Category: Social Media

Day of Blame: A Modest Proposal

Several years ago, a couple of friends and I were having a few adult beverages.  The evening was old but we were still beautiful, and somewhere between the hockey argument and “I love you, man!” we came up with a cunning plan.  We decided that what this country needed was a National Day of Blame.  It would be a single day, set aside each year, so people could legitimately blame all the various and sundry who had ever done them a dirty.  It was a worthy plan; unfortunately, it didn’t survive the skull pain of the morning after the night before.  However, as bad is just getting worse (here in the second decade of the 21st century) I think me and the bros may have hit on an idea whose time has just begun.

You don’t have to be intoxicated to realize that grievance has become a growth industry in North America.  There aren’t five people on this continent who haven’t got a bitch with somebody – or something.  Everybody from Barack Obama (who’s currently blaming the Republicans) to the guy down the street (who’s blaming a roofer named Jinder or Vinder — I’m not sure which) has got a finger pointed directly in some other guy’s face.  This isn’t healthy.

However, as a result, there’s an entire industry built on the premise that everything is somebody else’s fault.  The most visible proponents of this are government agencies, and the uncivil servants who dwell there, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg.  There’s another whole layer of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) waiting down the block to back them up.  The sole purpose of these groups is to point fingers and assess blame.  These services, if you can call them that, are stocked full of worker bees, called activists.  Remember when activists were people who saw inequality, misfortune or injustice and took time out of their real lives to perform their civic duty and help right a social wrong?  Not anymore; contemporary activists are permanent employees of the grievance industry.  Blaming somebody for something is their 9 to 5 job.  Their children’s lunch money and school clothes depend on it.

There’s also a whole strata of sub-scum hangers-on who feed off grievance as if it were manna from the gods.  There are harassment officers, community organizers and various advocacy groups.  There are also the legal-fecal lawyers who perch like vampires, waiting to sink their fangs into some social complaint that used to be settled with a harsh word and a rude gesture.  And of course, there’s the media: in the history of civilized behaviour, no other collection of ne’er–do-wells has played The Blame Game with such ruthless tenacity – and that’s sugar-coating it.  TV and radio personalities wake up in the morning blaming the sun for shining if it’s a hot day and either Obama or Bachmann if it’s cloudy – and they make millions doing it.  It’s no wonder I blame Phil Donahue for ruining journalism.

Anyway, since finding fault has become a national pastime, it’s time we had a day for it.  The Day of Blame could be March 1st, halfway between St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day.  The sugar shock feel-good of Valentine’s Day has worn off and the pre-Celtic alcohol run-up to St. Paddy’s hasn’t kicked in yet.  Spring is coming, but it hasn’t arrived, and the late days of winter are still cold and miserable.  It’s a perfect time to sit around and grouse about who’s been nasty to you since birth and the reason your kids are ugly.

This thing could catch fire like a meth lab with a short circuit.  People would be having dinner parties with their exes and blaming them for all the love’s labour lost they’ve suffered since they got tossed the first time.  Children would be phoning their parents — collect — and blaming them for every petty neurosis they’ve suffered since puberty.  Grandparents would write letters to the grandchildren, blaming them for being lonely, and the grandkids would be e-mailing back blaming grandma for holding up their inheritance.

Hallmark alone would make a fortune on “It’s Your Fault” cards.  Students could send, “It’s your fault I didn’t get an A” cards to their teachers, and teachers would respond with an “It’s your fault I’m too tired and burned out to write a novel” card, in return.  Every boss in the world would receive an “It’s your fault this company is so screw up” card and every employee would get the same one back.  Then there would be the extra-cool, “It’s your own damn fault” cards.  Husbands could send them to wives and vice versa.  Parents could send their kids, “It’s your own damn fault you flunked out of college; you’re not moving back in with me” cards and settle the question forever.

