"It's Not My Fault!"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“It’s Not My Fault!”

December 11, 2021

 

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process

never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”

                                                                                                                                Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

                                                                                                                                You learn by Living, 1960

 

Being accountable for one’s actions and taking responsibility are fading qualities in our “woke” age. In the mid 1960s, on a snowy street in New Hampshire after a day’s skiing, my father, driving home, knocked a woman down, sending her to the hospital. The police told him it was not his fault. Nevertheless, he assumed responsibility, visiting her regularly until she recovered and was released. Such chivalry no longer exists. Like merit, hard work and objective truth, gallantry and graciousness are now, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote in the December issue of The Spectator, “manifestations of heredity and ‘whiteness,’” – therefore to be condemned. 

 

“Victory has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan,” is an old quote used by President Kennedy. Today’s politicians no longer take blame for policies gone wrong. Instead, they follow advice Napoleon is alleged to have given: “Never retreat, never retract, never admit a mistake.” When the January 6 march on the Capitol turned disastrous, Donald Trump never admitted that his words that afternoon helped provoke it. But neither has Hillary Clinton accepted blame for the Steel dossier, which was at the heart of the $40 million (taxpayer money) discredited Mueller investigation. Governor Andrew Cuomo placed COVID-19 infected patients in nursing homes, leading to a plethora of unnecessary deaths. Has he expressed remorse or assumed responsibility? No. Has he expressed sorrow for abusing women who worked in his office? No. “Oh yes, the past can hurt,” says the shaman Rafiki in The Lion King, “but you can either run from it or learn from it.” Politicians choose to run from their past, not learn from it.

 

Dr. Anthony Fauci belittles those who disagree with him by claiming an attack on him is an attack on science. Yet the science about COVID-19 has changed as more has been learned. But his arrogance forbids any display of humility, or admission of personal responsibility regarding helping to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (Dr. Fauci’s denial gained two Pinocchio’s from left-leaning The Washington Post.) The recent rise in energy prices, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren, is due to oil and gas producers “putting their massive profits, share prices and dividends…ahead of Americans.” Apparently higher prices have nothing to do with restrictions on drilling and cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline extension, policies which the Massachusetts Senator supports. In a recent article in The Epoch Times, Victor Davis Hanson wrote, regarding the disastrous flight from Afghanistan: “Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility – much less resigned – for the worst military fiasco in the past half century.”  

 

“It’s not my fault; the dog ate my homework!” has become a common response. Running away from personal responsibility has infested society. “Failure is not an option,” is a phrase one associates with NASA; but was taken literally by Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos who never apologized for misleading investors, instead placing blame on her Svengali-like partner. There have been no mea culpas from journalists following four years of filling airtime and front pages of newspapers regarding the discredited Russian collusion story? Teachers are not held responsible for the failure of their students in international testing. Global warming is the fault of selfish consumers, not the elitists who pompously pontificate when stepping off private jets. The surge in crime during the “summer of Love,” when billions in dollars in property was destroyed and twenty-five people were killed, was not the fault of the perpetrators. It was the ‘system’ and white supremacists who made them do it. The Biden Administration places blame for the increase in crime on COVID-19 – “…the virus is a root cause in a lot of communities,” is the way White House press secretary Jen Psaki put it last week. In a June 18, 2020, New York Times article, Professor Robin D. G. Kelley of UCLA, wrote: “Given that we are in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, looting should not surprise anyone...stealing commodities isn’t senseless” Really? And that makes it okay? Mightn’t the surge in crime have something to with disparaging and defunding the police? 

 

Alec Baldwin – certainly inadvertently – shot and killed cinemaphotographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust, a film of which he is one of the producers. Has he taken responsibility? No. In fact, he claims he didn’t pull the trigger. Nevertheless, Ms. Hutchins was killed by a bullet discharged from the firearm he was holding. Still, Mr. Baldwin says the killing was not his fault. Has Jussie Smollett expressed remorse for concocting a crime meant to increase his ratings? This nationwide attitude of denying personal responsibility suggests a “woke” and nihilistic culture that permeates our society and threatens our nation.

 

Mahatma Gandhi is quoted in his posthumously published The Essential Writings: “It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one’s acts.” The United States has survived for almost 250 years because its people are free to succeed or fail, to act in their own interest, within the law. In the same book quoted in the rubric, You Learn by Living, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” Being free means being accountable. The words, “It’s not my fault,” have become too pervasive and suggest we are moving in the wrong direction. Errors are the fault of those making them. There may be understandable excuses, but faults should be acknowledged and corrected.