Ask yourself why the people one paycheck from disaster are often the most ferocious defenders of the system that put them one paycheck from disaster.
It's not irrational.
It's the last available source of dignity.
If the system is fundamentally broken, fundamentally rigged, fundamentally indifferent to whether you live or die, then the years you spent believing in it, working within it, sacrificing for it, were wasted.
Worse than wasted.
They were the actions of someone who didn't see what was obvious.
That is a very hard thing for a person to accept about their own life.
It is easier, psychologically, emotionally, in every way that matters in the moment, to defend the system than to accept that you gave decades of your life to something that was never going to give anything back.
The defense isn't about the system.
It's about not having to grieve your own time.