Regressive Supremacy

A.R. Moxon had a recent essay about one of the big problems underlying our current polycrisis. I think of his subject in terms of the 20 (or 30 or whatever) percent of people in this country who, as Heather McGhee put it in The Sum of Us, will drain public pools instead of share what is clearly easy to make available to everyone, or as Jonathan Metzl showed in Dying of Whiteness, would rather die of preventable illness than extend Medicaid if it means "those people" also get to have it.

Moxon calls this regressive supremacy, and its opposite progressive humanism:

Progressive humanism is the belief that all people matter and deserve life, that generative human value springs from an inextricable and diverse mutually cooperative interconnectivity, and that we have a natural responsibility and moral duty to take the natural human system we have inherited and use our energies and skills to progress and improve it.

Regressive supremacy is the belief that only specific types of people matter and deserve life, and then only to the degree that they conform to specific and rigid hierarchical roles and doctrines; that all other human beings, who must earn life, get what they deserve and deserve what they get, because they are the natural property of the people who matter most.

I recently read about the results of a thorough qualitative research project* carried out in several states (mostly in the South but also the Midwest), mostly focused on committed Christians. The way they were described would clearly put them all in the regressive supremacy camp. 

The researchers tried to make their subjects' world view make sense by referencing Jonathan Haidt's six types of morality, and how that differs between liberals and conservatives. (Haidt says conservatives value loyalty, sanctity and authority over liberals' valuing of fairness and care/compassion.) 

Give me a break. This is not a new insight, I know, but the people in the research say they adhere to the Bible when it's clear they have no interest in anything resembling Christ's teachings. 

Everything they promulgate is fear-based, trying to instate order on behalf of authoritarian personalities who make them feel safe. And it's also usually to obey the big father they've been taught is over all of us, according to some preacher their parents indoctrinated them into following. 

I'm tired of this and these people. 

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* I can't find the link to the research because I got so down-hearted reading it that I closed the tab. I'm trying to remember who referenced it so I can retrace my steps.