Beyond that, I think most of them genuinely believe that A) things were better in the past…even though it’s some because concept of the past, B) that when things were “better” for them, they were better for everyone, and C) if that means reverting in ways like rolling back racial equality, women’s rights, religious tolerance, diversity, marijuana reform, and LGBT progress…well, so be it.

To them, things were better back before all that happened, and they’re so convinced not only that it was better for them but for everyone, that they’re basically saying, “Shut up blacks, women, gays and lesbians, and everyone who isn’t a straight white Christian male. You don’t know what’s best for you. Things were better for us back then so they were better for you too…so we’re going to do everything in our power to revert back to that time.”

Honestly their warped thinking in this regard is disturbingly similar to the bullshit they’ve pushed schools to teach children about slavery in the South. Basically, “The slaves had no skills and through slavery they could learn some skills, so it was actually a benefit to them.”

For your average voter caught in the grift then yes… But when you look at the people running the show it’s more of a mixed bag. The grift changes. They talk about things in big purposefully narrow and oversimplified versions of leftist rhetoric about constitutional freedoms and equalities which spread power horizontally but their aim is to make it go vertical, create hierarchy. Abortion debate on it’s face is an emotional issue that people can get behind because “think of the litte unborn babies! Don’t they need freedoms?!” but you aren’t supposed to notice that reinforcing the traditional hierarchy of family by removing the choices of women makes it easier to place the entire category in a place where their labor, time effort and freedom of movement and self determination is taken by force. It makes women’s entire existence precarious because they might lose their careers and ability to move freely for something they have no reasonable control over. Any woman who becomes romantically entangled with a man, regardless of the quality of that relationship of that becomes at risk because they KNOW birth control even under perfect use conditions is not perfect and part of keeping most long term heterosexual relationships alive and fulfilling means putting a woman in some manner of danger of risking the life she wants to lead a couple of times a week… And as for anything outside of that arrangement they want that to burn too.

At the top they aren’t stupid. They just don’t want a democracy they want hierarchy and they are smart enough to trick people into believing that their world view is still democratic.