RESPONSIBLITY! WHAT'S THAT?

RESPONSIBILITY!  WHAT’S THAT?

By

Dr. Jimmie R. Applegate

“When you accept responsibility for your life it means that every single success and failure is because of your actions, and this very fact is often what causes people to keep the ‘victim’ mentality for so long. As a ‘victim’, your failures are never your fault; they are always caused by others and allows your ego to feel safe behind a wall of lies. It takes guts and courage to take responsibility for your own actions, to stop hiding behind the ‘victim’ mentality that keeps you safe from the reality that the reason your life sucks is because of you.”  Author Unknown.

The author summed the content of these two paragraphs in the final nine words, “…..the reason your life sucks is because of you.”    Eleanor Roosevelt said the same thing in ten words, “And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”  I will shorten the summary to three words, “Responsibility follows Choices.”  My thesis in this post is that if you believe your life sucks, it is because you have not accepted responsibility for the consequences that resulted from the decisions you made.  If not you, who is responsible for your decision should your dollar bet or sweat equity investment not return your anticipated financial expectations?  Excuses like “But I wanted it”, or “I needed it” do not cut the mustard.  Neither does playing the blame game with statements such as “It wasn’t my fault” or the amorphous “They caused it”.

The recent $26B mortgage foreclosure deal approved by most states and five banks is a prime example blaming banks for poor decisions that resulted in negative consequences when the housing bubble burst.  Sure some banks did not practice due diligence in verifying the information submitted by applicants when they robo-signed the documents.  But wait a minute, sloppy banking practices were unofficially encouraged by Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Barney Frank who did not discourage cheap money and less than effective business practices by arguing their support of easy money was because of their belief that home ownership is a civil right and many, particularly low-income Americans, were being denied that right.  Banks blame congressional encouragement for suspect home loans.  And Americans who borrowed the money dangled in front of them say they were deceived and tricked into signing documents they knew nothing about.  “I didn’t understand what I was signing”, “No one advised me not to borrow $100K with no collateral”, “It’s not my fault”, or “I thought I could sell the house for profit” were common excuses.  Do any of them sound like “hiding behind the ‘victim’ mentality that keeps you safe from the reality that the reason your life sucks is because of you’?  They all should!  Unfortunately many Americans have become practitioners of the art of being a victim.

Another example of using the “victim” mentality strategy while playing the blame game is taking place as I write this on the Pine Ridge Reservation.  The Oglala Sioux tribe filed a $500M suit against several large brewers, distributors and merchants for “knowingly contributing” to alcohol related problems on the Reservation.  Alcoholism apparently is rampant among the 20,000 tribal members.  But individual alcoholics are not to blame for their addiction because the brewers made the alcohol available for purchase off, but near the Reservation.  “It’s not my fault”, “They made it easily available to me”.  Sound familiar?

A similar suit was filed, and won, by 46 states against the tobacco industry in 1998.  The tobacco industry agreed to pay more than $206B because as Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore argued “’[The] lawsuit is premised on a simple notion: you caused the health crisis; you pay for it.”’  Previous lawsuits filed by individuals against the tobacco industry failed because  the industry took the position that the individuals were personally responsible for their addiction.  It is important to note that when the industry was sued by the states because of the health crises they were alleged to have caused, the states won, but when individuals sued they lost because the industry argued the plaintiffs were personally responsible for their decisions.  Evidently the personal responsibility for the decision to buy and smoke tobacco products that lead to sickness and death is of lesser importance than blaming the tobacco industry for making tobacco products available.  I can hear the cries “It’s not my fault”, “They  caused me to get addicted”, “They made and sold cigarettes knowing once I started smoking I wouldn’t be able to stop”.  When individuals are not held responsible for the conditions of their lives and instead are lumped into a class action lawsuit, personal responsibility becomes irrelevant.

Similar blame games are played at the federal level with illegal aliens caught in the middle.  Several states and multiple individuals and groups oppose the influx of illegal aliens while Homeland Security and the Department of Justice do not enforce the immigration laws of the United States.  Not only are the laws not enforced but government agencies reinforce the illegal actions of aliens crossing the border from the South.  Illegal aliens who file tax returns claiming a refundable credit are paid a $1,000 tax credit per child.  So not only don’t they pay any income tax, but they receive an outright gift per child.  The Treasury Department estimates that in the 2010 tax filing year more than $4B in child credits went to 2.3 million people who filed tax returns without social security numbers to “prove” they were US citizens or legal immigrants.

Given this background do you suppose the illegal aliens accept personal responsibility for “a life that sucks”?  Of course not, and why should they when they find themselves in a no man’s land with a convenient scapegoat.  “I’m not responsible for the child credit refund, or the “free” doctor and hospital care, or the “free” and reduced lunch programs or the English as a Second Language programs”.  “I am not responsible for the failure to verify my immigration status”.  “I’m not responsible for being paid in cash under the table” and “Like everyone else I know, I’m just accepting what is given to me for the asking”.

Sound familiar?  It should because it reinforces that ‘’’hiding behind the ‘victim’ mentality keeps you safe from the reality that the reason your life sucks is because of you”’.  The United States needs a resurgence of independence, self-reliance, individualism and the “I can. I can. I know I can” spirit that made America great and Americans exceptional.