Sometimes, I think about people like white supremacists and religious fundamentalists. Zealots fueled by a persecutory mythology. I think about these people and I wonder if they can't be helped. Honestly helped.
They're already halfway there. Their mythos provides them with the idea that it is wrong for others to inflict damage on them for things like the color of their skin, the culture they identify, or the deity they believe. They've also spent a lot of time thinking about wrongs done to them, applying qualifications, justifying actions.
Why should it be so monumental a proposition to convince them that it is as wrong for them to inflict that sort of damage on others when they clearly understand it as being wrong when done to them? And they claim to have the best grasp of all about what it means to be persecuted for simply existing. If anything, it would prove that their persecution has genuinely made them into better people.
Even so... wouldn't they just rather be right?
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