It may not have escaped your attention that, instead of attempting to come to terms with the complexities of modern life, many people choose the simpler option of finding someone, or something, to blame. Let's call this phenomenon blame culture.
We blame poor people for their poverty, fat people for their obesity and immigrants for taking our jobs, lowering our wages and crowding out our schools and hospitals.
Rather than face up to what were once known as home truths - like the simple fact that we've elected a government that actively wants to shrink the state and that's why the schools and hospitals aren't getting the funding that's needed - or being prepared to accept responsibility for our own actions - we're the people littering the streets, drinking too much and failing to pay attention - we find it easier to pin the blame on someone else.
Build a wall to keep out the Mexican rapists, leave the EU to stop all those Poles with their annoying work ethic from taking our jobs, and all will be well with the world. We'll be back in charge of our own destiny and the glorious future that we no doubt deserve, because of our obvious innate superiority, will simply follow along just as day follows night.
But, if and when we are back in charge of our own destiny, remember that there'll be no one else to blame if at all goes tits up, as it were*.
*The ending of Henry James' short novel Washington Square has always struck me as almost perfect
"Catherine, meanwhile, in the parlour, picking up her morsel of fancy work, had seated herself with it again--for life, as it were."
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