Bob Wallace upsets a few apple carts
here.
After thinking about this problem for a long time, I refined the Story to this: I am grandiose; you are devalued. I project my problems on you, scapegoat you, then human-sacrifice you.
Wallace applies this to Rand, to mass murders, to Islamists, to us, and to the state. I think it applies very well to our relationship to the Arab world. After 911 it became pretty fashionable to pretend the US never did anything wrong in the wider world and at the same time the Islamists projected all their problems on us, ugly reality but reality.