because arguing about what someone is implying in their write is a dubious exercise at best. i see none of that in anything i've read here or elsewhere. nothing in what they are saying even resembles a blame the victim mentality, let alone blame voters or blame the people who lost loved ones and colleagues. and you can count me among the people who lost colleagues nathan. i sure as heck don't read the left as blaming me.
>I said implicit - okay we can do a textual analysis on
>that
don't bother. you've humiliated yourself enough already.
>- but if the US government had no responsibility for what happened,
>why does "causation" matter? If there is no responsibility by our
>political leaders, why so much ink defending causality?
i haven't the faintest idea why you're talking about the US gov having no responsibility. who said that?
In _Streetwise_ or _Code of the Streets_, Eli Anderson spends years among kids in a neighborhood in Philly. he helps us understand why, for example, _some_ young girls have babies and why they parade them in the streets on Sundays dressed up in their finest $150 outfits while collecting welfare checks. He talks about "mother's day" when their boyfriends visit to collect a share of the welfare check. can ya believe nathan? a black, progressive sociologist actually studies such stuff and writes about it. no lie.
anderson helps us understand why young boys play "the game" where they try to have sex with as many girls as possible and why _some_ young men lie to these young women about their intentions.
but read anderson (and the left explanations) carefully. he helps us understand because he points us to structuralist explanations for their behavior.
since i'm familiar with same among rural whites, i'll elaborate as to why young, single women want to have babies. in a world where there aren't many opportunities for marking "adulthood" with a decent job, young women identify strongly with motherhood. motherhood and career aren't in opposition. motherhood isn't seen as something that will delay a college education. etc. motherhood is seen as a way to become a woman.
we can see how the economic structure gives rise to such sentiments, yes?
that's an explanation. that doesn't mean we are legitimating or justifying their behavior.
anderson goes on to talk about "street oriented" behavior and the use of public violence among _some_ young black men. he's appalled by this behavior. he does not approve. he holds these young men accountable for their behavior, knowing full well that many young men grow up under the same conditions and do _not_ engage in the same kind of behavior. nonetheless, he does not think that it useless to understand--understand nathan (which is different from causal explanation)--why they engage in those behaviors and he does so from a structuralist perspective. there may well be personal issues for each case that are opaque to the sociologist, but that is not the issue. the issue is, economic and social conditions contribute to the _conditions_ under which such behavior emerges and understanding that can help us think about how to respond to those conditions.
he makes a connection between personal biography and history, as C Wright Mills argues is the unique perspective of a sociological imagination. and his approach leads to policy proposals that are quite different from those proposed by people who use a rational choice perspective and imagine that young women have babies so they can collect bigger welfare checks.
kelley