The ring of truth here, concerning why right-wingers (BTW, what doctrine do these mean, stupid people really hold in common, besides a endemic hatred for progressive values---that is to say, the good? There obviously isn't any sense, fiscal or otherwise, in which they are conservative---unless that means prone to endorse the Neanderthalic---and "right-wingers" is unilluminating) go for the jugular of anyone who dares tell a story of personal hardship:
What is it about the victims of circumstances or tragedy which seems to attract such viciousness from so many conservatives? We could see a similar process at work when conservatives attacked the Frost family on account of their support for S-CHIP: people who were victims of circumstance and tragedy speaking out on behalf of social policies which conservatives disagree with. Is that the key factor, perhaps? Victims are OK, but only so long as they stand silent in their suffering and avoid taking any position which might conflict with the conservative agenda?
People react to personal stories much more strongly than they do to abstract arguments, so if you want to convince someone of a position, you're better off with a story and characters they can personally relate to rather than cold logic. That's only to be expected with social animals, and I think it's an important factor here. Even if they don't understand it consciously, conservatives surely recognize that their agenda is in trouble if sympathetic people with tragic stories are allowed to influence the national debate. They apparently don't have any counter-stories, so their only tactic is to harm the people involved: the politics of personal destruction.
Mean and stupid. Isn't that what evil amounts to? And what, if anything, can be done to stop it?
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