Blame Game

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One thing that our new cultural environment has enabled is for all sorts of people to avoid taking responsibility for any sort of outcome.  On one hand, all sorts of marginal folks feel disenfranchised: Mr Nobody, wherever he may live, feels that he should have a bigger say in what the government does, and of course all political parties hasten to encourage this feeling.  But, as we all know, there is just no way anybody is going to get what they want; everything is held hostage by the diverse wants and needs of several generations of individualists who simply refuse to submerge their needs to the good of Society.  To Mr Nobody, of course, Society is a vague thing out there that simply exists to prevent him from being happy.

Many former Nobodys, such as the former Governora of Alaska, must have had the idea that their only hope to personal advancement is to mobilize such nobodies to all go berserk in the same direction.  Harness the Entropy, you know?

All the Mr Nobodys out there are gradually having an effect.  They don't get what they want, but they make a splash, and for the worst sorts of Nobodys, making a splash is almost as good as getting what they want.  They might not have got on Reality TV, but several minutes on national TV must be almost as good.  The Muslim extremists have had this idea for several years, as we all know.  We now have some evidence that US Nobodys are getting almost as good as Muslim Nobodys!  This is progress.

Mr Gabe Zimmerman, who was killed this week, was a friend of my daughter.  It takes a lot of idealism to sign on as a political aide.  It is truly heartbreaking to learn of the death of an idealist such as he.  Of all our troops out in Afghanistan and Iraq, a good proportion are souls with great idealism.  One has to assume that a small minority must be individuals for whom serving in the military is a family tradition, and not really a seriously chosen occupation.  (A lot of us teachers are the same; the 'Rents were teachers, and so, why not?  Often once we're in it, the occupation fires our imagination, and we're hooked.)  But the rest of them willingly take on the danger to help protect the people back home.  But it is painful to realize that every day a number of idealists are dead out in the war zone.  The total loss of idealism in the Iraq theater must already be staggering, no matter how it is totted up.  To this day, I am not certain how the decision to invade Iraq was arrived at.  It must be that Saddam Hussein deeply annoyed the Bush Family.  This is something to be afraid of.  The Bushes are entirely capable of holding two nations hostage to satisfy their ... whatever; I don't have the vocabulary to describe it.

So life goes on, with many wonderful people doing their little actions patiently, in corners throughout the world, and Nobodys making large gestures whose effects have to be moderated by all of us acting patiently over weeks and months.  It's enormous leaps backwards, and a million tiny steps forward.  And we throw our shoulders to the yoke, trying not to think about the balance sheet.

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