Words

Two words from the political discourse are lateley tickling my brain. Unity. Blame. Or Blame Unity.

Blame: In interviews and articles and columns of the last months, especially since Katrina, reporters and anchors and interviewers have asked some version of, "Well, who's to blame for ______." Blame is then assigned. That's it. Everyone feels accomplished and righteous because blame has been assigned, dust of hands, move on to the next issue. Blame, as well all should know, is a moral condition in which one is found to have failed to come up to a standard of action, or has crossed a moral fence into immoral territories. But, blame and responsibility/accountability are not quite the same thing. I can be blamed for breaking my mother's victorian mantle clock by playing catch in the house with my friend, with a nurf ball when I was six. My actions did cause this break, though there was no intention, and other than a good scolding, there was no responsibility placed on me to say, get a job, earn a couple of hundred dollars, find a clock maker, and get it fixed. I was six. Blame, alone, does not lead to reparations, ammends of real import in the case of a business or political scandal or shortcoming. So, let's all, shall we, please not stop at blame, and instead play through to accountability and action. Should one be in a position to assign blame, let us also assume the position of suggesting and demanding appropriate action.

Unity: Burns my ass, this rhetoric of unity. On this we are united. On this we are not united, we are split, divided. Last I check there has been no challenge, as say posed by sessesion, to the unity of the United States. There is not a whif of civil war in the air here. Unity can be maintained, often quite well, with disagreement bandying about. We in the US disagree on many points. Our disagreement is Not, however, a threat to the nation qua nation. The use of this word to raise alarm over debate and differences of opinion, creed, policy is a mean little emotional trick such as those employed by Sophists and challenged by Socrates/Plato. There is a calculated emotional charge to the word unity that is intended to make people think we should always agree (with those in power at the moment and thus able to employ the word), or that we are in danger of national schizm and civil war. Unity means we should skip the debate. Unity means we should just agree for the sake of the Union and not bother about the rightness, constitutionality, or reason for the position taken. Because when unity is at stakes, disagreement is unto sedition. Puhleese. Thanks to Socrates/Plato, debate is how we get to better ideas and actions.

It is too much to ask, I am aware, that we try to use language clearly and accurately in the midst of charged political atmospheres, all those ideological ions floating about and exploding against each other, I know. I will ask it anyway.