Liberal White Women: The Culture of Moral Performance

The guest fell through, but the conversation we needed showed up anyway. What starts as a solo pivot becomes a candid look at why emotional performance so often replaces grounded compassion—and how a recent Minnesota tragedy revealed the script in real time. I unpack the psychology of meaning-making, the shift from “I do activism” to “I am an activist,” and the social rewards that elevate feelings as proof of virtue. When identity fuses with ideology, dissent reads as harm, analysis gets labeled cruel, and symbolism races ahead of facts.

We also talk about the role of institutionalized guilt and the anxiety it breeds: overperformance at vigils, faster condemnations, louder declarations that center the self while sidelining the person who was harmed. Media ecosystems compound it with binary frames that can’t hold nuance, turning complex events into morality plays. I walk through the Minnesota case details, why evidence matters, and how tragedies become props when narratives demand instant certainty. This isn’t a hit piece—it’s an attempt to understand how smart, sincere people can still drift into brittle certainty, where empathy without truth becomes manipulation and debate gives way to megaphones.

There’s a different path. Anchor emotions to something outside the self: responsibility, order, and humility. Let grief be sacred, not strategic. Ask what we know and what we don’t before we pronounce judgment. Real strength requires restraint; real compassion requires listening; real justice requires truth. If that resonates—or rankles—lean in. I want to hear your take, your pushback, and your added layers.

If this conversation challenged you or clarified something you’ve been feeling, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review so others can find it. Then tell me: where should empathy end and truth begin?

Chapters

• 0:41 A Solo Episode Begins
• 1:55 Setting The Topic And Tone
• 3:37 The Minnesota Case Context
• 5:12 Calling Out A Cultural Pattern
• 7:21 Meaning, Identity, And Activism
• 10:24 Feelings As Virtue And Evidence
• 12:23 Learned Behavior And Campus Rewards
• 15:04 Institutionalized Guilt And Anxiety
• 18:18 Performative Empathy Vs Compassion
• 20:16 Binary Worldviews And Echo Chambers
• 22:40 Symbolism Over Substance In Crises
• 25:13 Law Enforcement, Evidence, And Agency
• 27:09 Moral Power And Automatic Authority

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:41

Oh hey, hi. Well, it has been a very long hot minute since I have done a solo show. And um there is only really one reason I'm doing a solo show, and that is because I was supposed to be doing an interview right now, and um they um they didn't show. I don't know, they probably got their days mixed out. Marie emailed, but it's all figured out, it's all good, no worries. However, I have this little chunk of time um that um was supposed to be designated for doing a podcast. So I thought, why not? Why not do a solo one? Dust off some of the uh no, what do I want to say? Shake off some of the dust. Shake off some of the dust of doing solo interviews. I have to admit I'm very spoiled um having clay to do these with or doing interviews because it's just having a uh another person to bounce ideas off of and just simply have a conversation with. I I I kind of don't miss doing these by myself, but but I am excited to chat with you about this uh topic I've decided on for today. I just get my chin on the microphone.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50

Um yeah, so um I think we're gonna get right into it right after this. Here we go. Conversation tells a story, and the best ones begin with honesty, courage, and a little curiosity. That's where Elsa Kurt comes in. She's an author, podcaster, and independent media personality, and this is where she brings real life to the table. Authors, thinkers, creators, leaders, everyday folks with extraordinary journeys. We sit down, we dig in, and we talk about what matters, what's messy, what's beautiful, and what just might inspire you to look at the world a little differently. So pour a cup of something good. Settle back and join me. This is Elsa Kurt Interviews, where truth has a seat and everyone's welcome.

SPEAKER_02: 2:36

I'm gonna talk about something that maybe for some people is going to be a little bit uncomfortable, but I think it's actually necessary to have this conversation. And not because I think it's um fun and I'm not poking at people, and uh, it's not because I think everyone on one side of the political aisle is the same. However, I want to talk about this because patterns actually matter, and when you see the same behaviors and the same language and the same emotional responses over and over and over again, it it stops being about individuals and and it starts uh being about culture and psychology and um social conditioning, and and that is the overarching topic here. And we'll get into specifics, of course, but let me just kind of fill you in a little um background here. So for me, um, this really heightened with the most recent case in Minnesota, uh, Renee Good, um, who, you know, listen, it's a tragic situation all around. A woman, uh, a mother is is dead, and um people are understandably upset. Um and I can say that with also saying that this was all as a result of her own actions. Um, if you haven't seen it, this is just a little piece of it here. Um, you know, so pretty much immediately after the incident, I mean, especially during the incident, uh, the response from a very specific group of people followed uh a script that we have seen time and time again, right? And who were the people? Liberal white women.

SPEAKER_04: 5:16

Come on, my point.

