Apologetitians

There is a veritable dearth of apologies demanded or given of late in the political world. These apologies are considered the right of some over others as the way to fix or cure certain ills. The other day, I heard on the air waves a person demanding an apology be made by the government because the spouse died at home and the survivor had not been given clarity as to the symptoms of the disease that were professed that this individual said would have saved the deceased's life if it were made known to him/her. I couldn't believe my ears. First of all, why would a so-called radio journalist pick this up as being of concern to  intelligent human listeners. What I questioned was the reasoning behind the complaint. There seemed to be no thoughtful reason for publishing it and certainly no need for the apology. Why would it be the "government's" fault that someone died of physical symptoms that one purportedly had not been informed of fully?  Medical assistance and advice had been given but the word "fully" deemed it an impossible expectation.  How fully is "fully" being that every human body is different thus treatments are unique.  Sad as it all is, this example of demanding apologies for unfortunate situations, made me wonder just how much some of us expect of our government and how much is our own personal responsibility? Are we now expecting government to do everything for us? Are we handing over all of our own messes to deal with to  government to fix, while opting out of doing it ourselves?  And when tragedies happen, and they do constantly, do apologies really fix anything? I argue, not actually. They do cause shame after blame. As a kid, when there were scraps between children, parents often demanded that apologies be made. The kids usually had their own ways of handling the outcomes and even when apologies were forced, they didn't mean much in terms of reality. They were gestures that we learned had to be made but which didn't go much beyond words. Most of the time, apologies exacerbated a situation which was then settled in the "kid" way later when the parents were off the scene. Apologies come in large and small sizes. The big ones are generally government ones with flags and speeches and media microphones and cameras. The small ones happen all the time in the form of the miniscule "excuse me" to the larger, "oh, I am so sorry about that, please forgive me". Seldom do they make true recompense for the harm done. There are the apology "gold miners", however, who go after money and verbal apologies for others less talented. Their lawyers are well employed with media advertising as to how much apologies are worth and that if you don't win your monetary "apology", you don't pay. If you do win, you will pay them a good percentage of your "apology" money.  Apologies are apparently on the marketplace. I can see apologies in courtrooms where somebody has to pay by doing prison time or paying a fine but also having to go further and personally face those they harmed. They must explain in true apology form, according to the dictionary, why they did the harm and how they understand what they did and why they did it and that they regret it deeply and are willing to pay the price. They may be embarrassed unlike we did as kids who made our apology when we punched the bully back for once in its life and felt good about it.