Scapegoating and projection

In a Quillette article, the pseudonymous writer Lester Berg describes his bewilderment with leftist friends who attribute every personal disappointment to systemic abuse in general and Bad Orange Man in particular. I think he's describing the usefulness that makes scapegoating so popular as a political and psychological tool:

Here, at last, was somebody we could freely hate more that we hate each other or ourselves.

Isn't the same for hating the anonymous Jews who poisoned your well? Before they go completely around the bend and start shoving real individuals into gas chambers, most people find it hard to sustain that kind of venom about anyone with whom they are in personal contact. It's necessary to fix on some distant enemy who can be characterized as irretrievably evil, beyond the pale, outside all human norms of charity or civility.

If your life is awful and enough and you are too dishonest or cowardly to face what's wrong, then even if you don't have a Donald Trump in your life, it is essential to find one.  Otherwise you might have to talk to your lover, or your mother, or your boss about why you object, what price you will or won't pay to sustain the relationship, and what you're willing to do to fix it.  Sometimes we'll do anything to avoid telling someone face-to-face that we're angry and disappointed.  "I'm not mad at you!  I'm mad at Trump!"