This is extraordinarily unhealthy for everyone involved from society on down to the individual. Why does thinking of yourself and others as victims make your life worse? Well…

1) It keeps you from fixing your own problems: If you are an adult, the vast majority of your problems are your own fault and that percentage only goes up throughout your entire lifetime. Maybe in Afghanistan, where the Taliban might come over the hill and burn down your school for trying to teach little girls to read, you could say that "they" are keeping you from succeeding, but that's not true in America. There are people all over the world trying to get here, legally and illegally, because of the great opportunities that our nation provides them. If you can't make it in this environment, there's probably nowhere else in the world you could make it either. Unfortunately, it's easier for some people to wallow in victimhood than admit that truth and start on the hard work of fixing the problems they have created in their own lives.

2) Victimhood requires you to create oppressors: If you convince yourself that you're being kept down by racism, then you have to mentally create the racists who are holding you back. Is it sexists? Then the "patriarchy" is to blame. Being gay? Homophobes! After all, if your problems are all a result of being victimized, then someone else must be victimizing you. In America, those people aren't exactly apparent. Because of that, increasingly ridiculous explanations have to be fashioned to create those non-existent oppressors. That's why liberals came up with "rape culture," "structural racism," "cultural appropriation," and "intersectionality." We live in a world driven by supply and demand and if there is an enormous demand for oppressors, the market will find them even if it has to create them from thin air.