also feel like these processes are there so when the crap hits the fan, there's a trail to see whom to point the fingers at. everyone is just trying to cover their own butts
Do you really need to worry about someone making the same mistake again? Answer to that question probably depends mostly on the type of organization (size, complexity, turnover, ect..) you're working for.
A lot of this is also just "good intentions". Somebody encounters a problem and thinks "I want to prevent this problem, so I am going to propose this process to avoid it". It works if you have a small number of these processes, but once it gets to a large number, now you're frozen by bureaucracy. Every time you do something, you need to look up the exact process to get it done.
This is by far the best justification for bureaucracy.
It’s also a sign that many things went wrong previously, since every rule has been created because somebody screwed up.