Failed Conservative Values: Jeeni Criscenzo on Scapegoating

No human being should ever have to sleep on the street.  When you fall asleep you are in a condition of complete vulnerability.  How can you do that if you don’t have a safe place to lay your head.  So it’s a basic human right that everyone has to have shelter and food.  And for conservatives to say “Oh, well, if you give it away, then people aren’t going to work, and they should work”. 

There is a basic human right that we all have an ability to earn a living, that we will have the opportunity.  And then – for lack of a better word – this military-industrial complex is depriving more and more people of that by not providing mental healthy care for people who are not capable of taking care of themselves.  And again, it comes back to, okay, you need to take care of those people.

I don’t own a car.  I take public transportation all the time, and the buses are full of mentally ill people.  And they talk to themselves, are in another world.  Some of them are maybe a little threatening.  But mostly, it’s really very sad that these people are just tossed out like garbage, because our society is not taking care of them. 
 

(Cartoon: Organization Chart: Scapegoats)
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/jsi/lowres/jsin330l.jpg

More about Scapegoating

Definition:

- One that is made to bear the blame of others.
- scapegoat - someone who is punished for the errors of others
http://onelook.com/?w=Scapegoat
 

At Wikipedia
The scapegoat was a goat that was driven off into the wilderness as part of the ceremonies of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in Judaism during the times of the Temple in Jerusalem. The rite is described in Leviticus 16.

The word is more widely used as a metaphor, referring to someone who is blamed for misfortunes, generally as a way of distracting attention from the real causes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat 
 

Scapegoat Society
Scapegoating is a hostile social - psychological discrediting routine by which people move blame and responsibility away from themselves and towards a target person or group. It is also a practice by which angry feelings and feelings of hostility may be projected, via inappropriate accusation, towards others. The target feels wrongly persecuted and receives misplaced vilification, blame and criticism; he is likely to suffer rejection from those who the perpetrator seeks to influence. Scapegoating has a wide range of focus: from "approved" enemies of very large groups of people down to the scapegoating of individuals by other individuals. Distortion is always a feature.   http://www.scapegoat.demon.co.uk

(Cartoon:  I didn't say it was your fault...I said we are going to say it is.)
http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/jmo0599l.jpg
 

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices -- to be found in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.  Rod Serling

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