There is no denying that individuals and groups have been and will
yet be victimized in America. Each day the news is filled with stories
of man's inhumanity to man.
There is also no denying that, as a
general rule, citizens in the U.S. are particularly sensitive to
injustice, and are easily moved to right wrongs. The media is permeated
with the sympathetic airing of grievances, stories of Good Samaritans,
accounts of heroism, protests against abuse, criminal and civil
prosecution, and the like.
And, to their credit,
liberals tend to be quite vocal against perpetrators, and active in
their empathy for the victims. They have lead the charge against
racism, domestic violence, child abuse, corporate corruption,
destruction of the environment, and on and on. In many respects this is
very good.
However, liberals also have a tendency to
take things too far, and at times to use victimization to define groups
of people so that the groups perpetually see themselves as victims, and
continue to play the victim, easily manipulated by the Left. Liberals have a way of creating cults of
victimization that unwittingly produce Leftist LUNCs that perpetually victimize.the once victims. (see
Micro-Aggression and Culture of Victimhood)
And, if that weren't enough, like with the
politics of compassion,
the Left has even exploited victimization to manipulate and bully
in the pursuit of self-serving political ends. They have used
victimizations to victimize their opponents. The once protectors have become
perpetrators. This is not good, and also the cause of Leftist LUNCs.
For instance, liberals have exploited the victimization of
homosexuals, and have in turn unwittingly victimized homosexuals--which I
explicate starting here:
Same-Sex Marriage--Intro, particularly my article on
Destructive Compassion.
The exploitation of homosexual victimization is personified in Matthew Shepherd, "...the winsome young homosexual in Laramie, Wyoming who in
October 1998 was tortured, killed, and left hanging grotesquely from a
fence. He was discovered almost a day later and later died in the hospital from his horrific wounds....Almost immediately Shepard became a secular saint, and his killing
became a kind of gay Passion Play where he suffered and died for the
cause of homosexuality against the growing homophobia and hatred of gay
America....Thanks to a new book by an award winning gay journalist we now know that
much of this narrative turns out to be false, little more than gay
hagiography." (See
HERE)
Along the same line, liberals have attempted to quail the violence committed by heterosexuals
against homosexuals. This is great, and had
they gone no further in this regard, all may have been well. But, they didn't. Liberals have used and abused
the plight of homosexuals to: 1) stereotypically sling the unwarranted
arrows of "homophobia" against individuals and whole groups of innocent
people who haven't kowtowed to liberal ideology; 2) beat corporations
over the head who didn't quickly bend to liberal social agendas (most
notably the Chik-fil-a protests--see
HERE and
HERE and
HERE);
and 3) manipulate the public, politicians, and even judges, into
mangling the several millennium-old, once meaningful and valued
definition of marriage. (Just because a thousand or so homosexuals are
regrettably harassed or beat up each year--see
HERE, doesn't mean that they, as a group, should be
allowed to legally marry, any more than thousands of children in grade schools across the country who
have been bullied, means that grade school kids as a group should be
allowed to drive cars.)
Worse yet, in their haste to
beat up on their opponents and conveniently advance their agendas,
liberals have selectively focused on relatively less prevalent acts of
victimization of homosexual at the expense of far more serious and
extensive crimes against gays, which in turn has lead to the Leftist
LUNCs of further victimization of gays.
Take, for
example, when homosexuals are bullied by heterosexuals, it is often
blasted all over the airwaves, stirring up enormous public outcry,
which then mobilizes societies and government into corrective action . And, to an
extent this is as it should be.
Yet, when gays seriously
harm or kill each other, it at best registers barely a blimp on the
media radar, and in some cases the reports may be buried or whitewashed
or spun to fault anyone and/or everyone but the gay perpetrators.
To
put this into perspective, in 2011, there were 7,713 hate crimes that
were reported to law enforcement. These crimes range from vandalism
(29.3%), to intimidation (29%), to simple assault (22%), etc., to 7
deaths.
About 20 percent of those hate crimes were
committed against homosexuals--which is about the same rate as hate
crimes committed against religions, though less than half the hate
crimes due to race. (See
HERE).
In
short, there were 1,572 hate crimes of various sorts (it is uncertain
whether any deaths occurred) based on sexual orientation--mostly against
gay men (56%). And, while the rate declined over the previous year,
this is still 1,572 crimes too many. (ibid)
However,
in that same year, there were nearly 4,000 cases of gay-on-gay violence
(almost triple the number of hate crimes against gays), with 19
homicides (which is nearly 3 times the rate for hate crimes as a whole,
and 3 times the rate of gay-on-gay homicides for the previous year).
