thanks to brad delong from his excerpt here:
Though via a paradox: the greater their power, the more they felt oppressed. When the people who felt like losers united around their shared psychological sense of grievance, their enemies felt somehow more overwhelming, not less; even if the Franklins weren’t always really so powerful at all, Franklin “power” often being merely a self-perpetuating effect of an Orthogonian sense of victimization. Martyrs who were not really martyrs, oppressors who were not really oppressors: a class politics for the white middle class. The keynote of the new, Nixonian politics…though we are getting ahead of ourselves. For first we must send Richard Nixon to law school, where he was a monk….
I see this with a lot of my countrymen and women. its like so many people feel that they are so special as to believe that everyone is trying to oppress them. Damn. We are all special that’s why Nobody is special.
What I’d be honest enough to admit is what I continuously see. People are so caught up (except those people whom I know to have so much as to be ble to give so much of themselves, I wouldn’t name names so the few people who read this end up thinking I am referring to them) in the little drama of their own lives that most of the time your boss doesn’t hate you. The jeepney driver who gave you the wrong change didn’t actually try to cheat you. The lady who slightly nudged you while getting off the MRT(like the BART) didn’t really intend to shove you. Get Over Your Cult Of ME!