Perhaps you’ve had the misfortune of acquaintance with someone who conducted himself as if he was discomforted by “a stick up his ass,” a moral prig?  I wonder whether churches serve as a magnet for such who desire to judge others?  Like attracts like.  A unctuous, self-abasing demeanor can be a screen hiding self-loathing…  Nietzsche, with tongue in cheek describes this personality as a “turned out badly human being without enough spirit to enjoy it”…

Save us from such individuals when they become politicians, aspiring to high office, with party support.

Do you suppose such a scenario is an aspect of the intractable political divide now the case in our own country?

A metastasis of, a contagion of, self-loathing, a moralistic will to revenge?

Morality—
where do you suppose
that it finds its most dangerous
and insidious advocates?

There is a human being who has turned out badly,
who does not have enough spirit to be able to enjoy it
but just enough education to realize this;
he is bored, disgusted, and despises himself;
having inherited some money,
he is deprived
even of the last comfort, “the blessings of work,”
self-forgetfulness in “daily labor.”

Such a person
who is fundamentally ashamed of his existence
— perhaps he also harbors a few little vices

— on the other hand [he] cannot keep himself
from becoming more and more spoiled and irritable
by reading books to which he is not entitled

… such a human being
who has become poisoned
through and through
—for spirit becomes poison,
education becomes poison,
possessions become poison,
solitude becomes poison
for those who have turned out badly in this way
eventually ends up in a state of habitual revenge, will to revenge.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 5, Section 358 by Friedrich Nietzsche