[adventured]

It is fascinating how people lay blame.

The most common thing I see is my fellow Americans blaming politicians, bankers, school teachers, lobbyists, cops, unions, almost anyone... except themselves. The truth is, the American people are the problem, and they've spent the last few decades doing everything possible to avoid personal responsibility for the shape of the country.

[ambler0]

To be fair, the American people are and have been the most heavily propagandized people on Earth. I sympathize with your desire to tell people to step up and take personal responsibility, but the truth is that many people can't even think straight. Look at how many people consistently vote against their own interests, identify with their oppressors, etc.

[aaronem]

> the American people are and have been the most heavily propagandized people on Earth

You have heard of North Korea, I hope?

[ambler0]

Your point is well taken. However, propaganda in America is much more insidious than propaganda in North Korea. Don't get me wrong, North Korea is a brutal place and I thank my lucky stars I was born here and not there.

In America, there is always the illusion of a raging debate, which causes people to identify with the views they are presented. In places like North Korea, the propaganda is much more heavy-handed and if you step out of line you are punished much more severely. This causes people to pay lip service to the official views, but not necessarily to believe it in their hearts. In America, stepping out of line is tolerated - to a degree.

EDIT: So perhaps what I should have said originally is not that America is the most heavily propagandized population, but that Americans are the victims of the most sophisticated propaganda machine.

[aaronem]

Well, I'm certainly not inclined to argue with that.

[TelmoMenezes]

Can you spot the irony?

[aaronem]

I can spot a few different things at which you might be aiming the word "irony", but I'm not sure at which one of them, if any, you actually are.

[aaronem]

> It is fascinating how people lay blame.

Oh, yes, very much so! For example, you seem quite effortlessly to lay blame on three hundred or so million people, and that's only counting those alive right now, with no consideration for those who've predeceased us, at least some of whom presumably could be expected, in your formulation, to have had a hand in creating the situation you so readily decry.

But laying blame, while satisfying, rarely does anything to solve a problem. In blaming "the American people" for the current state of things, you imply that they, all three hundred million or so, could have acted, and presumably could still act, to improve the situation. What would you have us do? -- all three hundred million of us, of course.

(For the sake of not seeing you wiggle out of the question that easily, assume in your answer that some method, not intolerable to the modern American sense of morality and ethics, exists of usefully coordinating the actions of almost half a billion human beings.)

[mcv]

> What would you have us do? -- all three hundred million of us, of course.

Vote. For for better people. That is the basis of any democracy. You don't blindly follow your leaders, and you don't blame them for their mistakes and carry on as if there's nothing you can do about it, because you can do something about it. You can vote them out, and vote better people in.

The fact that those three hundred million Americans haven't done that, is entirely their own responsibility. It is the responsibility of the American people is that they allow themselves to be lied to. That you allow every single politician to break their promises, and re-elect them anyway. That you keep voting for the same two parties.

And yes, of course the first-past-the-post district system makes it a lot harder to have someone else win the vote. You'll have to mobilize a lot of people. But you have to start voting for different people. People unrelated to the big two parties. People who do politics in a different way. Find them and vote them into office.

[aaronem]

A glib answer, to be sure. What do you recommend regarding the unelected civil service bureaucracy which has such a large hand in how the United States are administered? I can't imagine seeing any president take on the State Department, for example, but having seen at least one senator do so, I suspect I know who'd win.

[dllthomas]

One Senator wields 0.5% (ish) of the authority of a branch of government that State Department officials and staff don't (directly) work for. The President wields 100% of the authority of the branch of government that the State Department officials and staff work for. I think these things are different in both kind and degree.

[sliverstorm]

And what would you have those of us already doing that do?

[collyw]

> Vote. For better people.

Obama was the best option was he not?

[newsreader]

No. In either of the two elections.

[kordless]

When you spot someone blaming, try not to assign blame when you reply. It interferes with forward movement in the conversation. Also, everyone makes mistakes every now and again. Shit happens.

[aaronem]

I might be more amenable to an argument like this if I saw any possibility of "forward movement", as you describe it, existing in a conversation like this one. I don't, so I'm not; my participation is directed at the goal of amusing myself, nothing more.

[adventured]

Wiggle out of what? I didn't say blame is bad, I said it's fascinating how people lay blame, and specifically what / who they choose to blame (anybody but their own self typically).

I have absolutely no problem taking my share of responsibility as an aware American, for the state of the country (I never said otherwise, you merely incorrectly inferred it). I don't see a very large percentage of people willing to do that these days.

Accepting personal responsibility in a democracy is a critical requirement to then taking action to change the conditions of a nation. So I strongly disagree that laying blame rarely does anything (throwing false blame around at every object you can, however, does nothing)

I say the buck stops with the American people. I'd argue that far more often than not, a country reflects its people. This isn't North Korea, we're not a Communist slave pen.

