Member-only story
Why We Love the Scapegoat
And how to stop blaming others.
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My friends and I have a little game we play whenever disaster strikes. It’s called “Who’s Trump’s dark scapegoat?”
The rules are simple: something terrible happens, and we place bets on which marginalized group Trump will blame before facts have a chance to get in the way.
When a driver plowed through a crowd of New Orleans revelers, we huddled in our group chat, typing furiously: “Who’s Trump’s dark scapegoat?”
Sure enough, within minutes, Trump had pointed a stubby finger at “criminals” illegally crossing the border. Never mind that the driver, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was a U.S. citizen from Texas. The important thing was the fear, not the facts.
Even Mother Nature isn’t immune. When Hurricane Helene battered the southeastern U.S., who took the blame? Big, brown immigrants again.
According to Trump’s Fox News interview, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had “no money” to help hurricane victims because it had “spent it on illegal migrants coming into the country.” A bold claim, considering FEMA’s funds for migrant shelters are separate from disaster relief and equal…
