Jokers

Introduction
Most of us surely remember Jack Nicholson's chilling Joker in Batman, a film heavily laden with the psychological problems of its main characters. Sadism in film is all the more horrifying due to the reality of its widespread practice in America. Much of the torture imposed on its victims is justified as having been earned: 'people deserve what they get.' 'Blame the victim" is a very common pattern these days, reflecting growing callousness and social disconnection.

Introduction

Most of us surely remember Jack Nicholson's chilling Joker in Batman, a film heavily laden with the psychological problems of its main characters. Sadism in film is all the more horrifying due to the reality of its widespread practice in America.

Much of the torture imposed on its victims is justified as having been earned: 'people deserve what they get.' 'Blame the victim" is a very common pattern these days, reflecting growing callousness and social disconnection.

There's lots of ways to blame victims that we've come to accept. We often don't recognize the arguments which amount to blaming, but should know the judgemental tone when we hear it. Blaming victims is an emotional - not logical - experience. When "logic" is used in blaming victims, it is a cover-up of the underlying emotion, not an explanation or justification.

Victim blaming invites others to do it, too, because it is a form of striking the defenseless. Ordinarilly, we are told not to kick a dog when it is down, or to hurt the injured. But, all of us have our own hurts and injuries, and almost all of us have been kicked at one time or another. So, there is a persistent desire to "get even," which is usually repressed because we fear the consequences. If, however, a socially acceptable person leads the way in abusing a victim, this can unlock repressed desires. The Nazis were very effective in using this mechanism to get popular support for their pogroms. Normally mild-mannered Germans were turned into book-burners, window smashers and brown-shirts. Krystal Nacht was only possible by arousing mass hysteria, based on victim blaming. The fact is, it is almost always safe to strike victims officially made defenseless.

So, it is a good thing to be repressed - not let it all hang out - when it makes social peace. This requires taking an attitude of tolerance, and finding other ways to defuse one's resentments. Following are some examples of victim-blaming. While some of these situations may seem far-fetched, I think they all involve blaming victims.

So, you are poor? That must be your fault because ...

	You are lazy.
	You didn't study enough.
	You took the wrong courses.
	You are black, hispanic or female.
	You have the wrong friends and relatives.
	Your father wasn't a Gates, Rockefeller or Kennedy.
	You didn't save anything from your minimum wage job.
	You didn't invest in technology or oil or real estate when it was hot.
	You didn't know enough to sell out before the crash (wrong friends inside, again).

Everyone knows well-to-do people have the right education, the right connections and work hard. They deserve what they have because they earned it. (Ignore those parents behind the curtain!) As one nouveau yuppie once told me, "It's all a matter of what you choose!"

What, you got cancer? This didn't have to happen to you because,

	You should have eaten the right stuff.
	You didn't have to smoke cigarettes or cigars.
	You shouldn't have drank any alcohol, except the French wine that prevents cancer.
	You should have worked out at Yuppie Fitness Center every day.
	You shouldn't have stayed on that unsafe job.
	You should have made sure to get health insurance.
	You should have had different parents.
	You should have moved to a safe, clean neighborhood.
	You shouldn't have used cheap, leaded paint and household products.

Everyone knows you can avoid getting cancer if you eat right, exercise and stay away from bad chemicals. You have to make sure you get the right job with the right employer, so you can get time off and freebies like personal health coaches. You can even overcome having the wrong parents, if you have a good doctor. Of course, if you couldn't afford any of that, see above. I am sorry they don't have any good doctors in Watts.

You got old, or you are getting old, and you don't have enough to live on ...

	You should have invested your savings.
	You should have taken those health food pills.
	You should have bought and sold your house every 5 years.
	You should have picked an employer which didn't go bankrupt.
	You should have kept on working, ignoring those shakes and aches.
	You should have made sure your pension plan was "locked up" before they raided it

There are endless examples paraded before us on TV every day: people who don't get older - whose bodies don't age - because they did the right things, took the right pills and worked for the right boss. If you are not like those TV people, it's not as if you weren't told. You should have paid careful attention. Maybe you have attention deficit disorder.

Need I say more? Are you getting the message: it's all your fault. You didn't have to be poor, or sick, or old. Those and many more things are avoidable if you only choose to lead the right kind of life.

I guess I misunderstood Calvin's saying, that 'the successful are the Chosen of God.' I thought that meant God chose the successful, so there was nothing anyone could do to make it otherwise. But, I have had my eyes opened: these days, the successful consider themselves gods.

Jokers' Wild