Some people think I am responsible for for Barack Obama’s  Donald Trump’s kill list.

You are too, if you’re an American.

“Dude, it’s just the American Kill-List. That the American people think that they can offload responsibility for the actions of their government is baffling!“

According to this rather prevalent worldview, the “American people” exist as one, giant homogeneous mass. Due to our association, we each bear some responsibility and culpability for the actions of the U.S. government. After all, “We are the government.”

Within this moral framework, we all share collective responsibility for every action taken by whatever government operates  in our name. It falls on us even if we didn’t actually do anything. We even bear some responsibility if we personally opposed a given action. We all share in collective guilt by virtue of group membership.

“From neighborhood associations, city counsels, county planning boards, state legislatures up to the federal government we are just collectives of citizens that meet together to do stuff. That stuff may be as trivial as regulating flag pole heights up to deciding who will die somewhere far across the world. Either way we share some responsibility, collectively.”

This type of collective responsibility makes some sense in the context of a voluntary association. But a state hardly counts as voluntary. Coercion and force holds every state and government jurisdiction together. If I live within a certain geographic region, I must submit to the government that operates there. I never give consent, and I cannot withdraw from it without physically leaving – and the government even makes that difficult. The government extracts money from my pocket at gunpoint to maintain its existence and fund its actions. I suppose I do have some “say” through my vote, but if the government takes an action I don’t support, I can’t actually stop it, especially if I hold a minority viewpoint. And oftentimes, governments operate in direct opposition to the desires of the majority.

So, how exactly am I responsible?

This conception of collective guilt leads to some chilling ramifications.

On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. military dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. An estimated 70,000 to 80,000 people died in the blast, including women, children and about 20,000 Korean slaves. Tens of thousands more suffered horrific injuries. Many Americans argue this was justified. They deserved it because “they” bombed Pearl Harbor.

Collective responsibility. Collective guilt. Collective punishment.

Never mind the vast majority of those incinerated bodies were no more “responsible” for Pearl Harbor than I am for Obama’s Trump’s kill list.

“Its not coercion, its cooperation. And they were responsible because they didn’t rise up and say, ‘No,  we’re not going to continue warring.'”

Of course, there was Japanese resistance to the war machine. Here’s how one historian put it.

“Histories of wartime Japan in English portray Japan as a monolithic entity, with the population united behind the militaristic goals of the state. The kamikaze pilots symbolise this perspective – young men eager to die for the emperor.

“It is well documented that the Japanese state and military cast a heavy shadow over the whole society, imposing uniformity from above from the time they invaded Manchuria in 1931 until surrender in 1945. What is little known or reported in English is the resistance against the increasing militarism, exacerbated by the deprivation, misery and devastation of ordinary lives.”

But  no. There was no coercion. It was all based on cooperation, right? And they were all to blame.

Kill them all.

Collectivism.