Of course we have to blame the victim because if we did not we would have to blame the system. If we did that we would have to blame ourselves to the extent that we are complicit with the system. That's not going to happen because it would mean we are not strong enough or capable enough to address a wrong when we see it. But if we don't see a fault or blame the victim we can come off as morally righteous ourselves without having to do anything. It's such a good deal for us freedom loving, take personally responsibility, church going patriots. .

Why, why? All the other industrialized democracies have some form or version of universal health care but the USA. Is it involved with our history of slavery and segregation? Why is this right wing/GOP/libertarian/Ayn Rand outlook so powerful in this country. Oh yeah, all those rich corporations and right wing billionaires have bought the media, the army of lobbyists and have bought our politicians to do their bidding. But there are capitalists, billionaires and rich corporations in Germany and Japan, they both have universal health care? What's up with us? We did the right thing with Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 though the GOP wants to end both these programs. Truman did try to enact a national health care system in 1947 but the GOP defeated that idea. How many more Americans will have to die, to go into bankruptcy before this nation gets a clue?

When i was a kid my parents were visiting neighbors who had a son who was the most incorrigible kid for miles around. It was a cold night. He wanted to go out to the well to get some water. He filled the dipper from the bucket sitting on the well, took a sip, and threw the rest on the cat with the comment "we got a wet cat".

That kid's mother regularly beat hell out of him whenever the mood struck her, in public or private. The Mother received similar treatment from her husband. Nobody complained. There was nobody to complain to.

What exactly can this rich banker buy to underscore his wealth and power? Houses? Cars? Hell, anybody can do that. But if he can degrade and humiliate another person without a thought of HER feelings, how long SHE will carry the scars of the incident, then forever after he can call to mind that woman who no doubt thinks every day about what was done to her, and he can bask in the assurance that it is he whom she will never forget as long as she lives. That is real power he feels. He feels it in every bone in his body.

Something akin to the motives of the Boy, the Mother, the Father, and the Banker Warms the heart of people like Chris Christie who want to deprive a family earning six thousand dollars a year access to food stamps. He could not enjoy the helicopter ride nearly so much if, while taking it, he could not remember the poor family. After all, who is to say that he is rich and powerful and has a gaggle of rich men standing in line to give him anything he wants----if he cannot compare himself to the poorest of the poor.

I have no idea about the merits of this particular case of the IMF President vs the house keeper, but I do know--whether or not the man ultimately is convicted of this particular sex crime--that his greater crimes were in his official capacity of head of the IMF--an institution that protects the pillaging of the poor by the rich and works exclusively in the interests of the world's bankers.

There is an old song the refrain of which goes:

Its the same the whole world over
Its the poor what gets the blame
Its the rich what gets the pleasure,
In't it all a bloody shame.

The standard procedure used by defence attornies is to try to discredit a witness or victim, this is pariticuarly true in rape. A sad indictment indeed and even more sad if a jury goes for it, should they be swayed by the
'aura' created by the rich white guy sitting in front of them.

For better or worse, I'll keep swimming against the current and wish that writers on the left side of the Amerikan political imaginary line would resist the temptation to use the Strauss-Kahn incident to make otherwise valid points.

The worst of it is that here, it's perfectly appropriate to cite a corporate-news flack using and reinforcing personal bankruptcy as a pejorative. That's the point of the article, and it's a valid and important point to make.

My objection to the Strauss-Kahn context is that it all too readily lends itself to muddying an otherwise salient discussion by incorporating into it a premature prejudicial view of the case and its implications and ramifications.

Although I well understand its seduction, I'm surprised to the extent that people so readily buy in to a perspective straight out of Victorian melodrama, with the odious, leering Strauss-Kahn twirling his moustaches as he defiles the helpless, defenseless damsel.

That may well prove to be a fair and accurate description of events. All I'm saying is that it's like the OJ Simpson case before the trial, such as it was. I don't think it's being preposterous or unduly priggish to argue that circumspection is in order.

It's one thing to feel that one confidently "knows" the truth of the matter, and freely express one's personal convictions informally; it's another to draw upon the still-developing story to bolster a public commentary.

