Writing before the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy declared his presidential candidacy, Theodore Kupfer considers the diagnosis of America’s social ills that Ramaswamy sets forth in his book Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence. Kupfer writes:

Whereas Americans once took pride in their ability to overcome long odds, now they tell and believe stories about “what they can’t do,” from racial minorities living in immiserated towns to southerners lamenting the lost Confederacy to aspiring college students eagerly workshopping sob stories with admissions counselors. Declaring oneself a victim might seem disempowering, but people keep doing it, perhaps because victim status confers advantages on those who can gain official recognition.

Ramaswamy argues that a victimhood complex is contributing to national decline in America, but not all such complexes are enervating. Nazis rose to power blaming “Jewish Bolshevism” for the German people’s interwar misfortune, while Communists sparked revolutions across the world by blaming capitalist exploitation for human misery. Ramaswamy fears that the U.S. has fallen behind China in educational excellence and military preparedness, and yet the Chinese government and its hardline nationalist supporters often refer to their nation’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of an imperial West. Past alleged wrongs can be a powerful motivator.

A more precise statement of the problem is that Americans regard themselves not just as victims but as victims of one another.

Two weeks ago, a terrorist—most likely working for Hizballah—managed to cross into Israel from Lebanon and plant an explosive device near Megiddo that wounded a civilian. The attack, according to Matthew Levitt, is a sign of the Iran-backed militia’s increasing willingness to challenge the tacit understanding it has had with the IDF for over a decade. Such renewed aggression can also be found in the rhetoric of the group’s leaders:

In the lead-up to the 2006 war, [Hizballah’s] Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah famously miscalculated how Israel would respond to the cross-border abduction of its soldiers. According to Israeli analysts, however, he now believes he can predict the enemy’s behavior more accurately, leading him to sharpen his rhetoric and approve a series of increasingly aggressive actions over the past three years.

Nasrallah’s willingness to risk conflict with Israel was partly driven by domestic economic and political pressures. . . . Yet he also seemed to believe that Israel was unlikely to respond in a serious way to his threats given Hizballah’s enlarged precision-missile arsenal and air-defense systems.

In addition to the bombing, this month has seen increased reports of cross-border harassment against Israelis, such as aiming laser beams at drivers and homes, setting off loud explosions on the Lebanese frontier, and pouring sewage toward Israeli towns. Hizballah has also disrupted Israeli efforts to reinforce the security barrier in several spots along the Blue Line, [which serves as the de-facto border between Lebanon and the Jewish state].

This creeping aggressiveness—coupled with Nasrallah’s sense of having deterred Israel and weakened its military posture—indicate that Hizballah will continue trying to move the goalposts.