There's nothing more self-centered and dehumanizing than the insistence of Western liberals on atoning for their forebears' desire for cheap coffee and tea by conceptually transforming billions of people into automatons whose every thought and deed is a direct consequence of Western imperialism.
Perpetual victimization is the worst thing that can be done to someone. It means conceptually depriving them of their free will and treating their every action as a reaction. Yet perpetual victimization is at the heart of Western liberalism, it is the very same premise that once promoted eugenics against the poor and throughout the 20th century has promoted and sought to keep minorities helpless and victimized, rather than self-empowered. Perpetual victimization is the ugliest side of the liberal nanny state in all its awful glory, tucking adults into their oversized cribs and graves, soothing them with socialized lullabies and nurturing their frustrations and grudges with passive aggressive appeasements that only create greater helplessness and feed a deeper level of bitterness.
But the worst part of perpetual victimization is that it transforms even the vilest villainy into virtue.
This is the path that the Jihad has followed into the West over a red carpet of Western bleeding hearts. By painting a portrait of the Jihadist as victim of Western imperialism, the suicide bomber and the head chopper have joined the rogue's gallery of the victims of the Patriarchy, never mind that they actually are the real Patriarchy.
If Western liberals wish to pretend that Islamic terrorists are not actors but mere reactors, the terrorists are happy enough to play the game. The Muslim world already lives in a state of irresponsibility, half that of the adolescent certain that he could conquer the world if it wasn't for mommy and daddy keeping him down and half that of the senile pensioner who remembers things being so much better some time around 1300 CE than they are today.
In the disturbing co-dependent relationship between Western liberals and Islamic terrorists, both sides agree that the West is to blame for the crimes of the terrorists while treating the terrorists as outraged protesters against Western oppression.
"I have no choice but to kill you," shrieks the Jihadist. "You have no choice but to kill us," shrieks the Anti-war Protester and should any well intentioned police officer who might interfere, the Jihadist will shriek, "Infidel" and the Anti-war Protester will shriek, "Fascist." And they will both mean the same thing.
Perpetual victimization not only deprives people of choice, it deprives them of even the possibility of choice, of their free will. It insists to them and to anyone who will listen that they are helpless to do anything to improve their lot. Perpetual victimization breeds perpetual entitlement which when combined with a sense of impotence, breeds perpetual war. "Your money or your life" isn't simply the cry of a mugger or a government official anymore, it's the clarion call of entitlement, bred and fed by perpetual victimization.
The Nanny state, both the familiar domestic one and the slowly emerging global one, depends on fostering the myth of individual and even national helplessness. And if that helplessness fosters rage and violence, so much the better they think, as violence clears the ground and demonstrates a clear demand for centralization.
Yet the final outcome is something quite different, for in the end the rage of the perpetually victimized can only be sated when they finally climb the walls and throw down those men and women who cast shadows of accomplishment across the plateau of their own failure and ignorance-- and when the barbarians have stormed the city and stand on the burning walls they will feel a terrible quaking terror at their own power and the choices it lays before them and they will bow their heads to a tyrant of their own to reclaim their most valued possession. Their sense of helplessness which Western liberals helped bestow upon them.
