Letters to the Editor
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Why must we look for someone to blame?
This article highlights a facet of current American society that never ceases to amaze me: no tragic event (or even a simply unfortunate one) can occur without people lining up to dole out blame. Your kid broke his arm on the playground? It's the park management's/school's/negligent teacher's fault! Family member killed in a car accident? It's the fault of the car manufacturer/road maintenance crew/waiter who served him a glass of wine with dinner. You've got cancer? It's because you didn't eat organic/meditate/put on enough sunscreen. And so on. Nothing even remotely unhappy can happen without people slinging blame around, either at the victim of misfortune or some big, bad external actor.
Truth is, there are certain crappy things that happen, and there is no one person/thing to blame. It may not be fair, or just, but it happens, and there is no point in sitting around looking for whose fault it is. But of course, Americans refuse to believe that there is anything that they (or someone else in a position of power) CAN'T control. Evidently it's more comforting to people to believe that there are incompetent and/or nefarious forces out there trying to do them harm, than to believe that sometimes the universe just shits on you. And so the blame game goes on.