A running theme in movies for decades has been where the villain will tell the hero that all of the people who’ve died are because of the hero. Yes, they pull the trigger, throw them off a building, run over them, or otherwise commit the murder, but they almost always tell the hero that the death is actually the hero’s fault. Sadly, this plot line has moved into real life. We’ve seen thugs attack police, and after the police office defends their life, it’s the PD’s fault or the Jury’s fault that the town is destroyed by riots. Students at UC Berkeley have rioted more than once, over invitations to a speaker and when anyone asks them, we’re told that they are “just protesting hate speech.” At one point, someone was struck in the head with a bike lock, which could have killed that person, but these people maintain that it’s because a conservative group invited a speaker, so if that person had died, they’d lay all the blame on students who invited someone to campus, not the person who swung the lock, and this is what must change.
Sadly, with how pervasive the attitude of “it’s all your fault, I’m innocent in everything” is, this is a change that will take decades, but it is possible, if we’re willing to work for it, and can live with the whining. We start with the children, recently a group of middle school students refused to be in a photo with Paul Ryan. On the surface, this seems like nothing at all, as the photo was not required, but simply because Ryan doesn’t blindly support Obamacare and isn’t fighting to expand it, they call him evil, say they hate him, and worse. This leads to what we saw with VP Pence giving the commencement speech where a group of college students walked out of Commencement when he took the podium. While I wouldn’t advocate expulsion for the middle school students, I would hand out detentions or suspensions for anyone who did more than simply say “no thanks, no photo,” for the disrespect. For those who walked out on the sitting Vice President, no degree until you issue a public and sincere apology, meaning a video either tweeted, posted to Facebook or another public site. For eight years, conservatives were told “we won, get over it,” or from Valerie Jarret “it’s our turn now” and that Republicans had to go to “the back of the bus.” If anyone had even objected to Biden speaking at a college graduation (not walked out, just said they didn’t want to hear him,) or a DNC Senator came to a middle school and someone refused a photo, there would be screaming about “stop forcing your politics on others” but not now, and that’s what has to stop.
Parents will tell you it’s Ryan’s fault, the disrespectful students will say it’s Pence’s fault, and so on, just as the evil mastermind tells the hero that the deaths are on his hands because he didn’t give in, or wasn’t fast enough. Rather than just “not my fault” any more, the left actively blames the right for all of their actions. UCB students riot, it’s the conservative students’ fault for inviting such hateful people! People destroy a city rioting because a police officer wasn’t put in jail after defending his life? It’s because America is a horrible racist country! Only when we force responsible behavior from a young age, only when we hold people accountable for their own actions, and when we don’t give in when they cry about it not being fair that we expect them to be responsible for their actions, will we even stand a chance of turning this around. Yes, states like NY or CA will be last, and we’ll see them crying and hear the wailing about the “oppressive state of America,” where people who do bad things are punished for those bad things, but we’ll also have to listen to them crying about how their votes are suppressed by the rest of the country, because by that point, only NY and CA will likely be electing Democrats, which of course means that the GOP President is #nottheirpresident since the other 48 states “stole the election.” Although, we could also hope for a giant meteor to hit before then, and just make it so we don’t worry about anything any more, right?