The New Martyr
“The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.”
-Florence Nightingale
I’m starting to get annoyed with the whole “liberal media” thing. I really didn’t assume I would be commenting on something as inane as the little shibboleth that could, but after enough time hearing it nonstop, I really couldn’t help but make connections.
The Right seems to be playing the martyr these days. After John McCain birthed the concept of acting as if his campaign could be getting the low deal just because of media bias, the Conservatives ran with it. And they have yet to let it go. I hear it everywhere, on NPR, on local news broadcasts, and especially on the Right-leaning Minneapolis talk radio of AM1500.
Their new host, whose name I can’t even seem to remember (the replacement for the only good thing that came from AM1500, Mischke), is a bit of a zealot. He seems to bat for all the traditional Right-wing interests (pro-life, anti-immigration, pro-Christian), and thus seems to have a firm case of woe-is-meism. The Franken/Coleman debacle thunders on with more twists and turns than ever, and now that Franken is up by 225 votes, the media is to blame for some of the troubles, according to said pundit. You see, no one around the country even knows what’s happening because the liberal media is suppressing the important facts: there was double counting of votes and no standard method for the counting of improperly rejected absentee votes. Warning, the entire last sentence was sarcasm.
There’s not a whole lot to say on the topic, I guess. But this martyrdom is a bit annoying. Seems to me that in the last eight years while George Bush was in office ruining the country, us liberals took our chance to point out the falsehoods, inaccuracies, and downright lies coming from the administration. We didn’t complain that the world was out to get us, we just fought back. If this is the kind of attitude the Right is going to take, they really do have no chance to win the next election. And that’s fine with me.
The Republican base includes two elements that are prone to falling into a martyr complex.
The Christian right thrives on martyrdom, of course.
Then there are the embittered working class Republicans. In some ways, they are more sympathetic. They believed in the American dream that they can get ahead by hard work, and that dream has eluded them.
They don’t want their tax money going to the poor, because they believe that the poor wouldn’t be poor if they just worked harder – or worked at all. Being poor is a result of poor choices, they say. And to some extent, they may be right.
But these Republicans, who struggled all their lives and still are not as wealthy as they had hoped, can fall into the martyrdom complex.
Who can we blame for our situation? The government for taking our income and giving it to undeserving people, many of them ethnic minorities. The minorities themselves for lack of values that create their own poverty. The liberal media for lying to the American public.
Your Nightingale quote was a good one. Republican martyrdom has indeed highlighted their selfish, narrow view of the world.