POLISHING YOUR VICTIM STORY
by Jon Rappoport
October 30, 2012
No, I’m not talking about Hurricane Sandy. I’m talking about something much more widespread.
If you haven’t realized it already, kids these days are growing up with the full knowledge that victims get ahead. Therefore, they have to find and hone and polish a story that will serve them well in life.
It could be anything from ADHD to Bipolar to “my parents got divorced, what do you expect?”
It’s not just about telling a story, either. They have to live out at least part of it, to gain cred.
So the kid steals. Or he throws tantrums. Or he gets bad grades in school, on purpose. Or, in certain circles, he pulls a trigger and somebody dies.
In the mental health department, he has 297 official mental disorders to choose from. It’s a banquet.
You can say the kid is too young to really know what he’s doing, and the parents and teachers and doctors are to blame, and that’s partly true. But unfortunately, the kid is, in fact, doing it. He is constructing a victim myth for himself. Later in life, he’ll find more sophisticated cover stories, and at some point the chickens will come home to roost. He’ll deteriorate as an adult, it won’t be pretty to watch.
Every once in a while, when a reader decides I haven’t been sufficiently sympathetic to victims, he’ll write and remind me of all the people in the world who are screwing over other people. Screwers like the government, the corporations, the big non-profit foundations, the banks, the generals, the intelligence agencies, the 20 families who own the planet, the secret societies, the doctors, the insurance companies, the right wingers or left wingers…
I have no problem with that. As a reporter, I’ve been covering these criminals for the past 30 years.
But I also know that self-made victims (as opposed to the people who are really being trampled on a daily basis) will blame major criminals to keep themselves weak and powerless. It’s a con. It’s a game.
Yes, this is an unpleasant subject. It’s also a basic element of human psychology, untouched by “mental-health professionals.” These pros feed off of, and in fact create, victims by the truckload. It’s good for business.
Several times, in print, I’ve called the 21st century the Century of the Brain. Ultimately, researchers want to say everyone is a victim of his own brain, and chemicals need to be applied to cure the inherent problem.
But on the other side, we now have many, many able-bodied people who are looking for an out. They’re looking for an acceptable way to predict and explain their failure and obtain freebies and sympathy.
Since the beginning of this election season, I’ve been saying that both candidates are shills for big government. We can go back many, many decades and then come back up the line and see that the federal government has been spreading like a fungus. It’s more than alarming.
However, it’s interesting that this election has been framed, as a story, about personal initiative and responsibility versus dependence and victimhood. This shows that people still think about these things. The amnesia and narcosis aren’t total. Not yet.
But at this rate, unless some fundamental change occurs, there will come a day when even the legend of personal liberty and responsibility will die out. At that point, a presidential election will look like an overt fire sale. It will be one set of freebies for victims versus another set.
Do you want the Democratic flat screen and car or the Republican Hawaiian vacation and the buttock implants?
The presidential debates will consist of competing late-night infomercials.
Parents who can afford it will be hiring victim consultants to tutor their little darlings, so they can choose stories that, later in life, will land them the most freebies.
Amidst the protests and uproar, the government will decide that every child, no matter how little money his parents make, deserves a civil servant to advocate for him and promote and shape his future as a disabled creature.
This is precisely what’s happening now in the mental-health arena. Last week, I reported on psychiatrists who are dispensing ADHD drugs to children in low-income neighborhoods, to effect “social justice.”
Since these MD morons assume the drugs actually do improve school performance over the long run, they want to close the gap between poorer and richer kids.
You see, it’s already SOP in middle-class homes to seek out shrinks who will make ADHD diagnoses for their privileged kids and give them the “performance-enhancing” drugs before crucial exams.
This must not stand, say the shrinks. No, the poorer kids deserve their (toxic) Ritalin and Adderall, too. You can’t pretend to be a victim in Shaker Heights or Scarsdale unless you can be exactly the same kind of victim in Watts or Southside Chicago.
By that logic, if little Jimmy who lives on Park Avenue can wear a $500 helmet whenever he leaves the house, in case a couch falls out of an apartment window and hits him on the head, then a child who is growing up in a ruined neighborhood in Detroit should also have the same quality of helmet. For free.
