The Real Whiny "Victims"

Mitt Romney's comments to a group of donors, dare we call them "investors?" I mean that for all candidates, too, not just Romney, so you Republicans don't have to start cussing me out... yet. Let's face it folks, you give five, ten, or twenty bucks to a candidate, you're hardly trying to get something in return. You give ten thousand to a half million or more, you want a return on that "investment." Okay, I digressed. Anyway, Romney's comments about people feeling they are victims and wanting government help, actually "government dependence," he may have said, really struck me. Fact checkers have been poring over all sorts of records to find out just which Americans Romney was referencing. Without wearing out any search engine, let me see if this fits the picture of America's true victims, at least if you listen to them tell it. Do you think he meant the wealthiest earners in the country, none of whom have suffered from the slow economy, but who, in fact, are almost all doing better than ever? Hm, they're always whining about taxes and regulations, but they're making more than ever. "Just give us more money and less regulation, and we'll create jobs." After decades of this same tune, I'm wondering how many verses this song has, although the refrain is the same in every verse. They really seem to believe they are "victims." We all should be so lucky to be such victims. I've got a proposal for these full of self pity victims. I'll change places with you for one year. You don't get to keep any of your millions (or billions); nope, a straight up exchange of positions. If after one year, you hear me whining about how tough I've got it because of taxes and regulations, I'll praise Rush Limbaugh as the greatest guy on earth, no matter how many pain pills it takes ME to kill that pain. Now, everyone shouldn't volunteer at once.

WORD HISTORY:
Victim-The ultimate origins of this word are unclear (see below), but English borrowed the word in the 1400s from Latin "victima," which meant "a living person or animal then killed as a sacrifice to a god or gods." The word then also took on the extended non religious meaning of "someone/something injured or killed." I tend to favor the origin as Indo European "weik," which had the notion of "separate." This idea would then have produced the Latin version, "victima," as well as forms in Old Germanic, including Old English "wig" (long "i," I believe), which meant "idol." German, the close cousin of English, has "weihen," a verb meaning "make holy, to consecrate," while Low German Saxon has "wiehen" (reversed vowels) with the same meaning, Danish has "vie" (consecrate), Dutch has "wijden" (bless), Norwegian has "vigsle" (consecrate) and Swedish has "viga" (consecrate, often in the sense of marriage). I did not find a form in either Frisian or Icelandic, but that doesn't mean there aren't forms, but with a slightly different meaning, or they could be archaic, as forms of the word "holy" actually took over much of the same meaning in many Germanic languages, including English, as we don't really use "consecrate" ^ all that much. As you can see, the Latin and Germanic forms all have something to do with religious rituals, giving credibility to Indo European "weik" as the source. The idea is, "weik" (separate), would have meant in this case "to separate the good, the holy, from the bad, the evil; thus make something holy, worthy of worship." Old English "wig" (idol, a holy object) fits right into that same basic meaning, although apparently, the English form (a noun) was formed AFTER the Anglo-Saxons left what is now northern Germany and established England, and I could not find an Old English verb form,^^ but Old Saxon, the language of the Saxons which remained in northern Germany, had the verb "wihian," meaning "to consecrate, to make holy." By the way, the German form, "weihen," helped give German its word for Christmas, which is "Weihnachten;" that is, "consecrated or holy night."  

^ "Consecrate" was borrowed into English from Latin. It literally means "make sacred," and it replaced a number of words used in English for "to make holy, make sacred," most of which are ancestors of modern English "bless" and "holy."

^^ Presumably the English noun "wig" was derived from a verb form, as the other Germanic languages all had verb forms.