Leftism has always been driven by a sense that the world is divided between "victims" and "oppressors," but for most of its existence, the claims people made to victimhood were based on some sort of visible evidence that most people could recognize. 

We could disagree about why people were not doing well; it could be an intentional desire to hurt people, indifference to their well-being, a desire to exploit them, or perhaps the internal failings or bad luck of the person who was not doing well. 

There are rich people and poor people. Some are born into wealthy families; others into poor ones. We don't get to choose our skin color or our parents. There are bosses and worker bees. The arguments we have had over these issues had little to do with whether some people were more fortunate than others — we could see the distinctions — but with whether anyone was at fault, who that might be, and what we can do to make the world less harsh. 

But as the world became less unfair with the decline of "isms" and the explosive spread of opportunities to rise, the need to feel victimized or assign "victim" and "oppressor" categories never went away; in fact, the opposite was true, since the categories themselves are central to leftist thought. 

Hence, the search for victims, the invention of victims through hoaxes and exaggerations, and the invention of imaginary slights. 

When your entire identity is bound up in fighting oppression, the demand for oppression to fight becomes insatiable. 

As with many horrible social trends, the term "microaggression" started gaining traction during the Obama years. As real aggression declined with the increasing prosperity of society, microaggressions became the "thing." A psychologist coined the term in the late 60s, but it never took off outside the discipline until the mid-2010s, and it wasn't added to the dictionary until 2017. 

Now, though, the term and its concept are in common use among leftists, and they see microaggressions everywhere. 

The beautiful thing about the concept is that it is entirely in the eye of the beholder. It is based on mind-reading and the internal feelings of the "victim," and hence is an inexhaustible vein of oppression gold to mine. There need be no objective reality to which to refer. 

Centimillionaires can be oppressed, as happened to Oprah Winfrey when she felt slighted by a clerk while trying to buy a purse.  Infants can oppress black people with the wrong look. You can oppress somebody by complimenting their hairstyle or not appreciating it enough. Liking the wrong music, not liking the same music, or even speaking grammatically correct English can all be considered oppressive. 

The power of this epistemological frame is obvious: the person desiring victimhood can simply create it out of thin air. "Microaggressions" are the Star Trek replicators of victimhood and oppression, and as long as victimhood can be assigned, the social benefits that stem from it flow to the people who demand social change and/or reparations. 

There are students at Harvard who have benefited mightily from a system that bent over backward to ensure they could attend, paid their tuition, and handed them a degree that ensures access to the highest benefits available in our society based on nothing more than the color of their skin, who will look you in the eye and assure you that Harvard oppressed them and is a fundamentally racist institution. 

There are professors at prestigious institutions who get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year who will seriously explain that their goal in life is to destroy that very institution because it is oppressive. 

The oppressor/oppressed frame is all about transferring power to the supposed victim, whose goal is to destroy the current social order and replace it with one where they are at the top of the pecking order. 

It justifies the hatred and prejudice held by the supposed "victims" toward their supposed "oppressors." In many cases, it justifies pure racism, which is why you now hear about how all white people are evil and racist. 

When even an infant can be assigned the role of oppressor, the grift should be obvious. But so many people are bewitched because they accept the categories that the left keeps acquiring more and more power. 

It's a powerful tool, and the left has used it well. 

Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it's spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there's nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.

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