Domestic abuse, bigotry, and "hate crimes" are all fueled by the rankist impulse to kick the dog. Wife-beaters, gay-bashers, and lynch mobs can all be seen as displacing disdain they have themselves experienced on to the undefended.

The entertainment value of humiliation, a staple of television and movies. . . . The perverse pleasure of witnessing the denigration of some hapless victim on the screen is a way of letting go of our internalized, pent-up rage. Nothing, however, is more enjoyable than seeing a target of rankism get even with his or her tormenters.

Robert W. Fuller, Somebodies and Nobodies