Following up on yesterday’s post on Kia Vaughn’s lawsuit against Don Imus, I received this wonderful email from our friend Thinker who has found a perfect and profound quote from Richard Rohr:

“The psychological age has found a surprising and rather ingenious
method of gaining power: Playing the victim… Given the language of
romantic expressionism, no one can criticize you without appearing to
be crass and politically incorrect. It’s the ultimate and
impregnable position. Every talk show is about people who are
“outraged” and “offended” by some other group who want their
particular totem protected and enthroned.
…”To hurt, to suffer, to deserve sympathy is to have achieved moral
victory. Once you can prove that you are indeed a victim, no more
can be demanded of you than the perpetual right to tell your story.
The rest of us must feel the appropriate guilt and off propitiatory
incense.
“We all know that there are real victims, and the role of the prophet
is to proclaim their story publicly. But sophisticated,
psychological society has used the profound Christian archetype of
the Lamb to gain negative power for people who are often merely
bitter with their own vendetta. The victimhood of Jesus is a matter
of accepting, forgiving, and non-self-serving. The Lamb of God takes
away the sin the the world; the victim lambs insist that the rest of
the world has sinned against them. The first redeems. The second
deadens and paralyzes.”

Brilliant.