People would be taking out full-page ads in magazines, blaming a litany of transgressors for every setback they’ve ever had in life.  Instead of those sappy, hackneyed marriage proposals, the Jumbotron at sporting events would have, “John Doe!  It’s your fault our marriage failed.  I want a divorce.”  Tons of people would be blaming Ken Jennings for not winning on Jeopardy, and George Lucas would finally get the blame for ruining Star Wars.

There could be an entirely new social network, not based on hundreds of so called friends, but on all those people who actually caused you problems over the years: your third grade teacher who ruined reading for you, the guy who broke your heart in grade 9, and the McDonald’s manager who fired you for being late every shift.  Of course, it would have to appear at one minute after midnight on March 1st and disappear again at midnight, March 2nd.  Otherwise, it wouldn’t be special.

That’s the true beauty of the Day of Blame.  It’s one special day when we get to blame somebody else for all or any of our problems.  Then, for the other 364, we have to shut up about it; for the rest of the year everybody has to cowboy up and take some personal responsibility.  It would be wonderful.  There would be no more whinging and whining about how bad life has treated all of us.  We’d save billions by closing down those government departments, and politicians would finally have to take the rap for some of the stunts they’ve pulled over the years.  Sanctimonious do-gooders would have to actually do some good instead of sitting around being holier-than-thou and blaming everybody else for the world’s problems.  Lawyers wouldn’t be allowed to advertise, and the media would quit playing “gotcha” and actually tell us what’s going on in the world.

Most importantly, we’d finally realize that, in our affluent western society, we don’t have that much to complain about.   Actually, most of the real blame for screwing up rests on our own little pass-the-buck shoulders.   And, in the end, one day is more than enough to blame the guy down the street for not cleaning up after his dog or all the other petty annoyances of life.

A National Day of Blame might be just what this country needs.

FYI — Day of Blame is the intellectual property of W.D. Fyfe.  If you want to use it, go ahead; but you must give me full credit for the idea and at least 10% of the gross income.  Otherwise, I will find a scuzzy lawyer and make you sorry.

Canadian Justice: The Emperor has No Clothes

When I was a kid, I loved the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”  I thought it was one of the coolest cons around.  If you don‘t know the tale, here’s the Parables for Dummies version.  The best part is at the end when the bratty little kid blows the thing out of the water and the tailors are caught and executed.  Obviously, I pre-date the uber-nice fairytales we feed our children these days.  In my day, there were real consequences for con jobs and other misdemeanours.  The neat thing about it, though, was I learned that when things look stupid, chances are good they are stupid.  More importantly, I learned that there’s always somebody somewhere willing to point this out, even if I wasn’t brave enough to do it myself.  As a child, this gave me tons of faith that I wasn’t the only one watching my back, and sometimes perfect strangers would take care of things for me.  It’s a little thing, but when you’re powerless kid in a powerful world, it means a lot.  This feeling lasted until I became an adult.

As an adult, I discovered that our world has armies of Emperors and they all have new clothes.  The difference is, as they parade around the streets proud of their attire there isn’t just one little kid laughing at them.  Everybody is – but it never ever stops them.  For example, just ask anybody about our Justice System; everybody from grandmas to grandchildren will tell you it’s so messed up Solomon is spinning in his grave.  There are stray dogs in this town rolling in the weeds, laughing at how we administer justice.  But it never changes.  We all know this particular Emperor has no clothes, but he’s never embarrassed about it; he just keeps prancing along.  The really funny thing is we still trust him to be our Emperor — even as we’re laughing our asses off.

So much for speaking in parables; let me be blunt.  Exactly two months ago, a mob of over-privileged young people rampaged through the streets of Vancouver.  They tore the still-beating heart out of our world-renown reputation and stomped the life out of it.  They burned and smashed like a tribe of Visigoths at a Pillagers’ Convention.  There was millions of dollars in damage.  The next day, the wheels of justice were set in motion.  Everybody from Premier Clark to Mayor Robertson swore up/down and sideways that they would track down the perpetrators of these dastardly crimes with the tenacity of Dudley Do-Right and prosecute them to the full extent of the law.  Justice would be swift and painful.  The criminals were caught in a hail of cliches.

