Andrew Boyd, in his blog post We Shall Not Be Overwhelmed: How “Selective Denial” Can Help Us Survive Trump 2.0, makes a compelling argument: to stay effective in the face of political and social chaos, we must carefully choose where to direct our attention. He warns that being constantly bombarded with crises—especially the ones Trump and his allies deliberately manufacture—can lead to burnout, paralysis, and disengagement. So he proposes ‘selective denial’ as strategy forward.
Boyd is right: we cannot fight every battle, all the time, without collapsing. However, while selective denial may protect us from exhaustion, it also carries enormous risks—especially when used to filter out uncomfortable truths. Selective denial has long been a tool, not just for emotional survival, but also for avoiding the contradictions within our own movements.
And when these contradictions become too glaring—when progressive elites fail to live up to their own ideals—they fuel resentment and alienation. This has already happened: millions of Americans voted for Trump because they see progressive elites as out of touch. More selective denial—more cherry-picking of which injustices to focus on while ignoring others—risks deepening this divide, further driving working-class voters into the hands of populists.
If we want to stay engaged without being overwhelmed, we need a different strategy—one that resists filtering reality too narrowly and instead embraces holistic, community-driven resilience.
Selective Denial and the Perception of Hypocrisy
Boyd argues that we must strategically ignore some crises in order to keep moving forward. But who decides which injustices to engage with and which to ignore? And what happens when this selectivity mirrors existing privileges and blind spots?
One of the biggest dangers of selective denial is that it often serves not just as a coping mechanism, but as a way to avoid reckoning with uncomfortable contradictions within one’s own social class. This is especially evident in the climate movement, where the loudest voices—often academically trained professionals in high-income careers —focus on solutions that align with their own lifestyles and economic interests, while selectively ignoring the larger systemic changes needed.
1. Climate and Class Contradictions
For example, wealthy and professional-class climate advocates promote electric vehicles (EVs) as a key solution, while ignoring:
- The class divide: EVs are expensive and inaccessible to a large percentage of the population.
- The environmental impact: EV batteries require destructive lithium mining, and their carbon break-even point can take nearly a decade.
- The reinforcement of car dependency: EVs cement individual car ownership instead of pushing for public transit, which is a far more sustainable solution.
Similarly, (Un)sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs) are marketed as climate solutions, but primarily benefit high-income frequent fliers and corporations. SAFs neither are beneficial for the climate (unless we use a selectively blind accounting that ignores how additional demand will drive farmland expansion into the remaining wilderness), nor a solution to aviation emissions – they rather sustain the excessive consumption by the wealthy.
Like SAFs, carbon offset trading is another climate solution that disproportionately benefits the wealthy while failing to drive real systemic change. In theory, carbon offsets allow individuals and corporations to “neutralize” their emissions by funding projects that absorb or reduce carbon elsewhere—such as tree planting, soil carbon sequestration, or renewable energy initiatives. In practice, however, offsets often serve as a moral loophole that enables the rich to maintain their high-carbon lifestyles while outsourcing the burden of emissions reductions to the Global South or marginalized communities. Many offsets are based on overinflated or dubious carbon reduction claims, with studies showing that a large percentage of offset projects either fail to deliver promised reductions or would have happened anyway.
- Offsets perpetuate a “pay-to-pollute” system, where corporations and elites continue to fly, drive luxury cars, and consume excessively, while claiming to be carbon neutral.
- Offsets reinforce global inequality, as wealthy nations buy up land in poorer countries for reforestation projects, often displacing Indigenous communities or farmers in the process.
By allowing emissions-heavy industries to continue operating with little structural change, carbon offset trading becomes a smokescreen for inaction—an elite privilege rather than a true climate solution.
Other elite-driven climate solutions serve as greenwashing rather than real societal transformation. Luxury “eco-friendly” consumerism (e.g., EVs, organic superfoods, sustainable fashion) reinforces climate action as a lifestyle choice for the wealthy. Hydrogen fuel for passenger cars and biofuels distract from real shifts toward public transit and land-use reform. Green crypto and NFTs claim to reduce emissions while perpetuating an energy-intensive digital economy. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a delay tactic that lets fossil fuel companies keep polluting under the illusion of future neutrality. All of these supposed solutions maintain high-consumption lifestyles and corporate profits while failing to address systemic change, making them more about preserving privilege than solving the climate crisis.
When working-class people—who already feel economically marginalized—see wealthy professionals promoting solutions that allow them to maintain their lifestyles with high environmental impacts, while lecturing others about “doing their part,” they perceive it as deep hypocrisy.
Only few people may understand all the technical details why each of these solutions is flawed. But we all have sensitive hypocrisy antennas are vastly sharper than our ability to rationalize them (remember when you were a teenager and adults talked down on you?)! So progressive hypocrisy isn’t just a right-wing talking point. There are real contradictions in the climate movement that, if left unaddressed, will continue fuelling resentment and scepticism.
2. Selective Diversity and Inclusion: Who Gets Left Behind?
Another example of selective denial is found in the progressive focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Progressives place great emphasis on race and gender inclusion, but often fail to acknowledge other forms of marginalization—especially class, disability, neurodiversity, and obesity.
