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Comment by vezzy-fnord | Hacker News Reader

Not just with governments, but people's whims in general.

To quote G.K. Chesterton [1]:

   And then, last but the reverse of least, there plunged in
   all the people who think they can solve a problem they
   cannot understand by abolishing everything that has 
   contributed to it. We all know these people. If a barber
   has cut his customer's throat because the girl has 
   changed her partner for a dance or donkey ride on 
   Hampstead Heath, there are always people to protest
   against the mere institutions that led up to it. This 
   would not have happened if barbers were abolished, or if
   cutlery were abolished, or if the objection felt by
   girls to imperfectly grown beards were abolished, or if 
   the girls were abolished, or if heaths and open spaces
   were abolished, or if dancing were abolished, or if
   donkeys were abolished. But donkeys, I fear, will never
   be abolished.

[1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Flying_Inn/Chapter_IX

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That is a spectacular quote, and really embodies the impetus of the American people to not only blame excessively when things go wrong, but to place blame in a manner which absolves all parties of any (perceived) responsibility.

I find this is done universally. Every time some shooting or similar disaster occurs, the actual perpetrator is among the last to take the blame. It's the video games, it's the music, it's the toxic culture of masculinity, it's the pharmaceutical drugs, or it's the Zionist media poisoning our children with Judeo-Bolshevist propaganda.

The obsession is with the "one single cause", but more importantly the opportunity for every demagogue to revel in vilifying their preferred scapegoats. Nothing gets fixed, and people wonder why.

That's an interesting take... It's like the perfect storm of our collective tendency to shirk responsibility, our tendency to generalize in search of a single unifying class, AND the tendency for powerful bodies (governments, corporations, or individuals) to re-contextualize any issue in a manner that validates their operations.

The truth that truly terrifies people, is that some things happen without a rationale.

None of this rings true to me. I've never heard or read anything like "it wasn't the perpetrator's fault, it was XYZ", but rather "it was the perpetrator's fault, and I wonder if XYZ contributes to the prevalence of such perpetrators". In the US at least, there certainly appears to be something going on outside of random happenstance[0], so it makes sense to think and talk about what that may be. Certainly many people use such things to rail against their pet cause, but far more people are just trying to figure out where we're going wrong.

[0]: http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2015/07/De-Obfuscating-th...

I think the difference is people spend relatively little time on the perpetrator having some propensity to have issues (as will happen to some people when you have 7 billions-strong-bell-curve of them) and a lot of time on what could have triggered/exacerbated their issue (which could be a lot of things that don't cause issues in most people). For example, video games, pot, guns, etc. which don't cause issues in most users but seem related to issues in some users. This leads to an over focus on banning the thing most people use without issue rather than recognizing the statistics of 'out of 7 billions people some will have issues'.

As argued in the article I linked (and elsewhere), the U.S. in particular appears to be a statistical outlier, which suggests that we might be able to identify what is different in our policies, and make some improvements.

On the same token, there are many people discussing "other causes" while not removing blame from the perpetrator. For example, if it's easy for someone to gain access to (e.g.) nuclear weapons, it increases the damage that one bad actor can do. It's irresponsible to pretend like there will never be bad actors. Restricting access will never eliminate bad actors, but it's an attempt to limit the damage that bad actors can do.

Example of this abound. Let's take the corrupt cops. Not every cop is corrupt, and the police as an institution is (by many) considered a good thing. Corrupt cops are also responsible for their own actions.

On the other hand, corruption / bad actions on behalf of the police, while not necessarily "rewarded" is usually only met with wrist slapping. In one instance that I can recall, a police office was caught on tape offering accept sex as payment to make an arrest warrant go away. Said officer's punishment was just to get fired. How many police officers in Canada have been punished as a result of the G20 debacle or the handling of the Vancouver Olympics security? What about the trigger-happy LAPD[1]?

Society has some blame if they impart a message to would-be perpetrators that the consequences of bad behaviour are not very severe.

[1] http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/02/lapd-officers-who-sh...

Limiting your statement to the American populace is a bit ignorant. This is a universal reaction by people, not just those born west of the Atlantic Ocean.

You're probably right, but the American case may be the only case the author felt qualified to comment on.

G.K. Chesterton was British.

But the author of that comment about Americans was not G.K. Chesterton.

Seconded. Many times in online discussions people will make sweeping statements about "all" people. This always elicits a response from someone about how that doesn't happen in "my" culture/country/whatever (or how that only happens in America / only applies to Americans).

In this case, the person scoped their statement to (presumably) the society that they are most familiar with, yet this still managed to elicit a response that the scope was not broad enough!

Yeah, that's totally true. As another commenter pointed out, it's more-so the case that I only feel qualified to comment on American mentality (and even then, I don't feel especially qualified). This is particularly problematic here since the article pertains to both U.S. and British governments, and the quote itself was from a British author (as another commenter thoughtfully pointed out). I don't rescind my statement, but I definitely acknowledge the ignorance/cultural arrogance that comes with a comment that invokes the context of a single country -- in a lot of ways, it's this very ignorance that I attempt to combat in forums like this, by reading comments like yours :)

In general I think that's a good thing. People are hard to change, but redesigning the system is relatively easy.

Chesterton is spectacularly quotable - but I am afraid he was English. I would suggest at a minimum, it reflects the Anglo-Saxon legal mindset, and at a maximum, it reflects the human legal mindset.