Mad Libs for Victim Blamers
In Minority Report, the state arrests people for crimes they haven’t committed… yet. It feels like safety at first, but the story reveals the cost: suspicion becomes evidence. Justice dies before the crime ever happens.
Apparently, people want this movie to be real. After every tragedy, people scramble to find signs that should have been seen, threats that should have been stopped. It becomes a grim game of Mad Libs: “Yes, [STATE] had intelligence. Why didn’t they stop the attack on [DATE]?”
Leaks, rumors, and vague threats aren’t a blueprint. Intelligence isn’t certainty. But hindsight transforms noise into clarity. Critics forget how impossible it is to act on every signal without overstepping rights or targeting the wrong people. A criminal’s loud plan doesn’t shift blame to the government, it highlights the audacity of the perpetrator.
The blanks change. The blame doesn’t. So here’s a game — though it’s not a fun one — to help you understand how this logic falls apart:
Some claim that [STATE] “funded” [TERRORIST GROUP] by giving aid. But providing money for humanitarian reasons — to support food, medicine, or infrastructure — is not the same as endorsing violence. In fact, [STATE] has long spoken about how [TERRORIST GROUP] should reform. It’s like giving money to someone in need, asking them to get a hot meal, and blaming yourself when they spend it on drugs. Misplaced trust is not complicity. The fault lies with the one who broke the trust. Never blame those who acted it in good faith because of the response.
Critics say [STATE] should have acted “sooner.” But what would that have looked like? Detaining someone without evidence? Shutting down entire neighborhoods or airports based on a hunch? Bombing suspected targets without confirmation? Due process isn’t a luxury, it’s the foundation of ethical governance. [STATE] cannot behave like a dictatorship or like [TERRORIST GROUP] just because a rumor might be true.
Even in most theologies, judgment is based on action or intent, not foiled plans. G-d doesn’t condemn people for what they might have done. Divine justice waits. It listens. It weighs. So why do we expect governments to act with greater foresight and moral infallibility than the deities we worship? [STATE] is not omniscient. It is not divine. Demanding perfect prevention is demanding the impossible. Blaming [STATE] is like punishing the human for not being superhuman.
[Joke about the superhuman attributes associated with the state you chose.]
And in the rush to assign blame to [STATE] for failing to prevent the attack on [DATE], we too often forget those who did act. The first responders. The neighbors. The bystanders who carried others to safety. Casting blame endlessly and abstractly can erase the concrete bravery of those who ran toward the danger. Their courage deserves recognition. They should not be overshadowed by the glorification of [TERRORIST GROUP] propaganda.
You can do everything right — uphold laws, protect civil liberties, follow every lead — and still lose. That doesn’t make you a failure. It means the world is uncertain, and evil exists. The ones responsible for atrocities are the people who commit them. Not the ones who lacked divine foresight. Not the ones who followed the law. Not the ones who acted too slowly for the comfort of hindsight.
Because of my Jewishness, I wager most who read the previous text assume I’m talking about this because of October 7. Yes, October 7 fits the Minority Report conondrum. Rhetoric about that day includes endless, often contradictary, conspiracies, with little evidence to match. While some insist the horrors were because Mossad or Shin Bet were fighting with Bibi (‘They wanted him out of office so they sabatoged him!’), others insist the horrors were because of Bibi himself (‘He wanted an excuse to invade Gaza and bake the blood of goyim into crackers.’). Meanwhile, the only known thing is that Palestinians (not just Hamas) attacked and should take more blame.
But the truth is these gross conspiracies about negligence in not preventing attacks are not new. They didn’t start with 9/11 (“The US knew there would be hijackers!”). Such conspiracies were once popular around World War 2 as well. Anti-US voices might insist that the US wanted the Nazi party to rise so that they could go to war, in the same way that people blame the rise of Hamas on Israel. Likewise, “Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory” are so rampant, they have their own wiki. As Wiki sums it up, “[Losers] have argued that various parties high in the (US and UK gov) knew of the attack in advance and let it happen or encouraged it in order to ensure America’s entry into the European theater of World War II via a Japanese–American war started at the back door. The Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory is rejected by most historians as a fringe theory, citing several key discrepancies and reliance on dubious sources.”
It’s sad that the paradox of tolerance has led to so much victim blaming. It feels like a loving mother getting blamed when their child does something.
