Kristin Crowley, formerly Chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, is pictured above. Crowley was demoted by LA Mayor Karen Bass, which is why she is now the "former" Chief of the LA Fire Department. The Mayor blamed Crowley for what the Mayor thought was defective leadership and preparation, in advance of the devastation caused by the massive, wind-driven fires that burned down thousands of homes in Los Angeles. In the picture, Crowley is speaking to the press after she failed to persuade the Los Angeles City Council to restore her to her position. No suck luck. Crowley didn't get to keep her job.
The New York Times paired its article about Crowley's failed effort to regain her position with an adjacent article featuring the latest news on an effort to recall Mayor Karen Bass. Mayor Bass, herself, has come under criticism, and has been blamed for the incredible damage done by the fires. The fact that Bass was in Africa at the time of the fires, having left town after fire warnings were issued, was not a "good look." Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley billionaire who helped fund the unsuccessful Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. run for the presidency, is now going to put her money to work in the recall Bass effort.
I have previously written to decry "anger" as a good basis for political action. The same thing might be said about "rage," which I guess qualifies as an extreme form of anger. Please allow me to add "blame" to this list. Like "anger," and "rage," "blame" is a very poor basis for political decision-making.
Why is that? Well, one reason is that anger, rage, and blame are divisive, and it is usually true, at times of crisis, when political leadership and effective political action are most important, that getting everyone to work together is usually a pretty high priority, and an important factor in achieving success. So, there is a "practical" reason to suppress our instincts of anger, rage, and blame, when we want to confront and overcome a crisis.
There is also another reason that I think that anger, rage, and blame are politically counterproductive. These feelings are "backward-looking." We are angry, or enraged because of something that has already happened - even if what has already happened is just some sort of threat of something foretold for the future. Similarly, and even more clearly, blame is something that directly refers to the past.
Of course, we can give a nod to Faulkner for his accurate comment that "the past is never dead. It's not even past." That's so true, but the real point is that our aim must always be to look ahead. That is where we need to be looking if we want to be effective as human beings. The human world in which we most immediately live is created by human action - and collective human action is another way to say, "politics." If we want to make the world better, or to recover from disaster, we will either succeed, or not, by creating a new reality in the future.
Where we are now is always where we start. and we are always starting "now," right where we are. Talking about who to "blame" for where we find ourselves, and being "angry" and "enraged" about our situation, does nothing to enable us to move ahead into a future that we must, ourselves, create.
The "Blame Game"? We don't need it. It's counterproductive. It's another example of giving "observation" a preference over "action."
"Telling it like it is" almost always feels good - that's a way to rehearse and refresh our anger and rage. But what we really need to do is to make things better, to begin anew, to do something that has never even been thought of before.
Anger, blame, and rage? Let's put them in the rearview. We have so much to do, right now. We need to look ahead!
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