The linchpin holding together the minds of plutocrat rightwingers is essentially a never-ending process of rationalization. They are making excuses, somewhere in the substructure of their whirring little minds, that they don’t even know they are making. The functional self-deceit of “this is for the good of America” is a tight knot of denial (“scientists are lying, we’re fine”), convenient self-deception (“I’m not enabling gun violence”), raw cynicism (“everyone does it”), externalizing blame (“socialists force us to keep blacks from voting”), and disguised hatred “anyway,liberals are satanic”).
And yes, the basic fiber of that knot is greed for power and money.