❝ The default psychological state of the Right has always been paranoia. Right Wingers are afraid that someone is going to take it all away from them, their money, their property, their status, their sense of self-worth (all of which tend to be bound up together) and so they have to be constantly on their guard. They live in fear. It starts with their religion. They live in terror that their irritable and vindictive God will withdraw his love. Those who aren’t overtly religious in this way subscribe to various forms of social Darwinism. Nature is all about the survival of the fittest and that leads them to worrying about their own fitness to survive. Any slipping in wealth or status, any evidence that someone is taking it away from them, suggests that they are not among the fittest. Which to them means the same as inferior and therefore disposable. Constantly on the lookout for signs they are still God’s or nature’s favorites and they usually find it not in their own lives but in the lives of others who have clearly lost favor or who deserve to. This is why they scapegoat the poor and the unemployed. This is their prayer of appeasement to heaven: Look over there, at them! They’re the ones! Punish them! They screwed up. They failed. They have earned your displeasure and your wrath. ❞
- Going Joad (via azspot)
- Going Joad (via azspot)
