It's wasteful and illogical, but if you've got an authoritarian framework stuck inside your head filtering your perceptions you don't have any choice. Equality literally threatens everything you believe in. It's the end of your world -- or at least your worldview.
Take Pat Buchanan calling on the Tea Party to destroy America "like Samson" (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/16/pat-buchanan-to-gop-better-to-destroy-the-country-than-give-in-to-obamacare/)rather than fund Obamacare. His ideal of America is predicated on the moral and legal superiority of the few over the many. Anything that advances equality will tear down "his" America anyway, so why shouldn't he tear down "our" America in retaliation?
Or for an even more ludicrous example, here's a story from yesterday about why conservative Jews spent $60,000 to have a man kidnapped and tortured until he agreed to divorce his wife rather than reforming their divorce laws. (http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/guest_bloggers/7359/why__60k_and_torture_beats_changing_divorce_law/) From their perspective it was a bargain. Reforming the divorce laws would end their unquestioned power within their community, and anything was better than that.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regna
(no subject)
Date: 2013-10-17 04:55 pm (UTC)Take Pat Buchanan calling on the Tea Party to destroy America "like Samson" (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/16/pat-buchanan-to-gop-better-to-destroy-the-country-than-give-in-to-obamacare/)rather than fund Obamacare. His ideal of America is predicated on the moral and legal superiority of the few over the many. Anything that advances equality will tear down "his" America anyway, so why shouldn't he tear down "our" America in retaliation?
Or for an even more ludicrous example, here's a story from yesterday about why conservative Jews spent $60,000 to have a man kidnapped and tortured until he agreed to divorce his wife rather than reforming their divorce laws. (http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/guest_bloggers/7359/why__60k_and_torture_beats_changing_divorce_law/) From their perspective it was a bargain. Reforming the divorce laws would end their unquestioned power within their community, and anything was better than that.