- Disability and Neurodiversity Exclusion: The same progressive circles that advocate for “equity” often fall into ableist thinking and meritocratic assumptions when it comes to neurodiverse individuals or people with disabilities.
- Class Blindness: Many progressive spaces assume that people simply need to “work hard” and “make the right choices” to succeed, ignoring systemic economic barriers that keep the working class trapped in cycles of poverty.
- A Behavioural Lens: Wheter a person expresses the unusual behaviour of a neurodiverse person, or the untypical body shape of an obese person – our societal elites expects divergent individuals to conform to neuro-/bodytypical expectations. When these non-conformist persons struggle to conform, it’s framed as a “behavioural” issue, a personal weakness, rather than a mismatch between societal structures and individuality.
For those who fall outside of the selective focus of progressivism, the DEI movement can feel deeply hypocritical—championing inclusivity while reinforcing classism, ableism, and individualist explanations for success and failure. If we deny these contradictions rather than address them head-on, we risk alienating the very people who might otherwise be allies.
3. How Selective Denial Fuels Populism
Trump’s rise—and the broader rise of right-wing populism—cannot be understood without acknowledging the deep distrust many working-class people feel toward progressive elites. For decades, many Americans—especially rural and working-class communities—have felt ignored, talked down to, and left behind by the 9.9% elite class that is perceived as self-serving and hypocritical.
- They see wealthy progressives pushing climate policies that increase energy costs for ordinary people while flying on private jets to climate summits.
- They hear constant calls for diversity and inclusion, but notice that economic class and several other aspects of diversity are rarely part of the conversation.
- They see corporate-backed climate policies that offer tax credits for EVs that they can’t afford, while doing little to actually reduce wealth inequality or even GHG emissions.
Many of these people don’t necessarily love Trump, but they vote for him out of defiance—because he represents a rejection of elitist hypocrisy. Seemingly, the bottom 90% of society resent the 9.9% professional-managerial “general wealth elite” class more than the ultra-wealthy 0.1% “barons”, who sit atop the economic hierarchy but with whom the bottom 99.9% rarely interact. As David Brooks writes in The Atlantic, the working class sees the “know-it-all” professional class—the academics, journalists, corporate executives, and policymakers—as the real enforcers of cultural and economic norms that leave them behind. Unlike the distant billionaires, these elites shape narratives, control institutions, and push policies that feel condescending and disconnected from working-class struggles.
This resentment fuels the rise of populist billionaires, who, as Politico notes, have learned to capitalize on working-class frustration with the professional class. The 90% may not see figures like Trump as one of their own, but they vote for him: Trump as a weapon against the 9.9% elites—the cultural gatekeepers and policy technocrats who they perceive as looking down on them. In this way, the billionaire barons are not seen as the architects of inequality, but as wrecking balls who can tear down the elite class that governs their daily lives.
If progressives continue engaging in selective denial—ignoring class while focusing on race, ignoring ableism while promoting inclusion, pushing surface-level climate solutions that benefit their own social class—the alienation will only grow. And that alienation will continue driving people into the hands of authoritarian strongmen who position themselves as the enemies of elite hypocrisy.
4. A Better Path: Collective Resilience & Holistic Awareness
So how do we navigate the overwhelming nature of today’s crises without falling into selective denial? The answer may lie somewhere in community-driven resilience, shared wisdom, ceremony, deep reciprocity, and holistic awareness.
A powerful example is the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, a ceremony that reminds all participants of their deep interconnection with the world. Unlike selective denial, which filters reality into manageable pieces, this ceremony brings everything into awareness—ecological, social, and spiritual. With this wholesome awareness, the ceremony helps its participants to focus their attention on a specific problem at hand. This way, the Haudenoosaunee create balance between distracting holism and selective denial that fosters reductionist blindness.
A community-based approach like this could help us:
- Stay resilient without filtering out inconvenient truths.
- Balance emotional self-preservation with accountability.
- Remain rooted in a long-term, collective vision instead of short-term political battles.
Instead of progressive elites deciding what crises “matter” culturally and which ones don’t, we need a more inclusive approach—one that truly listens to the working class, disadvantaged individuals, neurodivergent people, and those marginalized by economic structures. We must stop preaching climate action from positions of privilege and start living the change in ways that uplift everyone—not just the professional class.
Conclusion: Choosing Awareness Over Denial
Andrew Boyd is right: we cannot let every crisis overwhelm us. But if selective denial becomes a tool to avoid our own contradictions, we risk fuelling the very backlash that strengthened Trump and his movement. These contradictions, I am convinced, explain to a large part why populists like Trump are rising all over the West.
The solution is not to filter reality for our self preservation. It is to engage with reality fully and collectively, without letting it become overwhelming. Through practices of holistic awareness, deep community engagement, and ceremonies like the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, we can hold complexity without being paralyzed by it—and create a movement that truly embodies the justice and sustainability we claim to fight for. I believe that we now have a window of opportunity to have this discussion: a self reflection on why the Trumps of this world are so attractive to the lower classes, how our own behaviour fuelled this attraction, and now we can develop more inclusive strategies that not only feel good to ourselves, but also deserve the respect and earn the support of the majority. I believe that now is the time to birth new ceremonies that help us stay connected with each other, with the land, and with ourselves.
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