Many years ago I visited my sister who at that time still had a husband, four kids, 3 dogs (a Pekingese dam and two pups) and 22 cats (she was raising Persians). As we were sitting around the table chatting the elder boy, Little J, noticed that it was time for his favorite cartoon. So he jumped up, ran to the living room where he came to a halt before getting to the TV. “Look what the dog did!” he caroled. One of the pups had dropped a doggie bomb in front of the TV.

What followed next was amazing. Little J came back to the table and the whole family went insane. For the next 20 minutes (by the clock, I kept looking around for the cameras) they passed the blame hot potato. “It’s his fault!” “It’s her fault!” “It’s your fault!” Until they achieved unanimity minus one: with one, sing-song voice, “It’s Little J’s fault!” In the face of this united front he took it on, his head fell, his shoulders slumped and he was silent. As if he had wrung the dog out on the spot.

It wasn’t until blame was assigned that Little J’s Dad, Big J, got up to clean up the mess.

The natural tendency of humans is, when things don’t turn out as expected, to blame somebody. The life lesson for me was Blame And Responsibility Cannot Exist At The Same Place At The Same Time.

What we have here is a lot bigger than a doggie bomb, and the circling finger of blame will be the more frenzied because of it. Hopefully there are some adults in the room to stop the cycle of blame and evasion, take stock of the situation, roll up their sleeves and get about the business of cleaning up the mess. To be sure there are such, largely unknown and ignored. Don’t look to the MSM to find and highlight these people and their efforts. They too are complicit in the crisis we face, besides which, blame sells more papers.