The blame game

This may sound a little like another entry I composed not long ago, but my repetition can't hold a candle to what's going on in society now.

The Monday morning quarterbacking at Virginia Tech is simply mind-boggling. We're pointing fingers everywhere. We need a scapegoat, a reason for an unspeakable tragedy ... not at all unlike the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The university didn't react fast enough. The campus police didn't do this. The local police didn't do that.

Who's going to resign? Who's going to apollllllllllllllllogize?!

Pardon me while I puke.

Have we really reached the point of no return on needing someone to blame for everything? Why is that? Is it just the media? Well, the advent of 24-hour news has created an environment wherein a story is covered ad nauseum, and everything gets picked cleaner than an animal carcass on a quiet country road.

Is it the underlying liberal tone? Well, we've seen for years countless examples of a festering mind-set rooted in the inability to take responsibility for the most basic aspects of one's own life.

Unhappy with your place in this world? Blame the system. Blame capitalism ... or conservatism in particular because other people live well and, geez, that's just not fair.

Concerned that there are religious fanatics in the world whose hate-based beliefs lead them to strap on explosives and kill innocent people ... or hijack planes and fly them into buildings, killing thousands whose only misstep on that particular day was showing up for work? Blame our inability to understand these murderous lunatics. And, by gosh (substituted for "God" because I certainly don't want to offend someone's sensitivities), by all means, let's invite history to repeat itself by avoiding even eye contact with anyone who might be a Muslim in an airport security checkpoint, because that would be "profiling."

Kid's not cutting it in school? Surely, the system is at fault! Demand more money!

Can't get off your ass in the face of an approaching hurricane? Gotta be the government's fault when all hell breaks loose, right? The federal government, too, because the re-election of local leaders less than one year later illustrates the clearest picture of this blame-someone-else culture.

Well, the system is to blame for all of the above. The system of societal evolution that has resulted in your ability to buy a cup of coffee, fail to take note of steam rising from the cup, spill it on yourself and then successfully sue the person who sold it to you for not informing you, in writing, that it was hot; or in your being free from accountability when your child wraps a plastic bag around his or her head and suffocates because someone failed to instruct you to properly dispose of said bag; or that when you stick your hand under a running lawn mower and lose two fingers, it's someone else's fault because there was no block-lettered label covering half the mower warning you not to do so.

The most asinine thing I've heard in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings was a radio-show caller who lamented the fact that we send our children off to college with the belief that they'll be taken care of and kept safe ...

What color is the sky in that world?

Those killed at Virginia Tech were simply wrong-place-wrong-time victims, unfortunate gazelle at the back of the herd when the lion came charging.

The fact that we now need someone to blame, other than the shooter himself, speaks volumes about the point to which we, as a society, have regressed.

(Imported from April 18, 2007)