In the entry immediately 'south' of this one, I engaged in some victim-blaming.
Is it ever justified? I say it is. As you might expect, I have an article on this very topic over at the Stack.
Category: Praise and Blame
People and Their Works
This from a reader:
Your comment about Husserl's picture on your wall reminded me of a line from my notes: "I try to admire works but never people, as people invariably let you down." It's, I think, a line from Peter Hitchens.
People regularly, though not invariably, let one down. True. But being a person, I need persons to show me what is humanly possible and to serve as examples of how best to live. No book can render that service. While I cannot emulate (equal or excel) Husserl or Socrates in all respects, I can hope to do so in some, in respect of intellectual probity and devotion to the truth.
Sometimes we are at fault when others disappoint us. We pegged them too high. To be just in our assessments of others is extremely difficult. No man is worthy of worship and no man of utter contempt. No one is an angel and no one a demon. We regularly go to extremes.
One way to avoid disappointment in one's heroes is by not meeting them in the flesh. Distance permits idealization. Propinquity militates against it.
And if you want to avoid inspiring disappointment in those who haven't met you but will, request of your advocates and admirers that they not sing your praises! Let the former think that you are just an ordinary schmuck schlepping down the pike. And then surprise them.
Bloomberg Blames the Victim!
Here:
As the financial crisis first began to strangle American homeowners, Michael Bloomberg, then the mayor of New York, identified a scapegoat. Bloomberg didn’t blame the banks for handing out subprime mortgages; he blamed the consumers who’d applied for them.
On an August 2007 broadcast of “The John Gambling Show” on WABC, Bloomberg first aired a pronouncement that he would later repeat during the recession and after it. “What happened here is a bunch of people who didn’t really have the wherewithal to get mortgages, got mortgages,” Bloomberg told Gambling. “Now, if they didn’t have access to those mortgages, the elected officials would scream, you’re discriminating against them. Some of them lied about their incomes, some by a lot. Now they say, ‘Oh, well, the salesman convinced them to do it.’ But we live in a world where when you put your signature down, you’re supposed to know what you’re signing, and you have to take responsibility. Because every time there’s a victim, we’ve got to find somebody that’s responsible for it.”
Is it not obvious that some of the blame here must be borne by the consumers? It is obvious to me.
I go into some detail on this question of blaming the victim in the appropriately appellated On Blaming the Victim.
I do not support Bloomberg's candidacy. He is a fraud and a phony driven by personal ambition. That he reversed himself on "Stop and Frisk," a successful and justified law enforcement tactic that protected blacks as well as whites, not to mention other 'persons of color,' shows that he is not rooted in principle. Did he come to see the 'racism' of the tactic? Of course not. He believes now what he believed when mayor, namely, that the tactic is a good one. The reversal is fake, a sop thrown to the Left in an ill-starred attempt to curry favor with them. The old man has not only thrown away a half billion dollars of his own money (at the time of this writing); he has also thrown away his dignity. All for nothing.