(See
HERE)
In
addition, during 2011, more than 30,000 homosexuals (20 times the
hate-crime rate) were infected/victimized with HIV/AIDS by other
homosexuals, with more than 7,000 deaths (thousands of times greater
than the hate crime rate as a whole), and where both the infection and
death rates were on the rise over previous years. (See
HERE) And, within that year, thousands of more gays were victimized from other STD's by gays. (See
HERE and
HERE) (See also
HERE and
HERE and
HERE and
HERE and
HERE and
HERE and
HERE and
HERE)
Where
is the media publicity and public outcry for these significantly
greater social and heath problem? Why dont these more serious and more
extensive victimizations get widely reported and championed by liberals,
even half as much as hate crimes against gays? What is behind the
conspicuous silence of liberals? Could it be that these more serious and
extensive victimizations don't advance, but may even hinder, the
liberal and gay agenda's? Is it likely that liberal leaders and media
elites may have submarined or whitewashed or distracted attention away
from these harrowing and unflattering statistics?
I will
leave the gentle readers to answer these questions for themselves, while
reserving to myself the right to reasonably answer the last two
question in the affirmative.
To me, if liberals were truly concerned about the victimization of homosexuals, more so than their own political aspirations and pet agendas, they would advocate as much if not more so against the more prevalent gay-on-gay victimizations.
Keep in mind, though, that while hate crimes against homosexuals have been mostly in decline over the last several years (see
HERE), gay-on-gay victimization is on the rise, in some cases significantly (see
HERE and
HERE and
HERE
). Could this rise have been caused by the lack of liberal reporting
and attention and intervention? If so, might the liberal neglect, as
well as possible obfuscation, be considered a form of leftist
victimization of homosexuals?
What makes the
agenda-driven liberal neglect all the more damaging, is that it has
resulted, ironically, in gays not having equal protection under the law.
When gays victimize each other, they don't have some of the same
remedies in place as when heterosexuals victimize each other: "Although
all 50 U.S.states issue protection from abuse orders (aka restraining
orders, stay-away orders, etc.), some do not make this legal remedy
available to gay men and lesbians. Domestic violence shelters are
typically not available to gay male victims because few shelters admit
men. Domestic violence shelter services appear to be increasingly
responsive to the needs of lesbian victims. Nonetheless, more work is
needed to address heterosexist attitudes and shelters' general focus on
IPV [intimate partner violence] as a male-on-female problem. Such issues
may discourage lesbian victims from seeking shelter and can contribute
to negative experiences for those who do. There are few agencies
specifically for lesbians and gay male victims of IPV, and most DV
[domestic violence] services do not have programs that address the
unique issues of these women and men." (See
HERE)
Likewise, as I intimate in my article on
The Politics of Race, and as illustrated in my post on the Leftist LUNCs of the
Treyvon Martin/George Zimmerman Controversy,
liberals have underhandedly exploited the racially-motivated
victimization of blacks so as to aggrandize themselves and forward
unintentionally destructive political ends, often in ways most harmful
to blacks. Their exploitation of racial tension has been what I consider
to be the most insidious form of racism: liberals have wrecked
substantial psychological and sociological damage by politically locking
a whole race of people into perpetual shackles of presumed
helplessness, incompetence, and dependency on a predominately white
government. I can think of no greater insult to a community that has
produced not a few leaders of nations, industry, sports, entertainment,
religion, etc.
And, as in the case of homosexuals, liberals have rightly trumpeted racial hate crimes, and worked to diminish them--which is good.
Yet, they seem to have turned a blind eye towards the far more serious rate of black-on-black violence. In 2011, there were 3,645 victims of racially motivated hate crimes, of which 71.9 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-black bias--or, in short, there were 2621 hate crimes against blacks, though it is uncertain how many of the 7 hate crime deaths were against blacks. (See
HERE) Whereas, "Each
year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the
time, the murderer is another black person." (See
HERE and
HERE and
HERE and
HERE) Or, in short, in 2011 there were 6,580 black-on-black homicides, which is nearly a thousand times as many homicides as all hate crime homicides as a whole. "Equally as startling, the same study reveals African Americans were
victims of an estimated 805,000 nonfatal violent crimes in just one year
alone." (See
HERE) If only 50% of those were black-on-black crimes, it would still be more than 100 times as many as hate crimes against blacks for the same year.
Not only is the black-on-black violence significantly higher than hate crimes, but it has been increasing over the years, whereas hate crimes against blacks have been decreasing. (ibid) Is it any wonder that black-on-black violence is increasjng when the attention of the liberal media and politicians is so riveted on the hate crimes, to the near exclusion of black-on-black crimes?
Again, to me, if liberals were truly concerned about the victimization of blacks, more so than their own political aspirations and pet agendas, they would advocate as much if not more so against the more prevalent black-on-black victimization.
Unfortunately, liberals are also busy dysfunctionally pressing Muslims into the victim box, with similar backfire results to homosexuals and blacks. (see
HERE)
In each of these cases liberals have not
only victimize the American public with the resulting Leftist LUNCs, but even more so they have inadvertently
victimized the victims.
I will add other examples when
they are written up--such as, PETA's exploitation of animal cruelty,
which has resulted in the victimization (at times fatal) of scientist
and businesses; or environmentalist who have exploited endangered
species to wreck havoc on developing regions; etc.