Every good story needs a good villain. After all, some of fiction’s greatest characters are compelling — or just plain awesome — bad guys (disclosure: I may be a little biased considering how two of the 10 people I’d love to meet most are Dr. Doom and Lex Luthor).
But, while you can be fairly sure to find a villain in every great story, the same doesn’t hold true in real life. It seems almost too obvious to even say out loud. Yet, if you were to follow what lawmakers and political commentators have to say about almost anything, you would think that everything bad in life could be blamed on some group of evil people:
- Got in a fight with your spouse? Depending on who you ask, it’s either because gays are getting married or because our evil capitalistic overlords are putting too much stress in our lives.
- Kids misbehaving? It’s either because of violent video games or stores selling guns.
- Lost your job? It’s either because of evil labor unions or evil immigrants.
- Healthcare getting more expensive? It’s either because insurance companies are the devil, or because some incompetent bureaucrats are screwing up your healthcare.
- Gas prices? It’s either because those goshdarn liberals have taxed gasoline too much, or because those crazy conservatives are in bed with the Saudi’s.
- Housing payments going up? It’s either because those irresponsible minorities bought houses they couldn’t afford or because some evil banker gets a kick out of watching you suffer.
Now, I’m not claiming that we shouldn’t try to find and hold people responsible for the things that they do. But too often, real world problems are caused by forces and factors which we cannot control or reasonably assign blame for. It’s relatively straightforward to point to Osama bin Laden and blame him and his cohorts for September 11. It’s a whole different ball game to “blame” someone for things like energy costs, poverty, the decline in “family values”, and global warming, for three reasons:
- Witchhunts are usually pretty meaningless when it comes to large problems. Economics blogger Megan McArdle, when reflecting on the causes of the current financial crisis, had this bit of wisdom to impart:
Nature is not a novelist. Reality does not come packaged in narrative form, and rarely gifts us with either true heroes, or true villains … Societies, and economies, cannot be brought down by a few people or a few bad decisions–otherwise we’d all still be living in hunter-gatherer tribes eating roast locusts for breakfast. A failure this massive can only occur if massive numbers of people had their hands in it somehow. If you want to find a villain, there’s probably one handy at the nearest reflective surface.
Who do you blame for the downfall of Detroit automakers? Do you blame Asian and European automakers? The American consumers willing to buy Japanese cars? The labor unions who have burdened Detroit with high labor costs? The government for protecting Detroit until the point of bankruptcy? Management for making stupid decisions? The real answer probably is a complicated combination of all of the above. And, really, did any of them do anything horribly evil? Foreign automakers just wanted to make a decent profit. Labor unions were looking out for their members’ interests. The government wanted to protect the economy of the Great Lakes region. Management had trouble making good decisions, yes, but every industry/company goes through stages of weakness and strength and no one has a perfect 100% record – I don’t see any horrible evil in this. Some stupidity, maybe. But there’s no individual or group that I can just point the finger at and say “there, it’s your fault, go clean it up!”
- Politicians and pundits have good reason to play the blame game.
Politicians want to get votes and attention – and the easiest way to do that is to blame somebody else for a voter’s problems. It plays on people’s sense of outrage when bad things happen, and the desire for quick-and-easy solutions to be carried out by the “man of the hour”. Of course, outlaw those dastardly unions! Burn down the mansions of those CEOs! Ban foreign cars! That’ll solve everything – vote for me and I’ll do it! Woe to the politician who talks about complicated tradeoffs or advocates nuanced policy. And woe to the voter who now has to choose between two extreme sides of the same coin. - Related to #2 is the unfortunate fact that playing the blame game shifts the burden of action away from you. It’s easy to blame an incompetent teacher’s union or horrible conservative spending cuts for your child’s grades. It’s easy to blame immigrants or new technology or taxes when you lose your job. It’s much harder to look into yourself to see what you should be doing differently. As Gandhi once said, “be the change you seek” – an especially powerful and inspirational sentiment considering that the problems Gandhi and his followers were dealing with were started by someone else (the British colonizers).
