Recently considering the words "success" and "failure" I remarked the logic underlying the use of the words. This is a matter not just of respect for the outcomes allotted by "the system" and by extension society (as Daniel Bell put it in his classic of centrist thought, The End of Ideology, society is in the end nothing but "an organized system for the distribution of rewards and privileges"), but sanctification of those outcomes. Thus are those who have been given a great deal of reward and privilege glorified, with the more the case in as those who have not been so gifted are not only put on the wrong end of an invidious comparison, but pointedly insulted and humiliated.
In the process they underline that they deserve what they get, and get what they deserve, such that they have no right to complain, and no claim on anyone else's attention or sympathy.
Some practice, that.
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