The Other McCain

“Everyone must come to grips with and make sense of their own failures. Excuse-making, blame-shifting, scapegoating — ‘It wasn’t my fault!’ — prevents us from learning the lessons of our failures. . . . Persistently attempting to externalize blame for our own failures is a recipe for moral disaster.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Lindsay Lohan Begins Serving Two Weeks in Jail,” July 21

If even an overprivileged Hollwyood star like Lindsay Lohan must be permitted to indulge the self-pitying sense of her own victimhood, who would dare question the officially-recognized victimhood of a black man?

Police in Connecticut have confirmed nine people were killed and two others injured in a shooting rampage at a beer distributorship. . . .
A company official identified the shooter as Omar Thornton, a driver who had been asked to quit his job. He refused and instead opened fire.
A union official says Thornton had been caught on videotape stealing beer. . . .
His girlfriend’s mother says Thornton, who was black, complained of racial bias, but the union says it knows of no complaints of racism. . . .
Teamsters Local 1035 official Christopher Roos says Thornton was “a disgruntled employee who shot a bunch of people.”

For all we know at this point, the company and union officials routinely turned a blind eye to white guys stealing beer. It is entirely possible that Thornton was, in some sense and at some level, a victim of racism. On the other hand, I would be willing to bet that there were many other black employees of this company who — whatever disadvantages or insults they may have suffered on account of their race — refused to surrender to the self-pitying victim mentality that appears to have motivated Thornton’s murderous rampage.

All of us live in a narcissistic culture that encourages us to externalize blame as a defensive rationalization for the protection of the sacred self. Yet some rationalizations are more equal than others, and certain categories of victimhood are enshrined in law and culture in such a way that skepticism is forbidden. This is where political correctness becomes such a deadly poison, like an invisible gas slowly permeating the atmosphere.

How many other disgruntled losers, each with his own self-pitying sense of grievance, have committed similar acts? And how many times have we seen their bloody acts attributed to some politically useful motive, or explained away as caused by the widespread availability of guns?

“[T]herapeutic morality encourages a permanent suspension of the moral sense. There is a close connection, in turn, between the erosion of moral responsibility and the waning capacity for self-help . . . between the elimination of culpability and the elimination of competence.”
– Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)

A society that provides prefabricated excuses and ready-made scapegoats for failure is, perhaps unwittingly, depriving individuals of the sense of personal responsibility that is the only solid basis for achievement. If we are not responsible for our own failures — if even on-the-job theft can be attributed to the evil machinations of The Man — then how may we credit others for their success? The externalization of blame turns people into moral cripples, incapable of coping rationally with their own shortcomings and ready to lash out at others whenever their own incompetence or malfeasance is exposed.

As for Omar Thornton, let his epitaph be the same words that came to mind when people offered politically convenient rationalizations for Pentagon shooter Patrick Bedell: “Whatever happened to crazy?”