As we watch the current debating and berating — with many of us bugged or baffled by this odd election cycle — a wise friend pointed to me to this… a thought-provoking blog from Matt Walsh, a man who identifies himself as “a blogger, writer, speaker, and professional truth sayer.” In his latest stab at truth saying, he suggests that “America Is Falling Apart And It’s Your [our] Fault.” Ponder the following, little-longer-than-usual, brash but insightful excerpt:
“When deciding who to blame for the current state of affairs in our country, we always run through a familiar list of shadowy villains: the ‘system,’ the ‘establishment,’ politicians, lobbyists, the schools, the media, etc. These are fine suspects in their own right, but I find it ridiculous that, somehow, we skip right over the first and most dastardly culprit: ourselves.
We never blame us, do we? We always get off the hook. All of the misery and misfortune in our culture have been hoist upon us from Washington, D.C. and Hollywood and Ivory Towers, and none of it from us, we claim. We’re victims. We had no say in any of this at all, according to us. Well, at the risk of alienating literally every single person reading this, I’d like to suggest that you are an adult and a voter, and this is your fault. And mine. And your mother’s. And your neighbor Jim’s. And all of our accomplices who generally make up the club known as ‘We The People.’
Here’s what I know: If you and me and your mother and your neighbor Jim and the rest of them were prudent, rational, resolute, wise, well-read, morally courageous and intellectually engaged, we wouldn’t be in this fix. What’s more, we wouldn’t have the same sort of politicians because we wouldn’t vote for those sorts of politicians, and we wouldn’t have the same sort of media because we wouldn’t watch that sort of media. Right on down the line like dominoes, everything would change if we changed. Everything.
But there is no accountability. We all say we want accountability, but what we really mean is we want everyone else to be accountable. Very few people will actually hold themselves accountable for anything. Our Republic crumbles while we all sit around pretending we’re victims of a culture we’re actively creating and politicians we actively vote into office. We put torches to our own home and wonder why it’s on fire.
And then, surveying the destruction we wrought upon ourselves, we weep like damsels in distress, crying out for a white knight to save us. Inevitably, a charlatan in a suit of armor comes along and promises to do just that. We faint and fall into his arms, and he proceeds to immediately betray us. Then we weep again for another white knight to save us from the last one, and another comes along, and he betrays us, and we weep again, and another one comes, and so on and so on and so on and so on unto infinity.
In the midst of all of this, nobody ever says: ‘Hey American people, STOP IT YOU FOOLS.’ Instead, even the people who know better continue making patronizing excuses for us. They pontificate about how the ‘blue collar workers’ and the ‘middle class’ are feeling quite sad and angry at the moment, and we can’t very well be expected to take charge of our lives and make better decisions when we’re feeling this way. Nonsense. It’s all nonsense.
Any notion that we’re victims of some mysterious outside force rather than of ourselves should be laid to rest because of this election season. After everything we’ve been through as a nation, suffering the incompetence, corruptions, and failures of one ruling regime after another, look at what we’re doing when given the opportunity to go in a different direction: flocking to Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton.
Some of us support other candidates, but, if polls are any indication, something close to a majority are threatening to vote for one of these three. We could well be looking at a Trump-Clinton or even Trump-Sanders showdown for president. And whose fault will that be?
Ours. Such an election would be a searing indictment not of Washington, D.C. or ‘the establishment’ or any other vague entity, but of us. We the people.
We vote for petty bullies, crooks, and charlatans. We vote for them. We select them. Our politics are a reflection of us. Just like the deterioration of the family, the divorce rate, fatherless homes, the moral bankruptcy of our culture, the decline of faith, collective apathy, ignorance and intellectual laziness are manifestation of our choices, so is the political system. None of this was hoisted upon us by dark overlords or mystical sorcerers. We have made choices, we have done things, we have decided to be a certain way, and that way has proven poisonous to the future of our country…
Besides, what’s shallowly buried in this ‘don’t blame the voters who support bad candidates, blame the system’ stuff is the implication that, essentially, people are incontinent morons who cannot be held responsible for their own actions. Weak-kneed apologists who agree that Trump/Sanders/Clinton/whoever is atrocious but insist that their supporters can’t be criticized, are claiming to be smarter than those supporters. When they say, ‘Yes, I see that this candidate is an insidious despot but you can’t blame the people who don’t see it,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘Yes, I see that this candidate is an insidious despot but you can’t blame the people who don’t see it because they’re stupid.’
So while I’m accusing the American public of wreaking havoc upon their own country, I’m not actually the one insulting the public. I do not believe that people are, by and large, stupid. And if people are stupid, I don’t believe I’m among the small minority of smart people. My access to information and my capacity to understand that information is about on par with everyone else. Yet, while I must claim responsibility for my share of this country’s decline, I’m at least not intent on voting for a socialist, a reality TV game show host, or a criminal. Why is that? Do I have mental capabilities that exceed those who support these reprobates? No, I don’t think so.
If a lack of intelligence were at the core of our nation’s problems, it might be true that our dear leaders in government, media, and education are solely to blame because they’re the smart ones taking advantage of a bunch of drooling imbeciles. But I don’t believe that to be the case. I believe at the core of our nation’s problems — especially our electoral problems, but also everything beyond that — are a collection of common vices, not mental deficiencies: laziness, apathy, greed, pride, envy, hatred, etc.
Our sin is our undoing. I’m as irritated with ‘the establishment’ as you are — or at least I would be if I knew what that phrase meant — but ‘the establishment,’ whatever it is, isn’t responsible for your sloth and your selfishness. Although nobody will acknowledge it, there is indeed a profound selfishness in the person who interjects himself into the democratic process yet refuses to think deeply, evaluate all the evidence, listen to opposing arguments, and scrutinize the principles, character, and integrity of the candidate he supports. To plug your ears and put on your blinders and plunge determinedly into the voting booth, having spent months aggressively refusing to apply any serious and considered thought to your decision, is an act of supreme self-centeredness. Even more so in the case of the people who vote for the politicians who promise to give them money appropriated from their fellow citizens. That’s greed and self-indulgence, not mere gullibility. In fact, these people are anything but gullible. They know exactly what they’re doing.
Ignorance, especially, can no longer be the stock explanation. We all carry around little devices that grant us access to all of the information in the world. The sum total of human knowledge is contained tidily in our pockets. We may choose to use this godlike tool to watch porn and take pictures of our own faces, but the fact remains that none of us have an excuse to be ill-informed. We continue to make reckless and shortsighted decisions as voters not because we lack information, but because we’ve seen the information and don’t care, or perhaps because we don’t care about seeing the information. In both cases, again, the fault is ours and ours alone…
Our bad choices and our flaws and our sins have brought us here politically, culturally, and in every other sense. That’s the truth. So if you want things in this country to improve, stop whining about the system and look in the mirror. We aren’t the victims, we’re the cause. If America is ever going to be ‘Great Again,’ it has to start with a little personal accountability.”
[Truth?]
Respectfully…
AR
Let’s stay on the leadership theme for another day here; it’s an area so relevant to us all, and there’s an additional insight I believe wise to discuss.
