The Blame Game

In the last couple of weeks there have been two incidents that have caused a rash of blaming. The first incident was the car accident and subsequent loss of Beautiful Girl to the injuries she sustained. The second incident was the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords an Arizona congresswoman (who was holding a meet and greet for constituents) and 19 other people. This shooting left 6 people dead and 14 wounded.

The first incident was a car accident, the key word being accident. It seems that everyone is looking to blame someone for this event either the driver of the car beautiful girl was riding in, or the driver of the car that hit them. Obviously, the police are looking into and investigating the accident in order to discover who is at fault, but in the mean time the rest of the community is looking for someone to blame. One question…how does this help? How does it help that people are naming names and pointing fingers on Facebook? Does the blaming bring back Beautiful Girl?

The second incident was a tragedy caused by a young man that was clearly disturbed. He was asked to leave his college because of his strange behavior and more stories keep coming out about what is certainly a mental handicap. Instead of the focus being on moving forward with the facts, several people have dissolved into pointing fingers at people that were completely outside the circle of events. Just because some overzealous politician makes a website with strongly worded inappropriate information does not make them the perpetrator of the crime. Only one alleged person pulled that trigger and they were caught by some very brave bystanders. Why do we feel the need to look for an outside source to blame?

The problem with blame is that it divides. It splits people down the middle. Now everyone must jump to one side or the other, either the blamers or the non blamers. There is no middle ground in blame, there is also no resolution. The only thing that comes from blame is more blame and more defensiveness. The guilt and responsibility needs to lie with whomever the law finds guilty and no place else. I hope that in the weeks to come the blaming falls away as the truth comes out about both of these horribly sad tragedies. The families need to find peace and there will be no peace as long as we are still blaming.