This article first appeared on Good Faith Media.
I’m working on paying attention to what I pay attention to.
Lately, I’ve wondered why we often find the most visceral versions of ourselves appear in the social media comments section. Why, in the anonymity offered through these platforms, do we permit instincts to govern our behaviors that we would never allow in any other context?
I was convinced President Trump would win the election by November. This made my election eve experience different from 2016, which could best be described as stunning.
This time, I was curious. And so, I spent the final days of 2024 on a journey of trying to understand. I wanted to know why America had elected President Trump. I changed my podcast rotation. I listened to the full-length interviews with then-President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Vance on Joe Rogan.
I tried to practice a kind of vicarious listening in which I took the concerns of my fellow Americans seriously and speculated about what President Trump’s sometimes cryptic comments might mean for policy. As an act of good faith, I tried to see the upside of those policy proposals because, whether I liked them or not, this is what Americans said they wanted.
Now that President Trump has taken office, he has implemented Steve Bannon’s muzzle velocity strategy. He has signed executive orders giving Elon Musk an alarming amount of authority as an unelected official, attempted to cut billions of dollars of federal grant funding, and implemented indiscriminate immigration policies.
This has jerked me back into a kind of somatic memory. And so, I’m becoming reacquainted with something that diminished during President Biden’s tenure–anxiety.
But in the spirit of curiosity, I’ve wondered if this experience is reciprocal for my conservative counterparts. I also think this wondering is rooted in my deeper need to hold out hope that there’s still some discourse possible that could hold all of us together as Americans.
Also, I’m exhausted. I don’t want to fight with people silently in my head or through measured comments on social media threads.
So here I am left wondering what I can do with the conviction that, on the one hand, policies are being enacted that hurt real people and, on the other, the desire for a productive discourse that seeks understanding from people I disagree with. I may have found a tool that can help.
About a year ago, I began reading the French literary critic René Girard, known for his scapegoat theory. This framework offers a way to understand how societies, especially in times of crisis, turn their frustrations onto a chosen victim.
Girard argued that human desire is imitative. We want what others have, and this mimetic desire creates rivalry, competition and, ultimately, conflict. But societies can’t function under constant internal strife, so they seek a way to purge the tension.
The easiest way to eliminate tension is to unite against a common enemy, a scapegoat. By assigning all the blame for society’s problems to one person, group, or idea, the community achieves a temporary sense of relief—a fragile peace built on exclusion and violence.
In America, we are seeing this mechanism play out in real time. The political left and right are locked in a cycle of mutual accusation, each believing the other side is the root of all national suffering. Whether it’s immigrants, elites, conservatives, or progressives, someone is always to blame, depending on where you stand.
Social media and 24-hour news amplify this process, turning the scapegoat mechanism into a self-sustaining, never-ending feedback loop. Every crisis—economic downturns, pandemics, foreign wars—intensifies the need for someone to bear the weight of the collective anxiety.
The problem is that scapegoating doesn’t solve anything. While it may offer a short-term sense of unity, it doesn’t address the real issues beneath the surface.
Girard’s reading of history shows that societies keep repeating this pattern, which always leads to more violence, division and turmoil. But he also suggests a way out—one that requires breaking the cycle and recognizing the innocence of the scapegoat.
Christianity, for Girard, represents a radical departure from the mythic tradition of scapegoating. Unlike ancient myths that justify the killing of the scapegoat, the gospel narrative exposes the mechanism for what it is.
Jesus, the ultimate scapegoat, is innocent. Yet he is still crucified by a mob seeking to rid itself of fear and guilt.
The resurrection reveals the truth: the scapegoat is not the source of our problems. The real issue lies within us—our rivalries, desires and unwillingness to take responsibility for the conditions we create.
This is a hard truth to swallow, especially when political anxiety demands easy answers. It’s far simpler to believe that all our troubles come from an outside enemy rather than from the complexities of history, economics and human nature. But if we continue down this path, the cycle will only intensify.
Today’s persecutors may become tomorrow’s victims. The roles may shift, but the violence remains.
The way forward requires rejecting the scapegoat mechanism, seeing past the frenzy of blame, and asking deeper questions about why we feel the way we do. What are we afraid of losing? What do we actually want? And most importantly, how can we solve our problems without finding someone to punish?
If we are to break free from political anxiety, we must resist the temptation to scapegoat. We must recognize when we are drawn into a cycle of blame and ask ourselves who benefits from our outrage. Most of all, we must find a way to desire differently, to imitate something better than resentment and fear.
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