If little Jimmy can receive 55 doses of vaccines by the time he’s six, so he can be poisoned by the load of chemicals and contaminants in the shots, then his little opposite in Harlem should be allowed to get the same 55 doses for free.
If a white newborn baby, who is injected with the Hepatitis B vaccine before he leaves the hospital, can be “protected” against a disease transmitted only through sex or IV street-drugs, then a black baby should have the same protection.
Indisputable logic in an insane society.
So polish your kids’ victim tale. Many goodies await.
In the future, if victimhood and dependence on government are universal, there’ll be no need to have people around who make a good living on their own. Since dependence is a more basic goal, why bother? Just put a cap on maximum allowed salary and profit.
What we now call the safety net will become the only net.
I recall two kids I grew up with. This was back in the stone age, when things were quite different. These two boys shared several features. They were very smart. They wore thick glasses. Physically, they were very uncoordinated. During every game, they were placed off to the side, where they’d do the least possible damage.
They were, at times, razzed mercilessly. From the blank paralyzed expressions on their faces, they didn’t take it well. It was quite painful to them. I think there were moments when they became absolutely desperate, but they didn’t voice it. They just stood there and took it. No one came to their rescue. It was bad.
If then were now, these two boys would be diagnosed, at the very least, with clinical depression. Because they seemed, at moments, abstracted and detached, they might be labeled ADHD as well.
And with psychologists on hand to “draw out their feelings,” they would be encouraged to think of themselves as victims.
They would get SSRI antidepressants and perhaps Ritalin. The SSRIs might push them over the edge into suicide. If not, they might be given powerful anti-psychotics (neuroleptics), like Haldol or Risperdal. These drugs cause motor brain damage.
But because they lived and grew up in a more “primitive age,” they made it through. And they became quite successful in later life.
They escaped the victim trap. As children they were treated cruelly, but they escaped.
Here is a modern child who didn’t. This story is related by Dr. Peter Breggin, the author of the classic, Toxic Psychiatry.
“Roberta was a college student, getting good grades, mostly A’s, when she first became depressed and sought psychiatric help at the recommendation of her university health service. She was eighteen at the time, bright and well motivated, and a very good candidate for psychotherapy. She was going through a sophomore-year identity crisis about dating men, succeeding in school, and planning a future. She could have thrived with a sensitive therapist who had an awareness of women’s issues.
“Instead of moral support and insight, her doctor gave her Haldol. Over the next four years, six different physicians watched her deteriorate neurologically without warning her or her family about tardive dyskinesia [motor brain damage] and without making the [tardive dyskinesia] diagnosis, even when she was overtly twitching in her arms and legs. Instead they switched her from one neuroleptic to another, including Navane, Stelazine, and Thorazine. Eventually a rehabilitation therapist became concerned enough to send her to a general physician, who made the diagnosis [of medical drug damage]. By then she was permanently physically disabled, with a loss of 30 percent of her IQ.
“…my medical evaluation described her condition: Roberta is a grossly disfigured and severely disabled human being who can no longer control her body. She suffers from extreme writhing movements and spasms involving the face, head, neck, shoulders, limbs, extremities, torso, and back-nearly the entire body. She had difficulty standing, sitting, or lying down, and the difficulties worsen as she attempts to carry out voluntary actions. At one point she could not prevent her head from banging against nearby furniture. She could hold a cup to her lip only with great difficulty. Even her respiratory movements are seriously afflicted so that her speech comes out in grunts and gasps amid spasms of her respiratory muscles…Roberta may improve somewhat after several months off the neuroleptic drugs, but she will never again have anything remotely resembling a normal life.”
This is the kinder, gentler society. This is care and share. This is prevention and intervention. This is It Takes a Village. This is “we’re all in this together.” This is the land of the victim.
For this, we are told we have to give up old-fashioned notions of self-reliance and independence as brutal remnants of a bygone era.