Like hell!  Two months later, despite mountains of video evidence, face recognition software, thousands of photographs, Facebook shaming, eye-witness accounts and several people actually walking into the police station, throwing themselves on the mercy of the courts, and confessing, not one person has been prosecuted – not one.  Not even the guy who confessed on the National News.  What is this — a comedy club?  We should just change our name to Monty Pythonville and get it over with.

Here’s another one.  In 2000, a couple of guys were street-racing in Vancouver.  One of them lost control of his car and killed a woman out for a pleasant evening stroll.  It took the justice system three years to convict them and sentence them to (this is true) two years less a day house arrest and a five year driving ban.  Glaciers move faster than that, and with better results.  The sentence was a year less than the court case!  But wait — there’s more.  Since these wannabe Fast and Furious co-stars were not citizens of Canada, it took the Federales another two and six years respectively to deport them.  Do the math: a total of nine years to see justice (smirk, smirk) done.

These are just two minor examples of the Comedy of Errors our Justice System has become.  It gets a lot more serious.  Since the days of Bindy Johal’s murderous battle with the Dojanjh Brothers in the mid 90s, well-known and often convicted criminals have been play tag with each other, all over metropolitan Vancouver — using live ammunition.  These are not crooks on the run but people who are “known to police.” Armed bandits are roaming our streets, many with enough convictions to make John Dillinger blush.  Everybody knows it and nobody can do a thing about it?  It beggars the imagination.  If the Justice System actually was an Emperor, these guys would steal his clothes.  It’s like we’re living in an episode of Mad TV.

However, here’s how the Ship of Fools system actually does work when it gets rolling.  In March, 2005, a drunken sixteen-year-old did a gas-and-dash for 12 bucks at a Maple Ridge gas bar.  The attendant gave chase and was somehow caught underneath the car and dragged for several kilometres.  He died of his injuries.  Instead of dealing with the criminal and the crime (which, by the way, was never considered murder) the provincial government decided it would be better to change the habits of every single citizen in British Columbia.  They enacted a law (it took them three years to do it) that required everybody to pay for their gas before they pumped it.  People who were nowhere near Maple Ridge that night and all other law-abiding citizens were now subjected by law to the consequences of that crime.  Gas-and-dash was no longer an option, and no other drunken 16-year-olds were tempted to commit murder for $12.00.  Problem solved.  I hate to be sarcastic, but given this logic, the way to prevent robbery is to make it illegal to carry money.  And in an even darker vein, apparently that old platitude “One person can make a difference” is true: this guy certainly changed society.

The parables of my youth were trite, even in my day.  However, tales like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” taught us that scoundrels do exist in the world, but eventually somebody has to say, “Hey! Wait a minute!  That guy’s naked.”  The unfortunate thing is nowadays we’re all screaming it at the top of our lungs, and it’s not doing any good.

Individual Rights and Responsibilities

Anarchy has a way of convincing people that the discussion about individual rights and responsibilities isn’t over yet.  Kick in a store window or set a cop car on fire, and the first thing you know, academics are demanding room on the head of a pin to debate individual rights in a free society — with a side order of responsibilities.  Common knowledge says that everybody has rights — although they seem to be elastic in times of crisis.  We also agree that individual citizens have responsibilities to their greater society, but, oddly enough, nobody — right, left and centre — is willing (or able) to specify what they are.  However, like medieval priests, the learned people of our time keep jawing away as if there’s some kind of cosmic scale that can be balanced if we just get the correct combination.  Unfortunately, there is no cosmic scale where rights and responsibilities have equal measure.  Besides, the entire discussion is based on a fallacy.

