This is irony, not a way to live one’s life. This is the editor of a newspaper, refusing to consider a story about a major poisoning, because the victim was ideologically affiliated with protesters trying to convince people air that kills is the point at which maybe we should stop polluting.
The Sheep Look Up is the best ecological disaster SF novel I’ve ever read. It’s full of these horrible moments, where “normal people” (typically white men) shrug and wonder what in the hell you expect them to do, exactly. Stop polluting, simply. This guy goes on to say that sure, there’s an environmental problem – his personal experience being that some air from the city got into his suburb through wind currents, and the defoliants spoiled half his wife’s flower garden.
If you can’t parse the privilege speaking there, trust me when I say it’s as thick as, well, as the poisons in industrial spillage.
This line is a statement hard to argue with – yes, you shouldn’t really make people’s lives harder when you’re trying to make them better. But when one of the things making something “better” is making it worse for someone else, the thing has to go away. No one’s making anything harder, they’re making it the same as it is for other people.
If you want a lesson on the current social problems, like refugees, racism, or anything else. Look to that. No one’s trying to make life harder, only to make it as easy for one person as another. If someone thinks they’re supposed to get more privilege than someone else (not the rewards of work, but privilege, the thing you get for being born something, like the upper classes in a fantasy novel, or, you know, life), then you’re the person making this shit harder. You’re the one shrugging and saying, “but it takes away from those as don’t deserve it.”