Today, technologies like the Internet and the cell phone have allowed people to become closer to each other worldwide.

At the same time, however, these technologies have led to a degree of separation from reality and personal responsibility. The ease of credit cards, online banking and automatic bill pay has made our financial world seem almost invisible. We measure our worth according to numbers on a computer screen. We live our lives letting those numbers vacillate and we pray we stay in the green. We have let the important aspects of banking and personal financial responsibility all disappear onto the World Wide Web.

However, once those numbers become negative, we immediately blame the technology and the people behind it.  It could not be our own fault, because we didn’t do anything other than watch the numbers go up and down. The lack of agency, or ability to act, has been removed with the ease of online banking and thus people have lost personal responsibility for their finances. We place blame on others, whether it be the bank, the gas company, our bosses or our close friends and family—anyone but ourselves.

The lack of responsibility and the shifting of blame is also seen on the political level. The actions of Congress that affect our personal lives take place behind closed doors in Washington D.C. The decisions of the government are made away from the people who elected leaders to represent them. When Congress offers policies other than what its constituents want, the American people begin to place blame on everyone but themselves.

In the United States, we have a democratic republic, meaning that we democratically elect people to represent us. We elect those we feel will represent our values the best. We trust them to keep our interests in mind while serving and expect them to follow the rule of law.

While those we have elected are in Washington D.C. carrying out their duties, we sit back and relax at home. Very few Americans question what the Senate is doing from day to day, yet when something happens that upsets them, the blame game begins.

After the health care reform bill passed two Sundays ago, Americans questioned their representatives’ loyalties. They blamed those who elected Obama and the liberal Congressmen who voted for these reforms.  They blamed the thousands of uninsured Americans for being the problem behind this flawed legislation. The only ones they didn’t blame were themselves.

In 2008, well before his election, Obama began touting his idea of health care reform.

Nearly two years later, he finally persuaded enough representatives to reach the 216 votes needed in the House to pass the bill. When he put his signature on the legislation, people across the country rose up against their representatives for not voting as their constituents wished. However, where were these angry people months and years ago, when the idea was still just an idea and not a law? I’m not talking about the Tea Party participants who have been strongly against the health care reform movement from the beginning. I’m talking about the newly upset citizens who should have taken part in the activities offered to them by the groundbreaking opposition the Tea Party offered—for the Tea Party is not blaming others. It is still acting, still pursuing its representatives and asking for change.

Unfortunately, many of the newest dissenters did not act.

Had more of these disgruntled Americans taken action at the polls in November of 2008, this may have been avoided. If last summer they had joined the ranks of hundreds at the town hall meetings across the country, it could have been avoided. If they had written letters to their representatives or spoken out against the bill louder and in all forms of media in the public sphere, then maybe their representatives would have known their constituents were strongly opposed to this legislation.

So what can be done now? For all the upset and disappointed Americans, the answer is simple: Stop blaming others for your own lack of action. Each and every concerned American must vote in his upcoming local elections and make a difference in the composition of Congress. Americans must use the agency made available to them in the Constitution and take action to ensure their representatives know what they want.

Americans must stop blaming others for what is going wrong in their life, take responsibility for their actions or lack thereof and work hard to fix their own mistakes.

Then America will truly be a democratic republic, not a nation of blame.
 

Claire Sanderson is a junior CCPA and political science double major. She can be reached for comment at [email protected].