Whatever threatens loss of status, and whatever invades one’s “space” (including one’s ideological “head space”), is a threat to the average domesticated primate. Thus, if a poor man has one status prop in his life — “I’m a white man, not a goddam nigger” or “I’m normal, not a goddam faggot” or whatever — any attempt to preach* tolerance, common humanity, relativism, etc. is not processed through the semantic circuit but through the emotional circuit, and is rejected as an attack on status (ego, social role).
