A while back I decided that the comments I spread around the internet display such genius that I should start saving them. So I put a folder on my desktop and labeled it "Comments." It contains one. Here it is:
The United States has a two-party system: There is a Responsible Party and an Irresponsible Party.
The Responsible Party is easy to identify. When something goes wrong, the Responsible Party is the party responsible -- either individually or as a group (as in "it's society's fault"). The Irresponsible Party is never responsible for the problem (when Flint's water went bad, was it the responsibility of the water department? Why ask). However, the Irresponsible Party will freely offer solutions that the Responsible Party should finance and implement (while ignoring the name-calling, the selfish bastards).
Members of the Irresponsible Party are more difficult to identify because they often look responsible and act responsibly where their own lives are concerned. They can push for a course on Critical Race Theory and non-racist athematic in public schools while sending their own kids to private schools. The typical criminal is a member of the Irresponsible Party but so is the prosecutor that releases a criminal with a high probability of offending again. Neither is responsible for what happens.
Members of the Irresponsible Party are often idealists who will join an organization with no intention of furthering that organization's mission. Indeed, their intention is to re-purpose the institution and move it in a different direction, to basically undermine it and fundamentally transform it. Their actions are deliberate, but often lack deliberation. Having identified with a cause on a personal level, questioning the wisdom of their actions becomes a highly personal attack on their self-worth. This applies to the idealist. The Sociopaths, who hope to take over when society fails and falls, don't practice self-deceit, just deceit straight-up.
I was thinking of making this a book with reasoned arguments and examples and footnotes and stuff.
A current example is Hamas -- an irresponsible party -- and Israel (guess which role it fills).
