Just as you could fault the Democratic machine for providing an easy opponent for Trump to beat (among other errors), you can fault the process of the Republican primary for allowing Trump to rise to the top of a highly competitive field of 15 candidates (there was some involvement of the Republican party in that process). You could also fault the Republican establishment for standing by throughout a campaign in which their nominee did not campaign for or espouse their core values. You could note the contribution of the media in creating a dichotomous story line that was often high on drama and low on details. You could fault American people for voting for a candidate believing he would not actually do what he said he would (and now being surprised that he is actually doing what he campaigned on).
That irony kind of gets to my point. I definitely would not assign full responsibility to the blame game. But I might call it a contributing factor along with the other factors listed above (as well as others I have not mentioned and may not even be aware of). With so many factors, I would be cautious to assign 95% of responsibility to any one of them. Mentioning the blame game was a way to highlight the potential danger of oversimplifying and attempting to assign full blame to a single factor in a complex issue. So I agree with your criticism of playing a blame game and therefore think that, rather than looking for something to place full blame on, we should focus on humble evaluation of the many complexities of every situation in the world and even our own negative contributions to them when appropriate.
Just as you could fault the Democratic machine for providing an easy opponent for Trump to beat (among other errors), you can fault the process of the Republican primary for allowing Trump to rise to the top of a highly competitive field of 15 candidates (there was some involvement of the Republican party in that process). You could also fault the Republican establishment for standing by throughout a campaign in which their nominee did not campaign for or espouse their core values. You could note the contribution of the media in creating a dichotomous story line that was often high on drama and low on details. You could fault American people for voting for a candidate believing he would not actually do what he said he would (and now being surprised that he is actually doing what he campaigned on).
That irony kind of gets to my point. I definitely would not assign full responsibility to the blame game. But I might call it a contributing factor along with the other factors listed above (as well as others I have not mentioned and may not even be aware of). With so many factors, I would be cautious to assign 95% of responsibility to any one of them. Mentioning the blame game was a way to highlight the potential danger of oversimplifying and attempting to assign full blame to a single factor in a complex issue. So I agree with your criticism of playing a blame game and therefore think that, rather than looking for something to place full blame on, we should focus on humble evaluation of the many complexities of every situation in the world and even our own negative contributions to them when appropriate.