(RNS) What a strange and combustible era we have entered, as people ratchet up their rage but aim it consistently at the wrong targets.

The newly dispossessed are encouraged to blame government for their woes, when in fact government spending is the most likely source of recovery. In this blaming, they do the bidding of those who actually caused the first recession and are now on the verge of causing a “double-dip” by refusing to hire the unemployed.

Those who find government regulations a drain on profits encourage citizens to denounce regulations that actually work to their benefit. Immigrants take the heat for rampant joblessness, even though their willingness to do menial work has nothing to do with the loss of high-paying factory jobs or the offshoring of service jobs.

Cynical political leaders initiate repressive measures against immigrants, women and minorities who might vote, but never tell those cheering on such repression that their own freedom will be the next casualty of class war.

Congress holds the nation hostage to stopgap spending crises in the name of fiduciary responsibility, when in fact their dysfunction serves big donors and cripples the U.S. economy.

Veterans of endless wars return to brief applause, followed by mortgage foreclosures and refusal to offer them jobs because they are seen as damaged goods.

The great sources of personal terror — joblessness, loss of home, loss of health insurance — are laid at the doorstep of agencies that are trying to help, but not at the door of the right-wing forces that have crippled those efforts.

This is, of course, the politics of misdirection. Blame the other for something you yourself are doing. Blame the victim, not the perpetrator. Blame the neighbor whose only fault is being different from you. Prevent natural allies from finding each other, just as 19th-century plantation owners turned poor whites against freed slaves in order to keep them both powerless.

Emerging grassroots protests under the Occupy Wall Street banner could be challenging this misdirection by shining a spotlight on the 1 percent who control a disproportionate amount of U.S. wealth. Meanwhile, wealthy predators bankroll right-wing rage in order to divert attention from their own predatory behavior.

Management blames labor for stupid decisions that were actually made in corporate suites, not in union halls. Corporations keep unemployment lines artificially long, while they quietly award vast sums to failed executives.

Misdirection is nothing new. The religious establishment turned people against Jesus by labeling his words against the establishment as words against God. Today’s prelates evade accountability for predatory priests by portraying outrage in the pews as an attack on the church itself.

We blame homosexuals for a collapse of family that actually began in the postwar era, not in the “coming out” era, and was ignored because its causes were profitable, like suburbanization, television and high-octane shopping. We blame teachers for failing our children, when in fact self-absorbed parents are undermining the educational enterprise.

Misdirection works because it shifts accountability away from self and onto a convenient target. The acts of self-examination and repentance that are the heart of any serious ethics are easily abandoned in favor of stirring group rage against “the other.”

Misdirection allows actual culprits to continue their misdeeds unobserved. Hence the vast sums spent by culprits to demolish anyone who speaks truth to power.

Misdirection solves nothing, of course. And that is the point. Solutions are anathema to those who actually profit from our economic and cultural disarray. They prefer to create a smokescreen that obscures causality and pits citizens against each other.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)