Once upon a time, in Amerika, people were principled. When something was screwed up, lost, miscalculated, manufactured incorrectly, etc., people took responsibility for those faults or issues caused and made good on them...
Remember when the generation of our Grandparents, and in some of your cases Great-grandparents, were referred to as the GREATEST GENERATION? They don't call Amerikans great anymore. We, collectively, are a bunch of whining, crying, tort tossing, irresponsible people. When we burn ourselves on a cup of comrade McDonald's coffee we sue him- AS IF WE DIDN'T EXPECT IT TO BE HOT COFFEE. Personally, I buy my coffee cold and my soda hot from comrade McDonald's restaurant chain. Yeah, like I like cold showers and frigid women- NOT!
We raise our children without consequences, on a diet of high fructose cartoon violence and dress them in Elmo cuteness... When they get in trouble we swoop in and tell school administrators it's ok- we are having difficulties at home, he has been sick lately, or it was just TOO MANY TWINKIES.
Culpability, what does it mean? Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa - Amerikan popular culture loves to bandy the phrase about without truly coming through and deliverin ghte lesson of what it means. Lisa Simpson, a cartoon character at that, uses it. Jack Ryan, Tom Clancy's hero character of many a novel that I have enjoyed used in a fictitious conversation with the Prince of Wales. We hear it chanted int eh background of one of the scenes in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It's even the title of one of the scenes in Fight Club... BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN? From the smattering of its use in film and fiction, do we truly get the lesson of what mea culpa, culpability, really is? Not really - we get lost in the technicolor washed out director's dreams and concepts of a film and we never really get the lesson.
How would or should we get the lesson? By not settling for less than full justice and full punishment for any crime or infraction, the punishments being proportionate to the acts... Longer time outs for kids- locking the XBox away for more than a few hours when Johnny can't read and gets and F in English... from the time we realize that we should be dumping in the toilet and not in our knickers, our parents and teachers should be chastizing and punishing the wrongful acts. Public trials and figures should never settle for less than what they originally sought to indict an individual for - to do any less cheapens the system, and dilutes discipline and the responsibility of the offending character... LESS IS NOT MORE. MORE IS MORE.
Blagojevich's "I have done nothing wrong." meanderings in his press conference are just garbage and a total indication of the problem of Amerikan society. Not taking responsibility and no culpability. The key word in his statement is the word DONE - indicating the ACT COMMITTED... Unfortunately for Blago, conspiracy and the intent are clearly there... what I'd like to see and most likely won't see is Rohm Emmanuel, our new Chief Executive elect's Chief of Staff select get some of that medicine too- but it won't happen. The media will vindicate him by way of removing any guilt or stain of insinuation thereof from their new Messiah in the 2009 White House.
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The Blago situation is a microcosm of American culpability, which is shift the blame and/or focus to someone else. My 6y/o son acts like this too. A real man would live up to his faults, learn from them, and teach from them.
ReplyDeleteContrary to what Blago says ("I'm not guilty of any criminal act"), the public knows that he is. Now we'll have to endure the parade of lawyers, hearings, sub-committees, etc ... at the cost of taxpayer money & public trust in their leaders. The time is coming for swift justice. The more we pander, the more we lose. I know, I'm sacrificing the "innocent until proven" part but I'm tired of all the bullcrap. Kill the lawyers first.
I think the most interesting thing about the Illinois situation is the fact that the MSM is STILL trying to distance BHO from the fray. Kill the MSM second.
I agree - the fact that we can try to teach our children something at home and then they go to school and learn the exact opposite which is that there are other "factors" that they can point to to avoid responsibility and consequences... Our American society is in deep trouble when its indelible in our children that they can blame other factors for their faults and not take responsibility for their own actions. Thanks for the comment Triz.
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