MAYBE THE RULES DON’T WORK: “Thousands who ‘followed the rules’ are about to get covid. They shouldn’t be ashamed.”

Vaccinated and boosted, she took a test last week ahead of holiday travel to Atlanta. She was stunned when it came back positive…. ‘I feel very embarrassed and dumb,’ she says, and upset that she’s causing her family stress. ‘It’s eye-opening that I feel so much shame from it. I’m realizing how much judgment I was secretly harboring against people who got it before.’

“The headline seems to misstate why Aline feels shame! It’s not shame over getting the disease despite following the rules. It’s shame for having been so judgmental toward other people. . . . Because she trusted in the precautions she devotedly took, she developed the idea that those who got the disease must not have done their part to avoid it. They were the disgusting others — the deplorables. Looking down on those people was part of believing in the worth of her efforts and the safety she was acquiring for herself, but now that she’s one of the people she used to find disgusting, her options are to find herself disgusting or to realize she was wrong when she thought they were disgusting. There’s shame involved either way.”

But bear in mind, the essence of leftist politics is dividing the population into “righteous” and “unrighteous,” with oneself on the righteous side of course, then heaping scorn and abuse on the unrighteous.