Yes, it's quite a business, this victim game. One hot-button issue today is that black people who have never been enslaved want white people who have never owned slaves, to pay them "reparations" (which is otherwise spelled "f-r-e-e m-o-n-e-y" )
because their ancestors from five, six, or seven generations ago were slaves who were badly treated. The only fair kind of reparations are to living people who have been imprisoned for decades for a crime that contemporary re-examination proves they didn't commit, who who have otherwise suffered a catastrophic loss at the hands of the government or the police. Everything else is pretty much trying to get something for nothing.
I mentioned the term "category grifter" before; "grifter" means a con artist, and a category grifter is a person who insist that because they belong to some category of people who have suffered awful things, they ought to be given goodies they haven't earned. Now even white people are getting into the act: I'm unlucky that I have no ancestors who were Irish (who were badly treated by the British, and then badly treated when they came to the U.S.) or Italian (who were poor or persecuted in the Old Country, and also treated badly when they came here). In reality, German immigrants and German-Americans were persecuted, if not viciously attacked, during World War I in much the same way that Muslims are today, so maybe I can get in on the Oppression Olympics myself. Though people would tend not to take you seriously if you tried to claim special favors because your German ancestors were treated badly.
Jews were treated pretty badly both in Europe and the U.S., but except for some legitimate situations in Germany that occurred during the Nazi era, they're not trying to get reparations - probably because (as some would say) they own everything and control the money supply anyway. Or maybe it's just because their culture teaches people to be responsible and to work hard to get what you want.
Funny that in your language it's "There's no smoke where there's no fire". In English, we express it in just the opposite way: "Where there's smoke, there's fire", meaning if there are rumors going around about something, there's probably some kind of truth behind it. Since this is obviously not always the case, some of us clever people will say, "Where there's smoke, it might just be a smokebomb".
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@RusA #9857202
Yes, it's quite a business, this victim game. One hot-button issue today is that black people who have never been enslaved want white people who have never owned slaves, to pay them "reparations" (which is otherwise spelled "f-r-e-e m-o-n-e-y"
because their ancestors from five, six, or seven generations ago were slaves who were badly treated. The only fair kind of reparations are to living people who have been imprisoned for decades for a crime that contemporary re-examination proves they didn't commit, who who have otherwise suffered a catastrophic loss at the hands of the government or the police. Everything else is pretty much trying to get something for nothing.
I mentioned the term "category grifter" before; "grifter" means a con artist, and a category grifter is a person who insist that because they belong to some category of people who have suffered awful things, they ought to be given goodies they haven't earned. Now even white people are getting into the act: I'm unlucky that I have no ancestors who were Irish (who were badly treated by the British, and then badly treated when they came to the U.S.) or Italian (who were poor or persecuted in the Old Country, and also treated badly when they came here). In reality, German immigrants and German-Americans were persecuted, if not viciously attacked, during World War I in much the same way that Muslims are today, so maybe I can get in on the Oppression Olympics myself. Though people would tend not to take you seriously if you tried to claim special favors because your German ancestors were treated badly.
Jews were treated pretty badly both in Europe and the U.S., but except for some legitimate situations in Germany that occurred during the Nazi era, they're not trying to get reparations - probably because (as some would say) they own everything and control the money supply anyway.
Funny that in your language it's "There's no smoke where there's no fire". In English, we express it in just the opposite way: "Where there's smoke, there's fire", meaning if there are rumors going around about something, there's probably some kind of truth behind it. Since this is obviously not always the case, some of us clever people will say, "Where there's smoke, it might just be a smokebomb".