Parsing Blame

From my recent post, Damned:
Whatever opinion one has of the Greek people, the truth is that this entire mess was caused by their politicians and by the bailing-out of European banks.
Eliciting this comment from July 6, 2015 at 9:14 AM:
A point of order: ‘This entire mess was caused by their politicians’ and the politicians were chosen by the Greek people, or some of them, and tolerated by most, or all, of the Greek people. So the Greek people are not entirely innocent.
And my reply:
Perhaps ‘entire’ was too strong a word. I will come down to 98%, as those who stand to make billions are quite effective at manipulating those who are in it for hundreds.
Not to excuse those who are manipulated, only to recognize the tremendously effective toolkit developed by and available to those doing the manipulating.

This post was published at Lew Rockwell on July 9, 2015.