There’s two groups in modern conservatism, one is motivated by money and the other is motivated by money and religious extremism. To these ends, maintaining a large enough unemployed population that is reinforced by low-income births helps suppress the cost of labor, and if they have to let the religious people marry a middle schooler here and there to guarantee the vote, so be it.

In the end, the thing that they presume to gain from the heinous shit they do is money 90% of the time, stupidity, error, and religious fervor account for the rest.

Fascists aren’t obliged to make sense to an outside observer.