We are all victims now.
We are victims of crime, we are oppressed by the heavy hand of the "nanny state", we suffer at the feet of faceless bureaucrats, we are downtrodden by venal corporations, we are scammed by interest-bloated finance companies, we are done like a big fat diabetic dinner by slick-talkin', finger-lickin' fast-food outlets, and we are drowned by the siren enticements alcohol purveyors and the bingeing booze culture that stalks the suburbs and pervades our high streets.
The cult of victimhood is alive and well and growing exponentially.
This is no surprise since its message is simultaneously seductive and reassuring.
Increasingly, personal reversals of fortune are inevitably someone else's fault.
On this unhappy note, I have to say I have every sympathy for the parents and wider family of the late Amy-Rose Allen, a 22-year-old alcoholic fatally injured in a crash after she was flung from the car she was driving while drunk, in the Waikato.
Every sympathy - except with the contention that she was "a victim".
Or, if she was, then with the simple equation between her victimhood and the liberal availability of alcohol in this country today.
Like many people, I have concerns about alcohol: about its heavy promotion and advertising; about the nature of a society that relies so profoundly on an alcoholic high to get its jollies; about the violence, much of it domestic, and aggression it provokes in some people (were it to be introduced as a "new drug" today, would it not, perhaps, get a similar press to methamphetamine or "P"?).
I have concerns about its long-term detrimental health effects, including mental health; about it negative impact on productivity in the workforce; about the dangers its misuse can create in the wrong hands.
But I also recognise that misuse of alcohol is likely to be the result of a complex range of factors; and that, as with all the other products and entities we are exposed to and like to blame when things go wrong, as individuals we do have choices as to their consumption.
Amy-Rose, in hospital following the crash, had her life support switched off three months ago.
On Sunday, her mother and stepfather drove to Auckland from Hamilton to take part in anti-alcohol marches that took place in Manukau.
All power to them: having lost a daughter to alcohol, and having had to make what must be one of the hardest decision any parent could take, one might expect them to feel passionately about the issue.
But matters perhaps subsequently got confused in translation.
For in talking to the media it came across they felt Amy-Rose had fallen prey to the pernicious alcohol industry.
Her mother told The New Zealand Herald that on a previous occasion her daughter and friends had been out drinking and won a $100 bar tab at a backpackers bar, but were told "they had to drink it there and then".
"She had already been drinking. That's why she got so intoxicated. These people are making money, they are making money at the expense of lives."
Only, Amy-Rose was evidently no stranger to the attractions and the dangers of booze: in her short life, and even shorter period behind the wheel of a car, she had been convicted three times for drink-driving and was before the courts for a fourth offence at the time of her accident.
Influences besides alcohol and its purveyors, including her own judgement, failed Amy-Rose Allen.
As much as the wider binge-drinking culture - with its social and commercial imperatives - may have influenced her, she is not exactly the best candidate for alcohol victimhood.
Yesterday, the Government clarified how it will approach voting on a range of alcohol-related measures following Prime Minister John Key's earlier hints.
How much cherry picking of the Law Commission's recommendations there will be remains to be revealed, although the transport-related provisions have been made public: a zero drink-drive limit for recidivist drink drivers; a zero drink limit for drivers under 20; tougher penalties for drink-driving and causing death; and alcohol interlocks for drink drivers.
Whether any of this would have made a difference to Amy-Rose is debatable.
The answer, suggested the Prime Minister's science guru Sir Peter Gluckman on a TV programme on Sunday, was in the "absolutely compelling" evidence that the skills through which the young in general - and by inference this young woman in particular - learn to deal with actions and consequences in later lives are acquired in their first six years.
Which rather puts the kibosh on many simplistic claims of victimhood.
Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.
