“I’ve just come from seeing a dead boy – and you killed him.” Those were the words of writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin (1924-1987) from a long-ago television appearance. Years after, Thomas Sowell referenced Baldwin’s appearance in a 1986 opinion piece.
Sowell was making an essential point, one that the American right would do well to internalize nearly 40 years later. In a column titled “An ‘Epidemic’ of Irresponsibility,” Sowell wrote that “The decline of personal responsibility has been accompanied by a rise in social responsibility by people who had nothing to do with the individual decisions that brought on disaster.” In 1986, a case could be made that Sowell was describing the victim culture of the Left. Not so in 2025.
At Fox News, Marc Siegel blames the actions of Charlie Kirk shooting suspect Tyler Robinson on “the dangers of kids lost in gaming culture.” At the Wall Street Journal, columnist Alyssia Finley pointed to an “atomized” internet culture that can apparently be “as addictive and destructive as any drug.” And when not suggesting the possibility that the internet triggered Robinson, Finley asked if “killing villains in videogames [might] desensitize the conscience?”
Except that the internet and video games are ubiquitous in modern life. If one or both were the source of murderous actions, then it’s safe to say that the lockdowns foisted on us by President Trump in his first White House term would have been slight relative to parents keeping their precious kids away from those “steeped in a dark digital world and videogames.”
Speaking of Trump, in a seeming replay of Baldwin he blamed the “radical left” for Kirk’s murder. He wasn’t alone on the right.
It arguably signals unfortunate changes in the outlook of modern conservatives. While they used to decry the playing of the victim card, they’ve since become expert at it. Nowadays they’re quick to throw personal responsibility (whereby people kill) aside in favor of blaming the internet, videogames, men transitioning into women, and once again, the “radical left.” There’s abundant blame placed on things, ideology, and personal choices, and less on individuals who’ve irresponsibly and sickeningly chosen to act in despicable ways.
The blame shifting and victimization gloss over what’s still true: people kill. And once it’s accepted that the latter is true, it can be asked just how many Americans are capable of killing? While one murderer is always and everywhere too many, it’s no insight to point out that the horrific acts of murderers shock us precisely because the number is so microscopically low.
Which brings us back to Sowell. Watching Baldwin blame “society” for the death of a 28-year-old male who had overdosed, Sowell replied to the screen, “Not me, Jim, I’ve been here in the apartment all day.” Yes, exactly.
The left used used to presume others “guilty until proven innocent,” yet the “guilty” were invariably others who had nothing to do with what transpired. What was true about the dead boy Baldwin was returning from seeing is similarly true about the present, only it’s the right increasingly doing the finger pointing at the others.
