Musings on Accountability vs. Blame

By: Anne Doherty

“Who am I dealing with?” my husband asks when he’s trying to sort out a problem with a bureaucracy. He asks this because if he’s not dealing with someone with authority who can be held accountable, he’s wasting his time.

Today, on the anniversary of the incident at the Capitol, it’s helpful to remind ourselves to focus on accountability and steer far away from blame.

Google “January 6” for 30 seconds and you will find that there are two opposing storylines and just about no way to know the facts about that event. Even people who were there know only what they personally experienced. Examples of contradictions include the number of people arrested, sentenced, and held without bail, plus whether or not prisoners are being abused. The January 6 incident is probably the best example today of what those in power will do to control the narrative, and control Americans by proxy.

In today’s speech, Joe Biden peppered blame amongst obvious half truths and misleading verbiage. But his administration, though they’ve charged upwards of 500 people, has stalled accountability in an open public court because the charges they’ve levied against those in custody (some for as long as a year) are small potatoes – no insurrection, no treason, no murder – mostly trespassing and, for a few, assaulting police. But they also stall for fear of revealing the whole truth and end the power they get out of keeping the story alive. 

So what do we know and who should be held accountable? We know that many of us feel the 2020 election was stolen. We’ve seen legislatures stall or drop looking into it fully. Despite what most of us consider hard proof of large scale manipulation, we’ve seen state and federal courts – and the Supreme Court – largely shun their responsibility to address it. In fact, corruption seems so vast in some counties/states that it seems as if virtually every public official is accountable from the county clerks on up. Yet Joe Biden today said that there was no proof the election had been stolen because no one has been held accountable.

The “Stop the Steal” protests were an outcry for accountability, not only for the election, but for a political system that releases illegals into the country, that doesn’t prosecute many types of crime (San Francisco car break-ins, for example), and that labeled “peaceful” the burnings in Oregon and Wisconsin.

While we may not know all the facts of January 6, we do know to trust our common sense. Just as we “know” that, if 10,000 people attended any rally anywhere, probably 100 may have temperaments (or mental issues) that could lead to violence, we also know that if one or more people erected a gallows at the Capital with the intention of hanging Mike Pence, that we’d know by now who erected it – in short, we’d know who we were dealing with. And we don’t.

Many years ago, when I first started my musical theatre company, I got a call from a guy who not only wrote musicals but he made his living creating political theatre – not the kind you buy tickets for. Apparently, the Democrat party and other groups would hire him to stage things. He told me to look for his handiwork that weekend. It was 2003, and there was an anti-Iraq war protest at the Civic Center. His handiwork was the “Republicans” holding misspelled signs with pro-war and racist content. The “political artist” died about 6 months later, but I believe he probably wasn’t the only one making a living that way.

So while we can’t tell the facts for the theatre, we do know our people. We know our people usually can spell. Images of the more outrageous January 6 protestors simply don’t ring true.

We also know the world is changing fast – in a millisecond compared to other turning points in history. We are becoming a world in which we hardly need government at all. When the Industrial Revolution took off after the Civil War, and then again during and after World War II, we needed bigger government; and yes, we even needed unions, because the playing field was so uneven. But we live now in the world of iPhones and Bitcoin, in which a rural Indian woman can support her family using her phone, and we can see that all the social unrest is just the powerful trying to justify their existence. We can surmise that the powerful men who went to Jeffrey Epstein’s island had so much prosperity and time on their hands, they dared test the limits of their power. While none of the powerful have been held formally accountable, they have in the court of public opinion.

People on the Right tend to believe in accountability, while those on Left lean into blame. They do because, deep down, Leftists believe human beings can’t take care of themselves; conservatives tend to believe we can. Both sides are right. But unnecessary politicians and other public servants take advantage of our fears to create a co-dependent relationship with us. They want us to think we need them when we don’t.

In the face of uncertainty and unrest, I believe the one thing that can save us is to avoid blame and focus on accountability. You will know when you are blaming because it’s the same as complaining. Blaming denies our relationship to and participation in our own lives. Complaining robs us of joy. Without these two, life is liberating. It’s easy to see yourself and others more clearly. You will know who you’re dealing with, even when you look in the mirror. This kind of knowing inspires fearlessness, develops compassion, and connects us to our family and neighbors.

It will give us the strength to weather the storm until those wrongly held for the Capital incident have justice.

2022 Monthly President's Message

January

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