A friend asked why any poor person — especially one who works for a company that cheats workers and offshores jobs — would support the Republican Party.
I surmised:
A friend-of-a-friend of mine is a gay Republican who preaches liberty and fiscal responsibility — even though both he and the party practice runaway deficit spending. Furthermore, neither the Libertarians nor the GOP currently affirm individual liberty; they uphold corporate liberty and majority rule by the largest and most repressive churches.
I think this happens because many social conservatives — Tea Party activists and Christian Rightists in particular:
1) have been taught that their “values” are more moral than their neighbors’ values, no matter that their actions betray their values and their neighbors aren’t who or what these rightists claim
2) practice pride as a religious virtue and greed as an economic virtue
3) have been taught to compete against fellow community members via arrogant and dishonest tactics that undermine collaboration and community integrity
4) are too proud or undisciplined to practice what they preach in terms of self-empowerment, which causes them to stagnate financially, educationally, and socially
Their pride and self-defeating behavior preclude Tea Partiers and Christian Rightists from financial and academic growth, leading them to become even more dependent upon bigoted social “value” judgments in order to preserve a sense of superiority.
By undermining education, infrastructure, cultural diversity, and ultimately community prosperity, people who otherwise have little prospect for material success can at least suppress others and assert the superiority of their tribe by ensuring their neighbors become worse off.
Thoughts?
