Not My Fault

Call me an arch-conservative (go on - be the first!), but I don't like whining liberals who complain about the world & how so many wrongs need to be righted.
This is, fundamentally, a revenge mentality - there is a wrong, someone needs to be punished, & then "we" will feel better.
It doesn't matter if we are talking about law, politics, or sport, people think they have a right to retribution in matters that don't actually concern them or directly affect them.

Let's do this with examples.

Law.

Although I'm all for victim impact statements & assessments, let's limit the range of victim defined. Perhaps I should say that we could leave it in the hands of professional victim assessors, rather than broadcasting "Hey, who wants to be a victim here?"
In a murder, there is generally one victim. They are dead. That's a big impact, but nothing can be done to change that.

No parent can get their child back. No parent should expect blood money. I say "expect" intentionally. Society may punish the perpetrator in such a way that it "profits", & these funds should then be pushed towards ameliorating the grief associated with the victim's loss, definitely.
However, buying a new house doesn't count.

The old Gaelic concept (& I'm sure it existed elsewhere) of blood money was to compensate a family for the loss of a worker - in the same way that you would compensate if you'd killed someone's cow. This is no longer relevant to our society, but we keep acting as though it is.

Don't even get me started on the precedence principles in the legal profession - where once judgement was by the King, then by his representatives, & now must look as consistent as if that was still the case.
I doubt if HM feels it is like that now.


Politics.

In a recent Australian election - & it's not the first time I've heard it - voters "punished" the government due to their unhappiness with various aspects of its organisation or its policies.
In what way did "punishing" a political party improve the lot of those voters?
Regardless of the opposition's policies, voting with revenge in mind is stupid.

I'm not even going to continue with how the new government then systematically removed any public servant or office with the taint of their predecessors.
Government is meant to be the stability that rules the country & keeps it from dissolving into anarchy & chaos.
I believe that seeking revenge on the temporarily unpopular former ruling tribe can lead only to further retribution down the track.


Sport.

This story seems to have legs for so many reasons. When one football team lost a game "because" the referees failed to notice an infringement by the other team, all hell broke loose.
Someone had to be held responsible for the tragedy - remember, this is football.
So, who perpetrated the "crime"? Obviously, the side that infringed, right?

I doubt that the infringement was intentional, but it also reflects on the reliance by that team on the referee to ensure that they didn't infringe - that is, they weren't clever enough to self-monitor.
The team that lost didn't notice until after the game, & only then protested that they had lost because of the unnoticed infringement, & that someone had to be held to account.

This is football! It's entertainment for the masses! Do we really need to "punish" someone for not imposing the rules perfectly? Does there need to be revenge?
Do we need to hold someone ultimately responsible for what is, at the base level, a small number of men trying to keep two teams of bigger angrier men from killing each other by pointing out the limits to which they can apply their aggression?