Stephen Henderson: Blame game won't solve Detroit's problems | Detroit Free Press | freep.com
I don't expect complexity from Glenn Beck any more than I expect sober clarity from Charlie Sheen.
So Beck's assertion Monday that Detroit 2010 is Hiroshima 1945 was predictably crude and one-dimensional -- effective, perhaps, for a predisposed audience, but not much grist for the intellectual mill.
Give Beck this, though: For an unrefined analogy, the core of this one was pretty spot-on.
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Mr. Henderson says, "... [T]here's a pernicious quality in today's political dialogue that seeks to blame one source for all of America's problems, be it liberals, Republicans, corporations or 'mainstream media.' If we could just take that evil out back and shoot it, problems would vanish, right?
"Right. Nothing's that simple.
"There's a lot of blame to go around for the problems of Detroit. But the more important issue is: Who's willing to be part of its resurrection? Who's trying to set it right?"
Lots of people, I think, but mostly in separate, often disparate, ways, and through this social lens that given us the idea that not only must responsibility always be assigned, it's best assigned to others. (Credit, on the other hand, is to be taken wherever it can be begged, borrowed, or stolen. That attitude's been serving the nation well, hm? :D) What it comes down to, really, is that our government has been handed over by we, the people to a small group of politicians made up largely of lawyers who share metaphorical beds with high powered capitalists instead of us saying, "Tut tut tut, hands off those rights and these privileges, thank you very much. We'll take care of ourselves in those areas, you lot just do the governing and remember that law-making and -enforcement is only a small part of what that means." I mean, if we really want to blame someone we can only blame our ancestors and ourselves, and our ancestors are either suffering their own consequences or beyond caring about any of it. I agree with Mr. Henderson, and hope that when we get over all the 'whodunnit' and finger-pointing perhaps we'll get together, share our ideas, and simply circumvent the political process through community action in areas in which the government has no place, until it decides to remove itself from those arenas and go about the business to which it should be attending.
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