Why would you want to be counted among the defeated if you aren't one?
Funny you bring that up, because I just watched a fascinating show on BBC4 (the history channel of BBC) and they did a program on historiography, which is the study of the study of history. So the program traced how the BBC has covered the Roman influence on Briton for the past 50 year... since the BBC started to do their Timeline (or timewatch?) series. Over the years, they did a lot of programs on Roman Briton.
And one of the conclusions was that in the past two decades, there has been a 'romantacizing' of the 'heathen' Britons as the underdogs. And that the Roman 'oppressor' culture has been attacked. Where in the early years of the coverage, the British were romanticizing all the things that Rome brought to Briton and how the culture was quite revered in a 'neo-classical' appreciation of the fact that they brought language, civilization, organization, communications, etc. etc. etc. to the Island.
The analysis was that in today's 'victim culture' everyone wants to be part of some oppressed victim group. And this has spilled, bigtime, into academic study of history where it is popular and trendy to cover victims, minorities, the oppressed... and somehow elevate their 'losing' into some kind of nobility among losers and savages under the 'bullying' of more-powerful (and often white/western) culture.
So there you go. These moonbats are so pathetic in their inability to accomplish anything other than keeping their parents sofa anchored to the allergy-free Berber rug... that they have nothing they can point to and be proud of. No hobbies. They never worked with their hands. They don't hunt or fish. Never fixed a car. Or a bike. Never threw a touchdown pass or hit a good bunt. Never hiked to the top of a mountain. All they did was slather on Purel and maybe play video games involving Teletubbies. The answer? Put themselves inside a victims group... real or imagined. And now they are somebody. They are a victim. They have an identity associated with some great culture that would still be great... except for those evil Western people... like their parents.
In fact, the same analysis has been put with the environmental movement... and the feminist movement. You are such a loser that you can't claim the slightest individual accomplishment? And you're the last kid picked for every team because, well, you are a loser? He, become a noble eco-warrior, out to save the Rhinos and the Polar Bears... saving an ignorant mankind (more ignorant than you, anyway)... from destruction. And your live has purpose. Stand for 'women's health...' and you are saving womanhood from oppression... your live is now important. Everything you do is saving women from oppression.
Yet you don't have to 'do' anything. All you have to do is care. Be part of the team. Be a sheep. Be a useful idiot. And your team will make sure you have that fulfillment that you could not get due to your own choices, lack of motivation or sloth.
This is the root of identity politics. And Balkanization. Instead of looking forward and being productive, they look inward and backwards and now have an excuse for why they are losers. And we seem to have bred a lot of them in the last 30 years.
Hard men make soft times. Soft times make soft men. Soft men make hard times. Hard times make hard men. (I edited the previous sentence because I wrote it with no coffee in me and screwed it up royally.... sorry.... Anyhoo....) It's a cycle. We're coming through the greatest period of 'soft times' probably since Rome. And our times are much softer. When a society gets rich and soft enough to support a leisure class... an academic class... a 'philosopher class' it sows some of the seeds of its own decline. At least historically.
Remember that when WW1 started in Europe... it was during the pinnacle of the Edwardian boom... that in Europe had gone on for close to 100 years since the beginning of the industrial revolution, through the pinnacle of empire and Queen Victoria... and into Edward's reign. Major wars were behind them. Standard of living was at its historical high. Trade was booming. It was, literally, the best of times. It took less than 3 months to turn it all into an apocalypse and ashes from which the continent has never recovered.
Pardon my rambling...
Cheers,
Sirhr