Spend some time following internet conversations about your liberal cause of the day (global warming, racial injustice, etc) and eventually someone will get to the nut of why the issue pisses many people off: they think activists want them to feel guilty and they don’t want to feel guilty. That’s pretty much it. A huge part of our failure to do anything about the climate disaster or racist asshole cops comes from people protecting their delicate ego.
Yep. But I’d take this a little more seriously, because it’s probably something that genuinely hurts lefty causes. It’s human nature to get defensive when you feel guilty, and it’s hard to recruit defensive folks to your cause. If this were only an occasional problem, that would be one thing. But let’s be honest: We really do rely on guilt a lot. You should feel guilty about using plastic bags. About liking college football. About driving an SUV. About eating factory-farmed beef. About using the wrong word to refer to a transgender person. About sending your kids to a private school. And on and on and on.
We all contribute to this, even when we don’t mean to. And maybe guilt is inevitable when you’re trying to change people’s behavior. But it adds up, and over time lefties can get to seem a little unbearable. You have to be so damn careful around us!
I don’t really have any useful advice about this. Maybe there’s nothing much to be done about it. But egos, delicate or otherwise, are just a part of the human condition. We ignore them at our peril.
