Lives lost, hopes hammered, dreams dashed.
Many of us consider the human tragedies that hit our nation — terrorism, mass shootings, bombings, etc. — with horror, compassion, and a strong desire to relieve the suffering in any way we can.
But not all.
For an increasing number of Americans, the first order of business after learning of these terrible events is none of the above. Instead, it is to find a partisan scapegoat or scapegoats on whom to pin the blame.
These tragedies should not be partisan issues, but that’s what they’ve become.
Time after time, I have read the online comments of people whose first instinct was to turn to news sources with which they agreed to assure themselves that their hands, and the hands of those who shared their beliefs, were clean — while the hands of those across the ideological divide were red with the blood of innocents.
This knee-jerk reaction seems to have embedded itself more deeply into the American psyche in the last 30 or so years, in step with the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, when what should be news sites began to churn out skewed stories to score cheap political points and boost their ratings, truth be damned.
It must make some feel better to tune in.
But does it help? I don’t think so. I concluded long ago that we Americans could get things done more quickly and efficiently if we cut out the bickering and finger pointing.
When I worked in Sequim years ago, my car died one night on the ice and snow in the middle of a signalled intersection. Immediately, a woman shot out of her car to scream at me about “that piece of crap you’re driving!”
“Lady,” I said, “what I need right now is a push to get my car off the street so people can get by. Your blame-and-shame game ain’t helping one bit.”
And for the record, my car was not a piece of crap.
On a much larger canvas, the fires burning in Los Angeles have once again engaged the energies of the Blame Those Bastards Over There Party, or BTBOTP.
Ignoring the tinder-dry conditions and hurricane strength winds and budget cuts to the fire services that LA officials enacted in order to hire more police, and a million other factors, Elon Musk and his ilk have instead fastened on the boogeyman du jour: “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programs.
Those folks are trying to draw a preposterous causal correlation between the devastation wrought by the wild fires and DEI. Thinly disguised, they argue that the female fire chief as well as minority hires the Los Angeles Fire Department has made in recent years are to blame. Obviously, those hires took jobs away from more qualified white firefighters, and are “incompetent.”
Yeah, sure, it’s that Black, or Chinese, or Hispanic firefighter’s fault, or the fault of the female chief, that the fires that broke out, four at once, overwhelmed all local resources dedicated to fighting fires. It’s an argument beneath contempt.
We witnessed the same thing with the COVID pandemic.
How quick we were to attribute sinister motives to actions people had taken to fight COVID, and again attacked them on a partisan basis.
But what if there weren’t bad guys? What if the mistakes made — and yes, people screwed up — had nothing to do with sinister intent? What if no one alive then had ever dealt with such a thing before, so they didn’t know what to do and acted, not in sulfurous alliance with the devil, but … clumsily?
Unless, or until there is clear evidence of intent to harm, I think it’s always a better practice, at least at first, to keep a cool head. To draw a laser beam on solving the problem, or at least relieving the suffering, and let the police and investigators and courts sort out the mess.
Otherwise, we’ll keep getting nonsense like the recent accusation that Democrats down south seeded hurricanes to prevent people from voting. Stupid. No, not good enough: stoooopid!
What do you think?
Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@auburn-reporter.com.
