The Blame Trap: Why We Keep Falling for Scapegoats
Whenever a crisis hits—whether it’s a policy failure, a scandal, or a national disaster—someone almost always ends up taking the fall. A minister resigns. A civil servant gets quietly reassigned. A contractor is dropped. The public sighs with some sense of closure. But underneath all that noise, the deeper issues—the broken systems, the structural injustices, the poor decisions made in closed rooms—often remain untouched.
This pattern is no accident. It’s part of a broader political habit: scapegoating.
Scapegoating is more than a dramatic gesture or a public shaming. It’s a way to manage blame without addressing root causes. And over time, it becomes woven into how institutions survive crises—not by fixing themselves, but by finding someone to sacrifice…
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