One of the humorous aspects of seeing the recent strikes for writers and screen actors is seeing executives like Disney’s Bob Iger stick their feet in their mouth by trying to say that the desire of these professionals to have their careers protected from the threat of exploitation by AI and their desire to receive fair compensation for residuals from streaming is unrealistic. Some people commenting on the strike and on the attitude of the entertainment corporations to the strikes have correctly noted that there are no scenarios where multi-billion dollar entertainment conglomerates appear like underdogs in a contest with unions who are made up mostly of people who are struggling for a break in a mercilessly cruel industry where a great many people have to moonlight in other jobs to pay the bills while they toil at auditioning or writing in the hopes of having something hit the big screen. I know, speaking personally, which of those sides I identify with, even if I have a lot to criticize bad writing and bad acting in an entertainment industry that is increasingly devoted to pushing negative cultural agendas rather than entertaining audiences who want an escape from the troubles of the contemporary world.

I did not wish to make a thinkpiece on strikes in general, or the entertainment strikes right now in particular, but rather to view this situation as an entrance into the question of how it is that we look at the issue of rooting for the underdog as a whole. Viewing someone as the underdog is entirely situationally based, and given the contemporary interest in celebrating the underdog, we must be careful to keep track of the context we are looking at, because people or institutions or nations who are underdogs in one context are decidedly not underdogs when looked at in other contexts, and if we keep ourselves locked into seeing certain people or groups as underdogs, we miss the fact that such people may inflict a great deal of bullying on others in other contexts. Understanding this is the first step in recognizing that rooting for the underdog blindly is itself a bad position to take in general, but it is a necessary first step, it should be noted.

There is no scenario in which God is an underdog. The Creator and Master of the Universe (or of any potential universe that can even be conceived of) is always going to be far more powerful than any of His creations. To the extent that we blindly and consistently support underdogs, we will always be in opposition to anyone in power, regardless of the moral excellence (or even perfection) of those in power. It is this sort of reflexive attitude that makes people sympathetic to the devil in Paradise Lost, or in the contemporary period where people often desire freedom from the supposedly intolerable burdens to the moral law of God and so make themselves rebels against God’s ways. While it is to our benefit if we are strongly aware of the corrupting influences of power, and especially our own vulnerability to be changed by the power that we possess and the power that we seek, blind hostility to those in power is neither just nor reasonable, not least because those who criticize power can only do so by the possession of some sort of power that gives them room to criticize. The act of giving criticism is itself the admission that one holds some sort of position that allows one to criticize in the first place. One cannot speak truth to power without making claim simultaneously to possessing some sort of legitimate power, and that means that one’s criticism of power can never be absolute, because that would make criticism itself impossible or inadmissible from the beginning.

In most cases, though, we are not dealing with those who are never underdogs but rather those who are underdogs in some circumstances and not others. When we look at the history of World War I and World War II, for example, Belgium is an obvious example of an underdog, in that it was steamrolled by Germany in both wars. When one looks at the history of Luxembourg, though, Belgium is a bully in that Belgium attempted in the 1830’s to completely take over Luxembourg’s lands, ending up taking its French-speaking lands that made up about half of the country and incorporating it into Belgian territory. Similarly, with the help of Allied nations, Belgium took some needless German land in 1919 that only increased its linguistic problems. If Belgium can be a bully, situationally speaking, then we cannot think of nations as always being underdogs, but we must view their underdog status in a particular situation, since Belgium was certainly not an underdog in the Congo or with regards to Luxembourg. Examples of this sort could easily be multiplied, as larger nations can be carved up in hostile peace treaties or there can be technological or organizational differences that allow a smaller nation to take on a larger nation with a considerable chance of success, like the British in India or the Swedes in the Thirty Year’s War, for example.

Even on an individual level, a blind adherence to identity politics blinds us to the injustices that supposedly subaltern classes can inflict on others when they receive some sort of institutional power within government or other institutions. Whether or not someone is an underdog in a given situation does not depend only–or even mostly–on their identity, but on their connections. One of the main reasons why nepotism is such a problem in the contemporary world is that successful relatives are an immensely important factor in making success for oneself, drastically lowering the difficulty of making it up the ladder of success in any given field. Even modest levels of success, like being a successful writer of corporate jingles, is often enough success to enable one’s children to get a record contract. Even on the most modest levels of success, we see this sort of phenomenon with chain migration, where any successful immigrant from a terrible situation then becomes the catalyst for migration of whole families. Success propagates success. But with that success, one becomes less of an underdog, and more someone with some sort of power and position to protect because it can be lost. We must recognize when we have moved from underdog to the subject of envy and resentment, as hard as it is to come to grips with that.