It is not only the pharmaceutical juggernaut that seeks to make profit from the manufacture of victims. The street-drug business also needs people to enshrine victimhood as their defining identity, which is exactly what happens when a person becomes addicted to meth or heroin or cocaine crack.
The Mexican-US border remains wide open because the tonnage of street drugs must flow. It has nothing to do with “concern for victim immigrants.” That is just the cover story. The drugs must move so the banks that launder drug money can stay afloat. (See Former Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson’s article, “Drug Cartel, Terrorists, and Banks,”)
There are two sides to this basic coin. One, people make themselves into victims. Two, government-corporate-syndicate-propaganda forces encourage victimhood. It’s big, big business.
Finally, I’d be remiss in failing to point out the rising trend in “victims claiming they’re not victims.” Many of these people assert this revelation happily, as if they’ve just discovered buried treasure in their back yards. It’s astonishing. I’m talking, for example, about women who opt for “prophylactic” mastectomies.
There is no diagnosis of cancer at all. The women choose to have one or both breasts removed to “minimize their later cancer risk.”
A study done in New York State inferred that, among all mastectomies performed, the percentage of prophylactic mastectomies rose over a decade by about 250%.
“Well, I could have thought of myself as a victim, but I realized I was doing a really good thing. I was, in my own small way, a hero. I want all women to know about their options…”
Look for this joyous self-mutilation trend to accelerate in the coming years. It will be accepted as blandly as these preventive breast surgeries are now.
“Last year, nine hundred perfectly healthy Americans had their legs removed in operating rooms. They opted for the amputations to make a statement. If some people somewhere can’t walk, neither can I…”
Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
I agree with you mostly. Doctoring is ceasing; testing and dispensing by the test numbers is increasing. You have to know how the body works in order to figure out what you really need because the doctors ignore symptoms and go only by the numbers. Part of this is the fault of Medicare… In the 80’s the method Medicare used to determine payment was changed to code numbers. Illnesses have to fit within Medicare parameters. And using numbers on a piece of paper gives you proof in black and white. You can point to it. Use it in self defense if you are sued for malpractice.
My grandmother was a doctor. I thank my lucky stars. I am able to heal myself because of her. Without the knowledge, I hate to think what I would have to go through. There are groups of people by the hundreds who find each other on the web, who learn from each others experiments how to treat their ills because the numbers on the tests are wrong and no doctor will pay attention to the symptoms. The numbers deny the symptoms.
American medicine is good for emergencies. For everything else… we are 37th from the top.
Your story was all too true. Everyone is a victim, so no one is responsible anymore. Yet, most of these people are just looking for excuses for their sorry-ass state of existence; makes me sick. Here’s my story:
I have Osteogenesis Imperfecta (my bones break easily – 10 so far). I was given up for adoption. My adopted parents divorced and my adopted mother kept trying to give me back. My adopted father split and I never saw him again. I grew up on welfare and in project housing. Being short, I was bullied a lot.
Given my “victim” history I should either be on serious drugs or in prison. Neither is the case. I am a professor and I have degrees in Physics and Computer Science. I live an upper middle-income life with 2 homes, a newer truck, and three custom build Harley Davidson motorcycles. I have been to 24 countries and travel to international destinations several times a year. I have one son and five grandkids.
I really am living a dream (Ok, my relationships haven’t worked out very well as I am divorced and currently single.). There are no excuses. You take care of your business or your business takes care of you. It’s that simple. Stop whining.
Yes, this is a great article…I have noticed one step further, though…’victim’ and then ‘bully,’ this personality vacillates between one and then the other…they pull out the ‘victim’ to get sympathy and hide behind it like a shield, and when that doesn’t get the result they want/need/expect they resort to the ‘bully’….oh boy, watch out when that comes out, it’ll threaten you within an inch of your life and sensibilities, and then oh, my, the switcharoo again…the ‘victim’…. This needs its own research paper and book….it’s an art form…and I can spot them a mile away….2 sides of the same coin….
I had some property stolen once and was surprised to be contacted by Victim Support (New Zealand). I thought this was very odd, because to my way of thinking, a “victim” is someone who is dead, and I had only lost two guitars!