Can someone be both guilty and a scapegoat? It is a question raised by the unanimous vote for a panel to investigate impeachment proceedings against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Caught on tape discussing how to reap personal benefit from his constitutional power to fill President-elect Obama’s vacant senate seat, Governor Blagojevich is universally condemned, tried and sentenced. Indeed, it is difficult to find any defenders of his conduct and you will not find one here. Any public servant who engages in a pattern of behavior that elevates personal gain over the public good is at the very least guilty of ethical violations and a breach of trust. In this case, it seems as if the governor’s actions have risen to criminal behavior and such accusations, though yet unproven, have deprived him of the consent of the governed. The fact that he has not resigned is being read as a signal that he is in a state of denial about his situation. Governor Blagojevich has lost his ability to govern, is ethically at fault and potentially criminally guilty, but is he being scapegoated?

As the term is commonly understood, a scapegoat is an innocent person who is falsely accused. Racial discrimination falls into this category, for when we accuse someone of being evil, lazy, stupid, or criminal by virtue of their race, it is clear that the accused is innocent. It may be true that a particular individual is indeed lazy, but that is hardly the point. The truth of the accusation is not what is at stake, but the way the accusation functions to protect the accuser from seriously considering the possibility of their own laziness.

Communities can achieve a benefit as well as individuals. For example, when one community accuses another community of being violent, then the accusers can derive a sense of identity around their sense of themselves as non-violent by virtue of being not-the-accused. Again, individuals may indeed be violent, but that is not the point. By virtue of locating violence within others, the accusation functions to protect the accusers from taking responsibility for their own violence. In this case an accused group may be both violent and a scapegoat because it is the function of the accusation that matters.

Three different writers on the Chicago Tribune commentary page on December 16, identified three arenas where Blagojevich functions as a scapegoat: the political culture in Illinois, the Illinois Democratic party, and among Illinois voters. Mara Tapp wrote about a culture of political corruption that permeates the people and institutions of Illinois. She writes, “Who among us didn’t hear tales of our convicted politicians almost from infancy? It’s a tradition that embarrasses and amuses us… for all our mortification, we take a certain pride in the amusing anecdotes such malfeasance creates.” She wonders about the uncomfortable truth that “tolerance” of the unethical and criminal behavior of our politicians may have in some way contributed to it. If she is right, then the hand-wringing by those who claim to be paragons of integrity amounts to scapegoating because by accusing Blagojevich of being unethical, they can avoid taking responsibility for the ways their tolerance of persistent political corruption has contributed to a climate that makes a Rod Blagojevich possible.

Ron Gidwitz writes about the members of the Governor’s own party who claim to be shocked and horrified by his behavior. Mr. Gidwitz, who ran in the Republican primary in 2006, writes, “The governor has repeatedly disregarded his oath to uphold the laws and constitution. However, until this made-for-cable comic-tragedy of the auctioning of the Senate seat, Blagojevich’s fellow Democrats have treated his depredations mainly with raised eyebrows and muted tsk-tsking… Once impeachment is concluded, a newly installed Gov. Pat Quinn and the General Assembly should get on with the business of getting Illinois back on track – assuming they can change their ways.” Mr. Gidwitz accurately diagnoses the way that Illinois Democrats are avoiding accepting responsibility for one of their own through the leveling of mighty accusations in a unified voice. All guilt is displaced onto Mr. Blagojevich so none lands on their own heads.

Finally, Dennis Byrne calls out the voters of Illinois in a discussion about whether or not to have a special election to fill the vacant Senate seat. He is all in favor of doing so because “Illinois voters put us into this mess, and they must now get us out of it.” Whether Governor Blagojevich is eventually found guilty of all charges, only a few, or completely acquitted matters little to the ways the growing chorus of calls for his resignation are functioning to heap all the blame for the state of our state onto his head. The ultimate scapegoating claim is always a lie and it is this: “If we can only rid of ourselves of this one bad apple, everything will be okay.” The truth is, getting rid of Rod Blagojevich may make us all feel better, but nothing at all will change, except the name of the next governor or elected official brought up on corruption charges. To avoid making Governor Blagojevich into a scapegoat , he must not be made to shoulder more than his fair share of guilt. What we do with the rest of that guilt will reveal whether we are scapegoaters or reformers. We should accuse, impeach, indict and judge the Governor and then treat ourselves to the same scrutiny. If not, then we will be scapegoaters who falsely believe we are reformers, residing uneasily in the same state of denial as our Governor.

