Accountability

I’ve noticed in the past year a dramatic increase in the number of politicians using the phrase “hold accountable”; it has become a moralistic shibboleth meaning something like “persecute using a moralistic excuse.”  The phrase appears to have crept into the greater government ecosystem by way of “sex trafficking” hysteria, considering it has been used by sociopaths pushing the Swedish model for quite a while now (“we have to starve & evict women in order to hold sex buyers accountable”, or however they would express that), and that most of the uses I saw prior to just a few months ago were in sex-related cases.  But recently, it exploded into more general use, with politicians of both major parties pompously bloviating about how they’re going to hold some person or entity “accountable”.  And that would be just dandy if they were talking about other politicians or their thugs and toadies, but they’re not; they’re using it to mean citizens and private companies.  In other words, politicians (the rulers) are calling for citizens (the ruled) to be “held accountable”.  This is some serious Looking-Glass thinking:  in a republic, politician (and cops, and others with power) are “accountable” to the citizens, not vice versa.  Being prosecuted for a crime is NOT a matter of “accountability”; that’s not what the word means.  “Accountability” is that which is owed by someone claiming to represent another to the person he supposedly represents; eg, my lawyer is accountable to me in legal matters where he represents my interests.  We do not live in a feudal system (yet); “accountability” is not something imposed by rulers on the ruled, but on representatives by the people they (supposedly) represent.  Nobody who does not claim to be acting for “the government” or “the people” is “accountable” to any politician; they’re just trying to confuse you about who owes what to whom.