Our modern concept of individual rights and freedoms comes from a group of gentleman farmers who had acres of slaves to do the actual agricultural work.  This gave them the cash and the leisure to read the ancient Greeks, John Locke and some trendy French philosophers.  They decided that men (women would have to wait) “were endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.”  This idea had been around for a while, but for the first time, instead of just talking about it, these guys took musket in hand and started shooting.  When the smoke cleared, a bunch of North Americans were enjoying “life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  The idea caught on, and the rest is recent history.

However, if we were to study these Virginians a little bit more diligently, we would discover what they already knew.  Human society is not based on individual rights.  It’s based on individual responsibilities.  They knew that; we’re the ones making the mistake.  Interestingly enough, one of the first crises of the new American government was a rebellion by western farmers who didn’t want to pay the excise tax on whiskey.  It was put down by force.  (Western alienation has been with us ever since.)  My point, of course, is America’s Founding Fathers understood that it’s the individual citizen’s responsibility to pay taxes — not his individual right to refuse — that is the cornerstone of polite society.

Way back in caveman days, when Grog and his family decided to share the warmth of their cave with other wandering Cro-Magnons the first grunting discussion was not about who got to sit by the fire.  It was who’s going to gather the wood.  Our low-brow ancestors came together in groups because all of us are smarter, stronger and better fed than one of us.  Society prospered because there’s safety in numbers.  More hunters, more mastodon — for everybody.  Besides, in those days, there was no such thing as a free lunch.  You had the right to live high on the mastodon if you went out and killed it — and dragged it home — for everybody.  The responsibility of feeding the group was there long before the right to eat.  As society progressed, these responsibilities were set down as commonly accepted tradition — as in: “We are the children of Grog, and we do things this way.  If you don’t like it, find another cave.”  It was a good arrangement.  Groups that maintained their common purpose not only survived but thrived.

Fast forward a bunch of evolutionary millennia.  Even though societies were centuries out of the cave their primo responsibility was still to the integrity of the group.  Only a strong group could guarantee an individuals’ right to eat, work and dream of better things.  Citizens who contributed to their society were protected by the group, and the more they contributed, the stronger the group became.  Plus the group protected the individual rights of everybody.  Traditions became laws which guys like Hammurabi wrote down, so everybody was clear that individuals had the responsibility to play nice with the neighbours, not the right to do as they pleased or disrupt the health, welfare or tranquillity of the group.  It’s what membership in the group meant.

Essentially, strong societies evolved because individuals dedicated themselves to the common purpose of preserving, protecting and enhancing everybody’s individual lives.  They understood the needs of the many outweigh Amtoph the drunkard’s right to play the lyre, at concert pitch, in the middle of the night.  They protected common folk from gangs of thieves running around the country, stealing chickens.  And they made sure those who couldn’t defend themselves were given a modicum of security to sleep easy in their beds.  The streets were kept reasonably safe from the most despicable among us, and for the next several centuries, strong societies flourished.  They went beyond hand to mouth subsistence to pursue the arts, science, medicine and technology — with tons of benefits — for all.

Fast forward again, to the middle of the 20th century.  Our society became so successful that the lessons of history from Grog the caveman to Jefferson and Madison became twisted.   Many amateur philosophers came to the unusual conclusion that individual rights supersede the needs of the rest of us.  They decided that, rather than keeping our collective society protected from those individuals who, for one reason or another, aren’t interested in the common good, we needed to use our considerable resources to protect the individual from our collective society.  Society itself became the bogeyman.  It’s a preposterous idea.  Unfortunately, it’s now taken hold so thoroughly that, while commentators still vaguely mention that citizens have responsibilities, no one seems to have a clue what they are.  Prevailing wisdom feels that, if we increase our responsibility, we naturally lose some of our rights, and vice versa: that increasing our rights diminishes our responsibility.  This is the way the discussion goes these days; whereas society’s natural path, which has worked ever since Grog got feeling hospitable one cold night, is individual rights can only increase when individuals take responsibility for the common good.

Meanwhile we, as citizens, keep missing the point and demanding our rights, and they’re dissolving all around us like sugar in the rain.