It's not appointment of blame, it's appointment of cause, which is fundamental if you're trying to solve for the _problem_.

Is it? The entire piece is about examining broader causes without blaming a particularly group.

I am not sure that there is a meaningful distinction between ‘blaming’ a group and saying the group caused the problem.

Both are about identifying a group of people as the problem.

> The entire piece is about examining broader causes without blaming a particularly group.

I'm not sure I would agree with that. It seems more like the piece is about blaming both sides and saying that they have the solution, but the author hasn't done a good job of explaining to me _why_ they should be trusted or listened to.

Again I see no blame. What I see is a description of how the frames the two sides use, largely in response to one another, don’t accurately capture the causes of the current problem.

The author is selling a book in which they say more.

The author’s thesis is that the causes are not captured by the political discourse, but are in fact structural, and they attempt to contrast the discourse with these structural ideas that they think are causal.

If you are convinced that the causes are rooted in the behavior of one ‘side’ then you clearly disagree with the author and are unlikely to trust or listen to them.

“What is to be done? I have my own thoughts about how to build a new America in the ruins of the one that has collapsed, which I discuss in my book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite and elsewhere. But the painstaking reconstruction of the United States, if it takes place, will be the work of several generations and the challenge is not one to be met by 10-point plans and PowerPoints. First we must agree on the causes of the collapse of the latest in a series of historic American regimes. To that discussion, this essay is a contribution.”