Taking Account

It has been my experience in the corporate workplace that those managers who talk the most about accountability are most often the least likely to hold themselves accountable for anything. They skillfully maneuver their way out of personal responsibility for everything by quickly finding someone else to hold the bag. The only personal responsibility they admit, is the responsibility to find someone else to blame. Once they have fingered the person to be held accountable, they often have little interest in the outcome, their ultimate concern having already been met: responsibility, ergo accountability, belongs to someone else. Most conservative pundits also love to talk about personal responsibility and accountability. By personal responsibility and accountability they too mean that they want to hold others personally responsible and accountable. As in, “they are the ones responsible for this mess.” They are quick to blame others for all of life’s real and perceived ills. In their view, if bad things happen to them, others must be to blame. If bad things happen to others, well, it must be their own damn fault. The freedom they champion so vigilantly is their own freedom from personal responsibility…. for anything. “It’s some else fault” is also at the heart of their sense of national identity: American Exceptionalism. In their world view, the United States is exceptional and therefore its actions are unimpeachable. The United States is indeed exceptional though not perfect. Still these conservative pundits hold that as the United States is exceptional, everything it does must be good and therefore blameless. The true America is the extension of their own and like-minded selves. The fault lies not in ourselves, dear Brutus, but with our neighbors. All the world’s ills can safely be laid at the feet of other nations. No room for responsibility or accountability here. We need never apologize as we have nothing to apologize for. This personal blamelessness extends not only to their view of international citizenship but all the way to their membership in the human race: blameless. This can be seen clearly in their response to global warming. Either humans are in no way contributing to global warming, global warming must be a hoax, or it must not be that bad (just the result of natural cooling and warming cycles). As an [again exceptional] human being it is impossible to conceive that global warming is in any way a result of anything they are doing or is anything for which they -- or any other human being -- can be held personally responsible. If it is a problem, it is someone (or something) else’s fault. Self satisfaction that comes from finding someone else to blame is that warm and fuzzy feeling that lets them sleep at night and not have to worry about anything other than resuming vigilance in the morning. Individuals who actually take personal responsibility don’t talk about it, they just take it.