SCAPEGOATING

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D.

Recently, two young men murdered a scrap metal dealer in Flagstaff during a robbery. Viciously, they executed the man with a bullet in his head as he pled for his life. The young men were found guilty. In pleading for a sentence other than life without the possibility of parole, the lawyer representing one of the men appealed for sympathy, referring to the killer’s miserable childhood. The thesis is that criminals are not responsible because they were raised in some kind of societal crawl space.

Of course, the lawyer was confusing two types of thought, an understanding of behavior and its justification, the one psychological, the other legal. In a sense, his argument was a whine, portraying the victimizer as the victim.

The same argument was used by the executives of oil companies, trying to justify their egregious profits by eliciting sympathy for their problems with the fluctuations in profits, the expenses of exploration, etc. Overstuffed dinosaurs, they are lying tobacco company executives redux. Of course, in 2001 Vice-President Cheney sought their wisdom for the Bush Administrations’s oil policy which has brought us never-ending increases for the cost of energy and gasoline.

Both the young murderers and the oil company executives suffer a malady in common. They are sociopaths who should be locked up and the keys thrown away. As sociopaths they scapegoat, blaming something or someone else for their crimes. The murderers blame their parents and the oil executives capitalistic markets.

Scapegoating goes back a long way, back to the Children of Israel in the 13th century B.C. As a part of the Day of Atonemen (Yom Kippur), the high priest laid the sins of the people on a goat’s (Azazel) head and sent the goat into the wilderness to die. The word "scapegoat" refers to the goat that escaped.

As usual, the oil company executives trotted out their old dog and pony show about the risks of capitalism. However, they are not capitalists, but rather quasi-socialists. Without any risk at all, they have a guaranteed market along with governmental benefits and tax breaks. They are corporate socialists. Their market is as certain as a whore’s.

If things were right with the world, the oil and gas companies would be socialized. However, such a prospect is slight in a world which is not right and in which politicians want to privatize the mails, prisons, and highways.

A sure sign of the scapegoater is whining which is an implicit plea for sympathy and a declaration of irresponsibility. Whiners resonate their voices behind their noses just as do blamers. Anally retentive personalties resonate their voices in their throats at the other end of their alimentary canals. They run tight ends. Whiners also cock their heads and wring their hands. Blamers point their fingers and narrow their eyelids into slits as though they were enfilading an enemy. In short, whiners are the obverse side of the blamers’ coin.

The only sure way to tell what people mean is to avoid paying mind to the content of their words and to pay attention to tone of voice, gestures, and facial expressions. Studies in communication have pointed out that only 7% of commuication is in the content. 93% is in the manner of the communication. The truth is in the process not the content. It’s not what is said, but how it’s said. As Duc de la Rochefoucauld said, "Speech has been given to man in order to disguise his thoughts." People telegraph what they mean by the way they deliver their words.

For several years George Bush and Richard Cheney have been pointing their fingers and narrowing their eyelids. Bush narrows his eyes as would a prosecutor with a weak or trumped up case. Cheney with his perpetual sneer and snarl looks like an out-of-shape, left-over, cowardly lion with five draft deferments. Pointed fingers, narrow eyelids, sneers, and snarls are harbingers of deceit and scapegoating. People who sneer, snarl, and speak out of the corner of their mouths are not trustworthy. People sure of their case speak the truth speak simply without added gestures and grimmaces for emphasis. Pounding tables and raised voices signify uncertainty.

George Bush’s voice has begun to take on a whine just as did his father’s. Both he and Cheney have taken to blaming the Democrats for their failures. They are scapegoating.

Of course, since George Bush is incapable of admitting he was wrong or making a mistake, his appeal for sympathy will be in the quality of his voice, not the content of his words. The way out of his dilemma will be to blame the system. With a flatly affected voice he speaks about how much he suffers at the news of the casualties. He earnestly stresses his good intentions unaware that "meant well" is code for "messed up."

When politicians say, "The system worked," they also imply that the system often doesn’t work. The system, whatever it is, is always available as a scapegoat. When politicians blame the system, they are saying that no one is responsible. When politicians say that they accept responsibility for something which has gone wrong, they mean nothing at all because there are no penalties attached to their acceptance of responsibility. Accepting responsibility is a far cry from repentance.

Blaming the system is a form of scapegoating, and as scapegoating it is a form of whining. The Democrats in Washington who supported the war now say that they were "duped" by the Bush Administration’s lies. What they mean is that they are such weenies that they didn’t have the courage to stand up and oppose the war for fear of having half-wit Republican weenies call them weenies. They wanted to come on strong which is a sure sign of weakness. Dupes do not elicit confidence as in the case of John Kerry.

The fact is that not many have stood up and said that they were wrong. Bush apparently believes that the reiteration of a lie establishes the truth of the lie and that the repetition of a failure will lead to success. "If at first you don’t succed, try something else." The Democrats in Congress say they were misled. In short, no one is wrong. Everyone scapegoats and by way of implication are sociopaths.

The chief mark of a moral person is not the claim to be moral as Bush claims, but the ability to own up to being wrong, acknowledging guilt, and accepting the consequences of failure. Moral people have the courage to confess that they were wrong when they were. So far, no one has exhibited morality, save Rep. John Murtha and former Sentaor John Edwards.

"Better to trust a man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt," Eric Sevareid.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2005