The important lesson we should take from the Geico caveman commercials is deeper than the accessibility of geico.com. The commercials point beyond themselves to a cure for scapegoating.  Our own goodness is not determined by others.  There is not a scarcity of goodness in the world. The truth is that we all have goodness. The ethical task, then, is to treat ourselves and all others within that goodness.        

A response to a New York Times op-ed article by William Kristol on December 1, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/opinion/01kristol.html?_r=1&scp=10&sq=december+01+2008&st=nyt

Dear Mr. Kristol,

In your op-ed article “Jihad’s True Face” you argue that the rationale offered by Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that “seems to have been centrally involved in the attacks on Mumbai” is a “maximalist agenda for global jihad” against the US, Israel and India. You convincingly argue that it is their stated goal to threaten our very existence and you do indeed sound threatened, for you counter their threat with threats of your own: “In a nation like Pakistan, the government will have to be persuaded to deal with those in their midst who are complicit. This can happen if those nations’ citizens decide they don’t want their own country to be dishonored by allegiances with terror groups. Otherwise, other nations will have to act.” You say that this decision on the part of the citizens can be encouraged through an appeal to their patriotism, which should be nurtured as a way to counteract the jihadist identity. Further, I interpret you to mean that those “other nations” will be India or the US and that such action if taken will be violence (perhaps an act of war) justified as a reasonable response. You appear to support the position that if you threaten our existence, we will threaten yours, as well as the existence of anyone who gets in our way. What you are proposing is a tit-for-tat game of maximalist agendas, pitting their jihadist program against your “patriotism”.

 

What you have sadly overlooked is that the hysterical claims to difference which result in terrorism function in exactly the same way as those made in the name of patriotism and it is the function that matters. Claims to difference, that is claims of goodness accompanied by accusations of evil or wickedness, are rationales for violence against the targeted, utterly different other. Each side makes their claims with different stories, but the stories are only different where it doesn’t matter. They are different in the way aliases are different only disguising how startlingly alike each side has become. The shared identity each side is desperately trying to deny is that both are willing to use violence to achieve their ends. The willingness to decide that some will have to die so that my threatened existence can be once again made secure is what links terrorists and patriots in a symbiotic march to what, if carried to its logical conclusion, is mutual annihilation.

 

To support my argument, I will refer to the Jim Leach article from Politico.com which you spend a great deal of time ridiculing. You would do well to reconsider your disdain, for in analyzing the violence in Mumbai, Mr. Leach resorts to a change in vocabulary. Rather than characterizing the violence as an act of war (violence justified in the name of patriotism) he proposes  “barbarism” which he defines as “pent-up irrationality that can occur anywhere, anytime”. While he clearly identifies the violence in Mumbai as barbarism, he cautions that it is a mistake to identify it with any particular group. Indeed, he wonders if barbarism is “part of the human condition.” That “pent-up irrationality” is what he later in the article calls “vengeful violence” and he is right to point out that we are all at risk for succumbing to its logic. He argues for a “response that is the least nationalistic” because despite the way he began the article, he seems to be aware that war is not to be contrasted with barbarism, but is to be seen as an example of it. War is the institutionalization of vengeful violence.

 

If you have convinced yourself, Mr. Kristol, that war is any less barbarous than terrorism, that in war innocent civilians are not sacrificed for an ideology, then you are more in love with being right than in being good. War is barbarism well disguised behind the alias of patriotism.

 

You will no doubt respond to me with your own hysterical claims of difference and you will not be without allies in your attempt to put distance between violence in the name of patriotism and the Mumbai terrorists. It is natural to see one’s side as good, as just, as acting on the defensive. It is always our enemies whose violence is “aggressive”, never our own. But be assured, Mr. Kristol, that the terrorists, whoever they are and for whatever reason they carried out their despicable assault, are engaged in the exact same mental gymnastics. The human condition is to deny responsibility for our own violence and we are sadly expert at it. You set out to reveal the true face of jihad, Mr. Kristol, and like anyone who attempts to justify their own violence, you found it in your mirror.