Taking A Stand: No one wants to take blame
You ever notice how it’s never anyone’s fault anymore? The buck never stops anywhere nowadays as it’s all about the blame game.
Had the father of our country, George Washington, lived in today’s society, the whole story about him chopping down the cherry tree would have been dramatically different. His famous statement of “I cannot tell a lie” would have been replaced with some type of corporate legal babble aimed at casting the blame on everyone but himself.
“We’ll sure, I may be holding the ax, but I’m a product of my upbringing so it isn’t my fault,” Washington would say. “Mom failed to cuddle me the proper way when I was a baby at her bosom. My father wasn’t at home enough and he drank too much ale. My teachers never taught me any better. My wooden teeth are too tight. It wasn’t my fault and I’m suing the ax company because I got a splinter in my finger from the handle.”
Sound funny? Well, it’s no more outrageous than the idiotic claims we hear today from folks seeking to shift the blame.
Now we get folks suing fast food restaurants because they’re fat. Talk about shifting the blame. They claim they’re fat because the restaurant super-sized their meals and therefore enticed them into being plump. Please, it’s pretty obvious if you’re stuffing your pie hole with grease-filled gutbombs as your regular diet, you’re not going to be entering the Mr. Universe pageant anytime soon. I’ve yet to see Ronald McDonald funneling burgers down anyone’s throat.
Then you have criminals who kill people who want to blame society for their problems. All they can do is whine about their mental condition and cite every right they can think of to keep them from facing the penalties of their actions. The entire legal system has become a joke catering to the whiners of society, all bent on not taking the blame.
And this goes right up the line. Corporations are the worst blame-shifters of all. Just try to get a straight answer about why gas prices are so high. The station owners blame the distributors, the distributors blame the manufacturers, and the manufacturers blame the producers. Yet, between them, no one will take the blame. Well, excuse me, there’s got to be some reason I’m paying two bucks a gallon.
And what about health care, the only thing in society that is more expensive than a gallon of gas nowadays. Premiums go up while benefits go down. When you ask why health care is so high and why coverage stinks, fingers get pointing and no one takes the blame. Yet, they all seem to live in nice houses. Hmmm.
Hey, I fell and busted my butt two weeks ago and I know I have a broken tail bone. However, I can’t afford to go to the hospital over it and I’m not paying a thousand bucks for someone to take a picture of my butt and tell me it’s broken. I’d like to call my provider and say my health care plan is a pain in the butt but then they’d just say it was a pre-existing condition.
You have people coming from miles around to pose in the picture and make sure their names are spelled right when credit is given out, but when it’s blame, talk about the roaches scattering. What does this say about our society?
With “America’s Greatest Generation” now passing away, what are we being left with? We obviously learned nothing from our predecessors who said “the buck stops here.” Somewhere between the Greatest Generation and today, we, as a society, have lost our integrity and our pride when it comes with our dealings with others. Either that or we’ve lost our guts to stand up and be counted.
Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].