After ruminating about @lindsayellis's video https://nebula.tv/videos/lindsayellis-bodycam-youtube, I connected a dot… Conservatives go through life thinking they are the main character in a story, so whatever they do is the Right thing, and everyone else is just supporting [characters for] their story, or extras.
I think this explains a lot of their behavior. For instance, "I'm not racist" = "I don't hate black people, it's just that they are extras in my story." Or "I didn't get the job because DEI made the company hire a woman" = "women are only supporting characters in my story."
Another more tenuous "dot" I think connects is to how movies and TV created and reinforced the flawed story idea. In movies I saw in the 80s and 90s, usually the white man was the central character and did things others couldn't.
Their hunches were right. The beautiful supporting actress loved them for who they were. They were the good-guy who fought or killed the bad guy. In fact, anything they did was the Right thing to do.
Everyone knows those stories are fiction to some internal depth. But the consistent reinforcement of those stories ingrains the broad commonality between them. The dissonance forces you to choose between the messy truth of reality, or the idealistic fantasy of fiction. The fiction is very appealing.
Meanwhile, the rational remainder (majority, I hope) understand that while my life is central to *my* story, everyone else also has an equivalently complex life of their own, and our society's job is to make a safe environment for everyone to have their lives.