Victim Stance
"The single most destructive thinking error is 'victim stance.' If one is a victim there is nothing to fix. The problem is others. Inmates who use 'victim stance' are the least treatable."
Letter from career prison psychologist
Prison psychologists have a vocabulary for attempting rehabilitation of prisoners. In group counseling sessions, psychologists and inmates discuss "criminal thinking errors." These are ideas that impede change to non-criminal behavior. Criminal Thinking Errors include failing to be self-critical, failure to acknowledge one's destructive behavior, using manipulation and deceit, and perceiving others’ objects as rightfully one's own.
Donald Trump was unhealthy, the psychologist wrote me. He was deep into "victim stance." It might be a winning strategy politically, the psychologist thought. Victimhood gets near nonstop media support via Fox. Fox is backing away from Trump personally, but it embraces and amplifies that core Trump message. Everybody is out to get you. Fox says that only it pushes back against the bias of the mainstream media, i.e. everyone else. Fox dropped its "Fair and Balanced" slogan. Now they are the unabashed counterweight media source. Trump won with that message. America faces poverty, violence, war, and destruction, he said. You are a victim. "I alone can fix it."
"Victim stance" thinking motivates voters. Email fundraising appeals are primary source material. The other side is overwhelmingly powerful and it is attacking you. Stop being a victim!
"Victim stance" is the direct opposite of the optimistic Reagan "morning in America" can-do route to personal fulfillment and national greatness. It is a different era now. We are amid "carnage." The Trump/Fox world is a dark forest of oppressors: Democrats, Biden, Obama, both Clintons, Pelosi, elitists, liberals, "woke" people, progressives, Blacks, feminists, non-Christians, ANTIFA, immigrants from Latin America and Asia, gangs, big cities like Chicago for violence, liberal cities like Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco for progressive lawlessness, Muslims, China, Fauci, the CDC, Deep State federal employees, groomers, pedophiles, traditional fake-news media, technology firms, George Soros, gun regulators, the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, RINOs and Republican turncoats, the January 6 committee, trans athletes, trans people generally, Critical Race Theory, books than normalize LGBT, climate change advocates, electric vehicles, wind turbines, mailed ballots, ballot tabulation machines. . . . The list goes on.
"Victim stance" thinking, as prison psychologists note, is self-destructive. Fundraising consultants tell nonprofit agencies' boards of directors contemplating a major project that if they think they can raise the money, they can. If they think the project is too big then indeed they cannot. Success depends on attitude.
The "power of positive thinking" meme sometimes drifts into blaming the victim for outcomes. That is unfair. Adversity is real. Prejudice is real. Oppression is real. My own attitude here is shaped in part by a long career that required attracting and retaining clients. Attitude matters. Every salesperson knows this.
There is a difference between the attitude of Black immigrants to America and the attitude of native-born Blacks. One group has an expectation of open-ended opportunity; the other group a memory of opportunities stifled and denied. Half full vs. half empty. Outcomes differ between the two groups. Second wave feminism of my young adulthood was an optimistic feminism of breaking loose from old restrictions. I think of it as "Helen Reddy feminism." She sang, "I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman." Current feminism in #MeToo has emphasized longstanding injury, aggressions, micro-aggressions, intractable misogyny.
I think it is possible that every injury experienced by Blacks and women is true. It matters--but it isn't useful. In fact, victimhood is debilitating. So is "victim stance" thinking. Useful is believing one can be better, that one can succeed notwithstanding adversity, that this is a great country getting better all the time, that one can make the sale and have a happy client, that one can make for oneself a great life out of prison, free at last.