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Hard to like this one as a Seahawks and Pete Carroll fan (who actually doesn’t give a rip about football 95% of the time). I did not like Carroll at USC, but when he came to the Hawks I really came to appreciate his unrelentingly positive outlook and the enthusiasm he shares with his players. Funny, isn’t it, how one’s bad guy can become their good guy? I wonder what you’d say about those scapegoats we change our minds about?

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Jan 10, 2023Liked by david roberts

Scapegoating, as you pointed out, is both an ancient and a systemic practice. Now as then, the permissiveness and acceptance of the community validates the practice. We as members of the human community, hold ourselves accountable for what each of us could have done. Easier to absolve ourselves of blame by heaping the responsibility on someone other person or group. We're all responsible for the 6 yr old deliberately shooting his teacher: from a social permissiveness of gun culture to the dissuasion of emotional self-regulation to an overall lack of empathy. The question I find myself asking in response to this lack of accountability in human culture is: why have we never decided that self-accountability is important enough to the function of society that we codify it in systemic practice? "Honesty is the best policy" is perhaps the closest we get in American culture, but as George Santos demonstrates, that is merely a suggestion that doesn't prevent him from taking a leadership role in our country's policy-making.

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founding

Wasn't Azazel the actual name of the demon in the Exorcist?

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