Social Decay in America: The 'I Didn't Do It' Culture

By John Stanton

“The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual..What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends … Our people are losing…the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. ” Jimmy Carter, July 15, 1979

It was an unremarkable incident, really. I happened to be in an American high school setting watching students (grades 9-12) comingling, laughing, discussing and, at the same time, eating lunch. The locale was not the school cafeteria but rather a large school hallway, sandwiched between a lounge and a library, with benches and plenty of floor space for 15-20 students. Adjacent to one of the benches was a trash can. On top of the garbage can was stacked, precariously, many lunch trays with leftover food, silverware and plates. One student accidently bumped the trash can and down came the whole mess crashing to the floor making a sound akin to a popping balloon.

For a moment there was silence, and then the students went about their business. The trays and food sat there on the floor untouched. Some moments passed and then it was time for class. A dozen or more students, from each class level, bypassed the mess on the floor. Not one thought to clean it up. A senior level student, making sure to avoid a banana peel, remarked—with emphasis-- “I Didn’t Do It!” and trotted off to the classroom. That senior level student, in an unconscious yelp, echoed America’s byline as it approaches the year 2010.

American society merrily avoids accountability and responsibility. Americans seek the loophole and blame others--be they individuals, networks or nations--for their own deficiencies. American leaders direct the consequences of poor judgment down the chain-of-command. Why?

Unaccountable Elite

The American people have taken the bait from the nation’s op-ed writers and talking heads, corporate CEO’s, financiers, the president, members of congress, justices of the Supreme Court, governors, sports/movie/think-tank/academic stars, and military leaders. In the USA these are the script writers of the American narrative and masters of the American consciousness. They stand firm in their belief that the masses down below will follow their words and deeds, even die for them. They are the Unaccountable Elite.

And the American people don’t disappoint. Only on rare occasions is an “American leader” taken to task by a concerned public. The American people revel in their leaders, glorifying and emulating them and striving, one day, to make it like their idols did. In so doing they have forsaken their duty as American citizens to hold their leaders to account and, as consumers, divine what is theater and what is not.

The American Dream is not pretty. It is, in fact, a descent, a struggle to reach the level of the Unaccountable Elite where “I Didn’t Do It” is the mantra. This is a cycle that has to be broken for America to change.

President Jimmy Carter (Carter Doctrine, funding the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan) was arguably the last president to tell the American public that some hard decisions had to be made about the way they lived their lives. It wasn’t just about energy consumption, as he so eloquently stated in his famed July 1979 speech. It was, at root, about how Americans interact with each other and other nations/groups.

For his frankness on the matter, his popularity with the American public increased. But the Unaccountable Elite was not pleased. They vilified Carter at every turn. The basic retort to Carter’s speech went something like this: there is nothing wrong with America or Americans--it’s the rest of the world that’s the problem. Even the compassionate Ted Kennedy ridiculed Carter.

In short, “We Didn’t Do It”. We, the people, as instructed by the masters, blamed OPEC, the USSR, the Shah, Vietnam and Carter for all our troubles.

So we remember, wrongly, Jimmy Carter for his “Mired in Malaise Speech” which, of course, was nothing of the sort. His message was timeless and far more relevant now than it was in 1979. Americans are paying the price for not listening to Jimmy Carter, the last president to go beyond the cliché of “There is nothing to fear but fear itself” and speak brutally to the American people about its troubled social infrastructure and cloudy future.

The Joy of Unaccountability

Since the Carter years, what have Unaccountable Elite done to deserve the respect and admiration of the American people?