Category: Daily Caller
Pity equals power for the progressive class
American politics once revolved around ideas — tax reform, national defense, energy independence, health care. But one side of the aisle has abandoned the work of persuasion for the theater of grievance. The modern left no longer campaigns on what it can build but on what has supposedly been done to it.
Victimhood has become the left’s organizing principle. The emotional currency of grievance has replaced the intellectual currency of ideas. That shift isn’t just cynical; it’s corrosive. It undermines the American spirit of self-reliance, accountability, and perseverance — the virtues that built this country in the first place.
Let others compete for who has suffered most. America’s story has never been written by its victims — only by its victors.
Consider New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Last month, he delivered a tearful campaign speech recalling how his “aunt stopped taking the subway after 9/11 because she didn’t feel safe in her hijab.” The story went viral. Media outlets rushed to elevate it as another morality play about post-9/11 Islamophobia.
Within days, however, fact-checkers discovered that the “aunt” didn’t live in New York City — and wasn’t his aunt at all but his father’s cousin. The story collapsed, but the damage was done.
Even if the tale were true, Mamdani’s framing was an insult to truth. His version turned the “victim” of 9/11 into someone who merely felt uncomfortable. The real victims were the firefighters who ran into burning towers, the police who breathed toxic dust for months, the passengers of Flight 93 who fought back knowing they would die, the families who never saw their loved ones again. To recast that national tragedy as a story about personal unease is moral inversion.
Privilege posing as persecution
Mamdani is no symbol of oppression. He was born in Uganda to two global elites: filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani. Educated at elite institutions, including Bowdoin College in Maine, he embodies privilege — not persecution.
He’s not alone. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has built her career on the same inversion. A graduate of Boston University, raised in a comfortable Westchester suburb, AOC is a product of the meritocracy she derides. Her father was an architect; her family owned a home. Yet her political persona depends on playing the perpetual underdog — the marginalized woman of color silenced by “the patriarchy.”
When criticized, she doesn’t answer with arguments but with emotion. Dissent becomes “hate.” Opposition becomes “bigotry.” As Newsweek once put it, “AOC’s weaponized victimhood undermines women.”
Grievance as status
This inversion — privilege masquerading as oppression — reveals something deeper about the left’s political psychology. Victimhood now confers moral authority. The more wounded you appear, the more virtuous you become. Pain is power.
But grievance politics reshapes the citizen’s role in democracy. Instead of the proud American who builds and contributes, we get the dependent petitioner, perpetually wronged and perpetually in need of government rescue. The state becomes therapist and provider, not guardian of liberty.
That’s why so many progressive campaigns sound like group therapy sessions. The message isn’t, “Here’s how we’ll improve schools or secure the border.” It’s, “Here’s who hurt us, and here’s who must atone.” The goal isn’t reform — it’s retribution.
The vanishing of virtue
When politics becomes a contest of feelings, truth and accountability vanish. Success is no longer measured by safer streets, better jobs, or stronger families, but by how “seen” or “unsafe” someone feels. Emotional satisfaction replaces objective progress.
But the American promise was never about comfort. It was about courage — the willingness to build, to sacrifice, to endure. This nation doesn’t owe its strength to grievance but to grit.
Think back to 9/11. The real victims weren’t the politically convenient ones. They were the firefighters who ran toward the towers, the police who never came home, the husbands and wives who never got to say goodbye, the children who grew up without parents. To twist their sacrifice into a sermon on discomfort dishonors them.
RELATED: The left’s new religion has no logic — and AOC is its perfect preacher
Photo by Bloomberg / Getty Images
From grievance to gratitude
The contrast couldn’t be clearer. One version of politics says, “I was wronged, therefore I deserve.” The other says, “I was blessed, therefore I will serve.” The left has built a moral economy where pain is currency. Conservatives must offer a different creed — one grounded in purpose, gratitude, and resilience.
Freedom, not fairness, defines America’s promise. Adversity refines character; it doesn’t define it. As the nation nears its 250th birthday, we should remember who we are — a people forged by hardship and lifted by hope.
Let others compete for who has suffered most. We’ll compete for who can spread the most good. America’s story has never been written by its victims — only by its victors.
Democrat-induced shutdown poised to break record as key programs lapse
The Democrat-induced government shutdown is set to break the record for the longest shutdown in history.
Senate Democrats blocked the GOP’s clean funding resolution on September 30, initiating the government shutdown on October 1. Over a month has passed since then, with the shutdown inching toward the 35-day record after over a dozen failed Senate votes.
‘REPUBLICANS, BE TOUGH AND SMART!’
If this streak of failed votes continues through midnight Wednesday as expected, the government shutdown will have surpassed the previous record-holding 35-day shutdown from President Donald Trump’s first term.
Although neither party has indicated that a deal is on the horizon, Trump has urged Republicans to deploy the nuclear option to bring the shutdown to a close.
RELATED: Trump urges Senate to deploy the ‘Nuclear Option’ on filibuster
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, NOT JUST FOR THE SHUTDOWN, BUT FOR EVERYTHING ELSE,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “WE WILL GET ALL OF OUR COMMON SENSE POLICIES APPROVED (VOTER ID, ANYONE?) AND MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! REMEMBER, THE DEMOCRATS WILL DO IT IMMEDIATELY, AS SOON AS THEY GET THE CHANCE. OUR DOING IT WILL NOT GIVE THEM THE CHANCE.”
“REPUBLICANS, BE TOUGH AND SMART! THE DEMS ARE CRAZED LUNATICS, THEY WILL NOT OPEN UP OUR COUNTRY NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE IRREPARABLY HARMED!”
Trump’s calls to eliminate the filibuster would allow Republicans to pass their funding bill with a simple majority as opposed to the 60-vote threshold currently in place. Only three Democrats have consistently crossed the aisle and voted with Republicans to reopen the government, falling short of the 60 votes needed.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, an institutionalist, has always been against eliminating the filibuster. Despite pressure from the president, Thune maintains that his “position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged.”
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
While Congress shows no signs of progress, millions of Americans lost key government benefits like food assistance programs that lapsed over the weekend. Programs like SNAP affect citizens across the country, but Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is taking the opportunity to clean house, ensuring illegal aliens are not taking advantage of the program.
“I’m glad to see the Trump administration is working to get to the bottom of why 41 million people are on SNAP and why this program exploded on Joe Biden’s watch,” said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has repeatedly voted with Democrats against the funding bill, in a post on X. “It’s time to root out the waste, fraud, and abuse.”
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