I believe it's blatantly obvious why America is eroding across nearly every measurement - and has been for decades - and I think it's obvious The People must be the root of it. Politicians come and go, Presidents come and go, Fed chairpersons come and go, corporate leaders come and go, educators come and go. The culture is created by and evolves with the people of a nation. The politicians that get elected are a direct reflection of the culture. The people set the standard for the culture, and that culture is what rules a nation, on its ethics, its beliefs, its standard of 'the good' or fairness, or whatever else you want to refer to.

If the ~250 million adult Americans are not responsible for the state of their country, who exactly would be? The Russians? The Chinese? The British?

Who voted Obama into office? Who voted Bush into office? Who voted Reid into office? Who voted Boehner into office? Who voted Pelosi into office? Who voted all their priors into office? Who allowed that to happen by inaction? And on and on it goes, encompassing the radical majority of Americans, either directly or indirectly by willful inaction. Who else is at fault for the net value of the elected representatives of the last ~50 years, if not the people of America?

How many are standing by, not saying a word, not lifting a finger, even while they disagree with what's happening? How many don't even disagree? My personal observation and opinion say that's a scary number as well.

Who has failed to rise up and protest or take action (voting, informing, etc) against the endless wave of scandals and violations going back decades leading to our current condition as a country? That would be: the extreme majority of Americans.

Who bought into the fear pandering? Who is still buying into it?

Who has bankrupted the country financially by more than happily licking up all the obviously fraudulent political promises? And then going back to the trough to ask for more. What do you think the soon to be $20 trillion in public debt that can never be repaid (or even reduced) went to? To buy votes of course, on both sides of the aisle.

Meanwhile the Republicans blame the Democrats, and the Democrats blame the Republicans, and the majority sit and watch Leno instead of doing something about the politics and shape of the country (both of which they supposedly think are terrible per polls). Inaction, complaining and paralysis rules the majority - all by choice.

Who favored the war response after 9/11? The radical majority of Americans, blatantly.

The security policies since 9/11? Where's the wide spread protesting? Didn't exist, doesn't exist. Where was the large scale outrage over the Patriot Act? Didn't exist.

Who doesn't show a bit of outrage at the droning - murder - of innocent civilians overseas? The radical majority of Americans.

Who is numbing themselves 24/7 in a endless orgy of consumerism - which has been going on increasingly for decades - while the core fundamentals of the economy just keep rotting out from under them (you of course realize the actual unemployment rate isn't 6.7%), as they stay perpetually hooked on cheap consumer financing?

Who's supposedly wildly unhappy with Congress? And what have they done about it the last few elections? Well a quick check on the voter turnout numbers tells you all you need to know: the majority mostly complains and not much else.

It's a culture that can't wait to put itself to sleep so it doesn't have to think (see the hyper self-medicating that Americans are doing for example).

Who is looking the other way as the NSA, FBI, DEA, CIA, TSA, DHS and an endless parade of agencies violate an endless list of laws and Constitutional lines in the sand? Where were the American people as Hoover reigned for decades? Willfully absent in their give-a-shit of course. Well Hoover set the standard for illegal spying on the American people.

Who is not caring one iota about the cause of their health problems, and just keeps on gorging the soda and fast food, not exercising, ballooning in obesity, and whining about health care costs, looking to blame anyone and everyone but themselves for their condition? It's the insurance companies, it's the doctors, it's the hospitals, it's Obamacare, it's the politicians. No, it's the majority of Americans.

Who was happy to borrow an ever increasing amount of easy money for college? Whose fault is that? The politicians? The Fed? Educators? Bankers? Or the people that take out the loans and the system they haven't cared to do anything about? Zero personal responsibility, find someone else to blame for it. It's unfair they forced Joe to sign up for $80,000 in student loans, obviously. Americans are unhappy with education costs? I've got a brilliant idea: take action - 20 years ago - and work on a solution instead of whining about it and putting it off.

The housing bubble? The corporate leaders blame the people that took out the loans, the people that took out the loans blame the greedy corporate leaders, others blame the Fed, or real estate agents, or brokers, or or or. Oh look, turns out it's the fault of the American people mostly as a whole for doing absolutely nothing about their broken system. It's a bankrupt culture of consumerism.

They don't want the budget cut, they don't want entitlements cut, and they don't want to pay higher personal taxes, and or they want someone else to foot the bill, and so on. They want a much higher minimum wage, but they don't want to pay 25% more for the things they buy at McDonalds or Walmart. I believe this general attitude represents the vast majority (not every single person).

This attitude of blame someone else pervades nearly every aspect of American culture. I say: start with taking personal responsibility for your role (however big or small), and then do your best to take actions to correct the problems you see. It's about America becoming an involved democracy.

