To paraphrase former secretary of state Clinton, “What difference does it make; what difference could it possibly make…” that only now we’re seeing video of the haymaker that former Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Ray Rice gave his wife in the casino elevator in Atlantic City? Hillary Clinton was referring to Benghazi, of course, and the violent deaths of four Americans when the U.S. embassy there was attacked by terrorists. But the question is apt in this case too, I think.

What difference does it make? I mean we already knew that (the now) “Mrs. Rice” was out cold when we saw him drag, not carry, her from the elevator in a far less than tender, seriously disrespectful way. Sure, maybe she had passed out from the misuse of some substance earlier in the evening – alcohol, drugs, or maybe some god-awful combination? But what difference does it make, really? We already knew that Rice was involved and at least a co-conspirator in whatever it was that knocked his then-fiancé and mother of their child out cold. So, really, what difference does it make?

Well, I have a hunch about that. My hunch is that the difference the new information makes for us is that it further solidifies our mistaken rationalizations about just who should and shouldn’t be blamed for the violence we see and experience in our world these days. The difference is it helps to secure our conclusion, albeit a mistaken one, that somebody other than us is mostly to blame; in this case Ray Rice, or the NFL, or its commissioner, or the police who investigated the case, or the prosecutor who brought charges, or the judge who tried the case, anybody else but our selves.

Placing and securing blame on someone else always helps us not blame ourselves. And that’s a mistake, I think. Truly we do have our selves to blame here in a most fundamental but probably not easily admitted way.

The fact is we like violence. We like it a lot, in fact, and we want it to happen, if not on our streets then in the controlled environments where we say to ourselves it’s somehow OK.

We don’t like to experience violence ourselves, but we surely do like to watch others experience it in a controlled kind of way. We like to see it on our television screens in the dramas that get the highest ratings and in the sports we watch, whether football, hockey, basketball, or cage-fighting.

Another fact is we like violence and its imminent possibility so much that is has ever-increasing commercial value. Witness the millions even billions of dollars that the NFL and its players, employees, team owners, and sponsors represent or the constantly increasing speeds of race cars that increasingly make it seem like people will soon get killed or be horribly injured, which they are…which sadly,  if we’re honest, we like…quite a lot, as much probably as the people in ancient Rome who watched the precursors of modern cage fighters, ancient gladiators, fight until only one remained alive.

Thus, we encourage the people who exercise and experience the controlled violence we approve of to do it ever more intensely. We pay them more and more to do it more and more viciously. Come on; sure we do. Now, to our credit, perhaps, and also to be fair, we also expect these gladiators who make their living and then some by doing the violence we like on Sunday afternoons to turn it off and be nice people, i.e. “role models for the youth of America,” once they’re done. But is that really realistic?

Many of them will be able to, I suppose; but many of them won’t. It simply stands to reason. The training to be violent in order to be successful and commercially profitable is so intense, the pressure to be violent during those 60 minutes is so severe, and the strength of character to just turn it off at the end of the game is so rare and precious that it shouldn’t be surprising that a higher than average number of professional athletes simply can’t.

So in a way, you see, we must share at least some of the responsibility ourselves. Scapegoats are abundant. There will always be a Ray Rice or Commissioner Goodell, or the police, prosecutors, owners and greedy sponsors who can be blamed, I suppose. But wouldn’t it be much better to take a look at ourselves both as a society and as individuals and then ask why we like the violence so much? Then – and this is the hard one – simply decide to stop liking it or, more easily, simply stop paying for it.

Then maybe the Sunday afternoon violence would begin to slow – it has in the case of professional boxing, if you think about it – and we could get back to paying attention to more important things. Our children would become safer in the long term. (Stronger helmets aren’t ever going to prevent their brains from being rattled by head to head or elbow or foot to head contact, after all.) And on Saturday afternoons our colleges and universities could again be about what they used to be about every day of the week, even on weekends – education for the well-being and security of our nation.

Imagine that…just a thought.