Mind Siege...

Why is it that the party of "personal responsibility" never takes any responsibility for it's errors? Examples are legion -- all the way from a president who cannot think of any mistakes he has made during his term, through cabinet members who could not imagine airliners ever being used as missiles, over to civilian millitary leaders who say no one could have predicted the chaos in Iraq, all the way down to pill-popping, compusive gambling perverts in the right-wing media who resolutely blame everyone in the world for smearing their good name.  3 million jobs lost -- Clinton's fault; 1.9 million jobs gained -- the success of Bush's tax cuts.  How does that work?

Publically acknowledging past errors is a bit of a political no-no, rather like failing to invoke God at the end of speaches. But this runs deeper than political pragmatism, and helps to highlight the difference between the reality-based and the faith-based world views.  In the reality-based community actions are important, and assuring that actions have the desired result is a matter worth investigating. When our actions have the wrong result, we ask "how did the plan go wrong?"  It's an open-ended inquiry into the reality of how our actions played out which can be used to adjust future actions for better results.

But the faith-based world turns this literally on its head.  Beliefs are primary, and actions are judged relative to those beliefs.  As long as the actions follow faithfully from the ideology, then the actions cannot be questioned, for to question the actions would be to question the beliefs, which faith will not allow.  So when their actions have the wrong results, they ask "who got in the way?"  Since our beliefs are true and righteous, they reason, and our actions were true to our beliefs, the only way they failed was if some non-believer thwarted us.

And there's always someone.  No matter whether the belief is in Christian theology, neo-conservative economic ideology, or one's personal moral superiority, the actions that flow from these beliefs often have bad consequences.  Consequences so bad, in fact, that they threaten to invalidate the belief.  In the face of that possiblity the faithful look for someone else to blame -- an external enemy who is really responsible for what would otherwise be their failure.  Atheists, hippies, the liberal media, blacks, labor unions, trial lawers, single mothers, Democrats, "activist" judges -- all members of a long list of the usual suspects who can be rounded up anytime something goes wrong.  All conveniently part of the reality-based community.

Many have noted that the Republican party has done well with enemies: communists & Russians in the earlier part of this century, gays and terrorists more recently.  The bare truth, however, is that the faith-based community always needs an enemy.  It cannot exist without one.  If there were no enemy there would be nowhere to blame failures.  Those who feel that a right-wing controlled govenment at least means that Democrats can no longer be blamed for disasterous policies have a rude awakening coming.  The next four years will see a more brutal and dirty demonization of everything progressive than has ever been seen before, as the catastrophic successes of the radical Bush adminstration begin to pile up.

-jack*

Comments

[oldman]

You do realize that the paradigm of assuming success and then blaming a conspiracy for undermining you is exactly the same kind of mentality involved in Witchcraft and Sorcery type public hysterias? Why did my cow die? A witch cursed it! We must burn the witch...

[Don in Colorado]

I for one am really go to miss the Enlightenment.

[MarcinGomulka]

And if you need examples, here is one:

http://www.jayreding.com/archives/2004/03/31/blaming-america-first

>>>The radical blame-America-first crowd is no different than those that argue that a woman deserves to be raped for dressing “provocatively” or that that “Negro” had what was coming to them because they talked up or sat at the wrong lunch counter. The four individuals that died were killed because they were trying to bring freedom to the people of Iraq, a task that is a prima facie noble goal. They were aid workers, not soldiers. <<<

See? They were good, because the "freedom-bringing"-ideology is by definition good and everybody under that big tent is it, too. And they were killed, because they were good. And if you are thinking otherwise, you are a blaming-America-firster.