[araes]

Many of the "Who" -> "Americans" call / responses I believe. However, it feels like correlation without causation. Yes, statistically, the majority of Americans are self-interested actors who vote as individuals, not as well meaning members of a greater whole. They're people. But so are the voters in most other representative governments. I would instead say that they are just the logical developed state of a nation that extols Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (all very individual goals) while situating them in a place with a very rapid, capitalistic feedback loop that gives carrots for highly self-interested choices, and sticks for choices which benefit the larger social group.

This will be a bit of a stretch, but nations are kind of like equation solvers. You start with ICs (form of government, economic views, population diversity), BCs (neighbours, trade, media), source terms (research, development, legal activism) , ect... and then start moving through time, trying to solve for a converged social state that's stable. Some of that junk just isn't stable and diverges spectacularly. Some are only locally stable, so you get periodic upheaval. And some are stable solutions and converge well. Almost every IC for America is one that favors absolute personal freedom over the welfare of the group. Our government rewards people for thinking locally and voting in their self interest. Our economic model is one which absolutely rewards people on self-interest. The idea model (touted here and elsewhere) is to develop the minimal effort product, market it extensively, build a loyal following, and then go public so that early backers / founders can cash out. At which point...who cares? Next big project and the public can get soaked. Even our population distribution favors it. "The land of bounty and opportunity where anyone with enough determination and drive can be a millionaire!" what kind of folks is that going to attract?

And like I said, it all converges. The media used to balance some of this, but as the iterations have continued, the bankruptcies, the buyouts, and the new investors, they've gotten more infected, to the point where they're now largely just mouthpieces for whatever self-interested individual or group speaks through them.

Are we divergent? Hard to tell. We could be a convergently stable Rome, stagnating as we develop ever more robust home tofu delivery visualizations. With the core of extreme individualism, we could theoretically be explosively divergent. However, I'm hoping for locally stable, so that we can get enough upheaval to kick us over the nearby hill and maybe find a better minima, where we once again aren't risk averse, dare to build big projects that change the world, and possess a government that does more than go into spasmodic seizures every two months.

[tolmasky]

A system that relies on all of it's constituents being informed and politically active in order to be successful is structurally unsound. This in my opinion is the true problem with our representational democracy. I am wary of blaming people who have difficulty day to day making ends meet for not caring enough about spying, etc.

[fooqux]

I'm not sure the founding fathers could have predicted what laid in store for the country or the world.

We have reached the point, I believe, where it is impossible to expect the majority of the population to be knowledgeable in all the various facets of running one of the most powerful countries in the world. Economics. Cultures. Science. These are all words which could be separated into thousands of sub-topics. You're expecting somebody to be "informed" about stem-cells, the likely implications of raising the interest rate by 0.1%, the differences between computer "memory" and "storage", and the differences of bowing to or shaking the hand of another world leader. Plus somehow keeping a full-time job and raising a family.

This is where media is supposed to step up, do the research, and present the facts to the populace. I believe that a few people figured out long ago that if you can control the media, you control the country. It's a big ship and it steers rather slow, but I still think it is true.

Hell, we still live in a world where laws are created based on books written thousands of years ago, where people doubt global warming because "man cannot possibly change what God created" and/or because the bible doesn't mention it.

The problem is the same as it's always been: Us. Asshats worm their way into the system and through fear, money, charisma, or subterfuge they subvert whatever they can modify to suit their own desires. If anything what we need is a system that can prevent this somehow, which is what the founding fathers were attempting to create. The entire western culture (likely others as well), needs to change, and I don't see that happening without something major (think The Day the Earth Stood Still type shit here) happening.

[yuhong]

I wonder how http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition would do.

[wylee]

When I was born, on the day of my birth, how much personal responsibility did I have for the state of the USA and the world in general? (None)

When did I start to have the even the most basic understanding of what's really going on in the world?

At what point did I become culpable?

At that point, what power did I have to actually influence anything (given 400+ years of policy, expansion, entrenchment, racism, etc).

I agree to an extent that individuals can and should take some personal responsibility, but that doesn't address systemic effects. And the mere notion that we should take some responsibility doesn't lead to an effective course of action.

Suggesting that we vote (which someone else suggested).. well, that's almost comical given the premise of the thread, which is that you can't trust politicians, no matter how progressive or sincere they might seem.

As much as I do take responsibility (and feel guilty about not doing more), I still haven't figured out how to have any real influence.

I've spent plenty of time complaining about other people and their lack of participation too, and I'm not sure what difference that has made. Merely pointing out the problem (or what I perceive the problem to be) doesn't change anything by itself.

Edit: Added a word. Formatting.

[skylan_q]

Personal/Individual responsibility is a dirty word. There is no incentive for a representational democracy to create an environment that fosters the development of personal blame. It can only grow and continue if it focuses on social responsibility and blaming the other group. Like 1984's Goldstein.

[geetee]

Please elaborate on this statement.