In the primaries, petty accusations and imagined slights and slings and arrows seem rife-– and arguing about such matters ad infinitum and ad nauseum. Every day, this media or that flogs one or another candidate for doing, saying, being, acting…re some insignificant thing. And sometimes, the candidates themselves turn to seemingly ‘out-victiming’ one another by petty accusation and counter pittance accusation.

But, there’s a price to pay for allowing/putting the emphasis on irrelevant and inflated matters….

The Boy Who Cried Wolf
The boy was a shepherd in a small village of farmers. Sheep herding can be tiresome. He did not mean to, but he imagined that maybe there was a hungry wolf creeping at the edge of the forest. He looked hard into the forest; there was no wolf. But, then he looked again, and thought, Maybe there is a wolf after all. I do think there is a wolf, really there is.

So, the boy cried Wolf! wolf! and the villagers ran from the fields with their sickles and scythes. But there was no wolf. The villagers were kind to the boy; You made an error, but you are young. Be more careful to rein in your imaginings.

The days passed. Again, the boy became restless. Again the boy thought there might be a wolf walking back and forth at the edge of the forest, and finally convinced himself there really was a wolf. So, the boy again cried Wolf! Wolf! and the villagers came running again, shouting this time they would kill the damned wolf for once and for all.

But the villagers looked inside and under and over all they could, poking every hut and hollow with their planting sticks and their bladed tools, yet again, there was no wolf. This time the villagers were stern: You are older now. You are supposed to be wiser. Do not keep making up untruths, for your own people are starting to distrust your eyes and mind.

The boy was chastened and tried to stay to the facts of his work. But, one day the wolf really did come from the forest into the pasture, and the boy cried out over and over: Wolf! Wolf! Help! Help! Wolf!, but the villagers did not come. Instead, they said amongst themselves, That’s only Crazy Hans who is always seeing wolves where there aren’t any.

And thus the boy met his fate.

———————-
Much of human behavior seems archetypal at root, and can thereby sometimes be predicted
I’ve been a shrink for 38 years. I mention this because as the decades go by in close-up observations of many persons’ psyches in depth, one begins to see repeating almost ritualistic patterns in human thought and behavior throughout those persons’ lifetimes,

a kind of aerial view of human beings that cannot be trained into a neophyte shrink, a non-book compendium that notes the often predictible trajectories and patterns of human behavior.

When opponents tire: predictable competitive behavior
Human behavior is often predictable when humans are engaged in a competition for something that is one of a kind, or a one time opportunity. A ‘vying match of many rounds,’ is also an intense stressor. A ‘flaying and flanging’ race causes marked physical and psychic duress. Markers that the ‘fighters’ are becoming fatigued, losing energy and power…

occurs when the boxing rounds devolve into not who is the best fighter, but who is the greater victim of the other.

In verbal competitions wherein others will decide who the ‘winner’ will be– such as arguing the law in defense or on offense– the most significant and powerful position one can take is not that of the champion… it is that of the victim.

The honest victim garners warranted empathy and shelter. People are moved suddenly to help and understand and heal the injured person. A true victim does not willfully linger nor wallow in their travail for secondary gains– even though it may take years to reconstruct trust or wholeness as before. Humankind as a record of eons of thinking that such are worthy to receive due comfort and benefit.

Especially, our hearts can be moved by those who suffer for a just cause. This instinct to shelter ‘just cause’ victims, is also a venerable ideal is us, but also a vulnerability in many. A great but not adequately insightful/experienced heart can often be manipulated by a poseur who hopes for a rich empathy that was not earned fair and square.

Oddly, there has been in our culture, for several decades now, an almost instant unexamined opprobrium toward those who are actual victims. Of anything. Of anyone. A kind of taunting that appears to rest on
–fatigue about

the endless number of true victims that keep surfacing in the world,
–and not being able to differentiate immediately between the real and the phonied ones,
– and being tired and angry from being called upon for mercy and compassion, especially for the false victims.

However, a blanket condemnation and disbelief of all who say they have been harmed by whatever forces, is not the most wise differentiation. There are real victims. But also there are those who play the role like Tallulah Bankhead at high noon after ten martinis.

It appears that in some ‘false victims’, when under pressure, or when they see a shining treasure they hope to corral, properly or not—perhaps, like the boy who cried wolf, it becomes too tempting to take just a short hop, skip and jump into mimicking injury, or claiming more injury than is actually present… and hoping for concomitant support because of this miming.

Why will persons mimic injury when there is little or none? Often because they are venal or vengeful. The false-victim stance is to disguise being enraged, or greedy-engorged, or calculating, or else, other lures by wearing the hair shirt.

In the main, such an imposter jumps straight to manipulation, not because they are injured, but because they are bent on the ‘treasure’ so thoroughly, it has caused their usual brain radar to dive into the Bermuda Triangle range

Thus, disability money goes to those who are not injured but pretend to be so; as in 9-11 Victim’s Fund being wrongfully plied by those who were not even present in the World Trade Center that day…. thus, sob stories that are not true but which are used to condemn another wrongfully. Susan Smith claiming her children were stolen by a black man, when in fact she murdered her two sons herself. It goes on.

And in political competition: likely one of the worst things thing a candidate can do, is

–lay in the coffin of long suffering Noble martyrdom (which is a kind of passive-aggression)
–or in shallowly rooted and constant complaint about others,
–or in a chronic and outraged ‘how dare you’ stance toward one’s opponent
–or on continuous rant which points out in 100 tiresome ways: ‘look at the pot calling the kettle black,’

Though initially these schemes may gain the sympathies of some who cannot distinguish a true underdog assailed unjustly in the midst of a huge competition they agreed to enter… from one who sees being assailed as opportunity to garner sympathies…

well, as in the story The Boy Who Cried Wolf,
eventually, trying to be the underdog for the perks it may initially bring is a zero sum game. Perhaps even sub-zero minus five. The boy cried wolf and the villagers came. There was no wolf. The boy again cried wolf and the villagers came. There again, was no wolf. Finally, the wolf did come, and the boy cried Wolf! Wolf! Help! Wolf!

But in the end, the villagers did not come.

Tantum ergo sacramentum: Down we fall in adoration…
Nihil est incertius volgo: Nothing more uncertain than the favor of the masses…