Irrationality is a symptom of demoralization, disempowerment and defeat.
You've heard these lines. They are the lines of someone who, at a basic unconscious level, is trapped in a small box that contains just themselves and their oppressor. The box has no third parties in it, no undecideds, no way to imagine the perspective of people who have not been traumatized in that particular way, and who consequently retain their capacity to reason somewhat rationally about the situation. When you're living in the box, everything is always as bad as it can possibly be, and everything, no matter how dreadful, is just more of the same. This article provides an early blueprint for research in this paradigm.