All THAT said, I couldn't agree more that there's a nasty strain of "blaming the victim" embedded in Amerikan culture. As with all such sour, mean-spirited toxic impulses, it's devolved from high-minded moral and ethical traditions abundantly represented in Amerikan literature from Mark Twain's Missouri to Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon.

It arises from elements of classic Stoicism and Anglo-Saxon-- especially Scots-Irish-- traditions: self-reliance, rugged individualism, personal responsibility. It's in tenets of Puritanism and especially Calvinism. And it's a straight line downhill to latter-day sanctimonious, self-caricaturizing harpies like Judge Judy, with her diatribes against those who "play the victim" or "game the system".

It really does seem to be a broad prejudice floating freely in the Amerikan ether, either absorbed or rejected according to one's temperament, upbringing, and experience. It's the knee-jerk tendency expressed by Job's kibitzers in the Book of Job to believe that the another's misfortune is something over which they had control, and which they most likely brought about themselves.

It's the sort of "principle" that seems most reliable, self-evident, and true in the abstract; it resists taking the bigger picture or general overviews and broad circumstances into account. People cling to it most because it reinforces their own faith in personal power and control; if they are too quick to sympathize with another's seeming failure or victimization, it undermines their own sense of security and confidence that they can control their fate and destiny.

One sees it even in comments on "progressive" sites like CommonDreams on topics like foreclosures. Despite abundant evidence that ordinary citizens were ruthlessly preyed upon by a confluence of unchecked, unregulated capitalist institutions staffed by avaricious wealth and profit-seekers, some still assume that as a rule of thumb, the so-called victims were simply stupid, greedy, and irresponsible fools or knaves trying to get something for nothing-- and thus deserve the miserable consequences.

This is a self-confirming perspective, because of course there always ARE fools or knaves trying to get something for nothing. And, just like we all know people who get into debt because of reckless overspending and heedless, over-indulgent materialism, there are indeed people whose bankruptcies are the end result of mad or bad financial decisions.

So those who take a harsh view tend to fixate on the worst miscreants to prove the virtue and correctness of their position.

But, as this article correctly notes, the reflex to blame the individual not only gets the higher-ups who design, execute, and profit from predatory systems off the hook-- it also is a flywheel that plunges hapless victims into a self-perpetuating, metastasizing spiral of personal destruction.

Unlike the quality of mercy, this high-handed severity is deplorably strained.

Credit checks are now routinely done as background checks for employment, thus keeping many Americans unemployed. You file for bankruptcy after weighing all the options, tormenting yourself about the decision, and seeing no other way out. Your credit score remains damaged for at least a decade while you try to climb out of the hole you've been put in (I would say dug yourself into, but how many bankruptcies are the result of frivolous, partying lifestyles?) only to discover that more dirt has been piled upon you and you may never get out of that hole.

I don't know whether or not "he done it", either, since the hotel industry is run by the mob, he's a Socialist and was competitive to Sarcozy, Le Pen, and another Socialist(e) - not to mention the fact that, as head of the IMF, the American government sees him as attempting to destroy the u.S. dOlLar, and wanted to get him oUt oF Ze waY - and though he is a philanderer, that doesn't make one a rapist - and, there is a terrible tendency for the press to try and hang people before a burden of proof has been reached ...

That being said, agree with this issue of bankruptcy. Some of the other issues too - like tenancy, etc. My sense is that, if his team is going to use that as well as other things mentioned, and with a N.Y.C. jury, it's not going to fly in this economic and political climate. It will only work against them. But they are the ones who study juries ..

Gad but for the politics and the possible set-up, this is like OJ and I can't stand it. I hope it's over soon.

Donna, please go back to Medicare for All.

This is insightful and compassionate and moves me to question my own assumptions.

I find I judge folks with education and resources more than the poor, but can have compassion for how young families are tempted into bad loans and over-spending with a fervor.

A major party blocking Pres. Truman's attempt to pass a universal health care plan were southern Reps. and southern senators. They worried about southern women in a hospital that also admitted "Black men."