This is what Conservatives, the leaders of the movement, have done throughout American history. The terms "Cracker" and "Hillbilly" were not terms the Black people came up with to fight back against White people. They were terms of derision created by rich White people to denigrate poor White people. When they saw poor white people, Native Americans, and Black people moving toward a solidarity against the oppression they were all suffering, the wealthy White people began to offer distinctions in the treatment of poor White people and even Native Americans with regards to Black people. Positions of "overseer" and other positions of authority over Black slaves were given to poor White people. Native Americans were able to own slaves in some areas.
They used racial animus and status as tools to prevent poor people from banding together. It has been this way for a long time. All of the bullshit planks in the Conservative movement and Republican Party (small government, fiscal responsibility, etc...) are just there to attract people in order to get them to vote against their economic interests.
Having gay people marry, I would argue, does absolutely NOTHING to harm families in rural areas, but giving tax breaks to millionaires and corporations and having those tax burdens shift down to middle and working class people certainly does. Conservatives, while they absolutely do want to control the social aspects of society, are willing to simply use those issues as a wedge to ensure that they can accumulate and keep more money for themselves. MONEY is first, the rest is just the icing on the cake.
As Ian Danskin put it in his "Alt Right Playbook" series on YouTube, "so long as they aren't at the bottom, they have some investment continuing as is because it authorizes them ... to fuck people up". They get little material benefit from Conservative or further right wing policies, but they get to wield the power of the state against people they don't like.
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