SPEAKER_02: 5:58

Um definitely no um sense of anything intelligent, uh, certainly not having any complete information, um, but they come in with their rants and their tirades and their moral decorations and their you know fist waving and uh performative guilt and outrage and you know their identity awareness that somehow always manages to center themselves right in the middle of someone else's death. Like they literally make everything about themselves. This is why I stared away from social media during the day, unless I'm working on it. Um, but you know, just uh just watching these clips that I'm and I'm thinking to myself, my god, this is so tone-deaf. I mean it it's not even just bad timing, like it is something way, way deeper. It is psychological and and sociological. Uh it's it's a pattern of these things that keep on repeating itself. And if we're gonna be honest about it, it is it has become one of the most destabilizing forces within public discourse. Like liberal white women, who knew, right? Who knew? Um, but that's what this episode is is gonna be all about. And it's not a rant. Um, at least I'm gonna try not to rant. It's not a hit piece, it might feel like one to some people, but um, it's an honest clinical look at why liberal white women as a group uh have moved so far into emotional extremism uh that their behavior just now reads as pure irrational and self-absorbed and and frankly completely unmored from reality. And you know, before anybody starts, let me just tell you, I'm not talking about all liberal women. I'm not talking about all white women. Uh I'm talking about a very, very specific ideological and cultural subgroup that are typically shaped by academia and uh media and and modern um modern activism. I mean, look let's just start right off the bat with psychology, right? Human beings need meaning. Um, and that's obviously it's not a political statement, it's biological and it's also definitely maybe even especially spiritual. We need to feel that our lives matter, that we're on the right side of something. And that's universal, it truly is. Um, we need to feel that we're contributing to a story that is longer than ourselves. We need purpose. Like we're designed with and for purpose. Now, traditionally, people found that meaning and that purpose through faith and uh family and community and responsibility, right? But when those structures weaken, which they obviously have, uh people don't stop needing to have meaning. They they just look for it somewhere else, right? Now, for a lot of liberal white women, activism has become that substitute because we know they don't want to have kids and they don't want to have families. And the thing is, they're not using activism as like volunteering, uh, you know, just working locally, they're using activism as their identity, uh, like as their moral currency, like as their self-definition. Like, I don't do activism. I am an activist, I am, that is who I am. And when your sense of self becomes tied to being good, and goodness is defined by ideology rather than behavior, you become hypersensitive to perceived threats. Like any challenge feels like an attack. And I listen, you've seen the videos, you've seen all of the things that they they say and do. You know this is true. Um, but in their minds, like any disagreement feels like harm. Uh facts become secondary to feelings because feelings are now evidence of virtue. I feel a certain way, and I am virtuous, I am good, right? That is why you see such extreme emotional reactions, the the crying into microphones, the screaming uh into what it was called, megaphones, the you know, shouting all these slogans that don't actually explain anything or better anything or offer any solutions to anything. Uh they just speak in these like rehearsed phrases that sound like they came straight out of a you know hippie college seminar or you know, a non-profit training. Like it's just it's all the same talking points over and over and over again. And it's not accidental. Like this behavior is taught. I mean, it is it's learned by them, by people teaching this to them to how to behave like this. Modern progressive spaces, like they reward emotional expression over analytical thinking. Uh, every, not every, um, all of these local college campuses, that that is the way it is over there. Like the more you you know shake your fist and and do all of these things, the more moral superiority you have. And the more you center your feelings, like you put them dead center of everything as the most important thing, um, the less you're expected to defend your claims because it comes from like this deeply emotional place, which who wants to who wants to even deal with that, right? Um, but all of this just produces adults who never learn emotional regulation and conflict. Like they cannot have logical, clear discourse with anyone. And now you add in this other, like to me, totally unexpected layer, like what the heck? But that layer that gets added in is now guilt, white guilt has been institutionalized, like not just acknowledged, not discussed thoughtfully, institutionalized, like taught, reinforced, worse, praised. Like the more white guilt you have, the better person you must be, right? Like, oh, if I if I am kneeling down and kissing the feet of a person of color, um, I have the most moral currency, right? You know, the truth is a lot of liberal white women have been told explicitly or implicitly that their very existence is suspect, that their comfort is stolen, essentially, like not earned, not anything to do with anything, but it's stolen. If they have any kind of neutrality, well, that's as good as violence. You're you're just that's just violence against others because silence is complicity. If you're not advocating, you must be complicit, you must be one of them, you know. So these women, these white liberal women with this white liberal guilt, have to keep proving that they're one of the good ones. You know, they're the ones that say things like, I have black friends. Like, here's a little sympathy though for these people, because when you think about it, like psych psychologically, uh that feeling has to create so much anxiety in these people. What do anxious people often do? They overperform, they over-signal, they overspeak, they over-emote, uh, they rush to condemn, you know, they they rush to align themselves, to be allies with whoever the, you know, perceived and need to be allied with of the day is, you know, they gotta make sure they say the right thing before anybody can accuse them of being on the wrong side. I'm exhausted for them. I I'm I am pained and anxious for them. To live like that is horrible, right? Uh and this is how you end up with women and a vigil for a dead mother talking about their own privilege instead of actual human loss in front of them. That's a real story. That's a real story that actually happened. There was like some vigil, uh, some you know emotional remote white woman um used the opportunity to talk about that instead of the deceased woman. I dude, that's not compassion. It's like self-preservation and it's masquerading as empathy. It it is nothing more than that. There is no actual depth to any of that. It's performative. And this is where sociology comes in. Now, this demographic, our liberal white women, they are overwhelmingly college educated, urban or suburban. Uh, they are immersed in social media and they are completely surrounded by um ideological echo chambers. And they often, no, they always tend to consume media that frames the world in binaries, like oppressor and oppressed, victim and villain, good people and bad people. No gray areas. You're either one or the other, and you can't be both. You can't have any type of overlap of anything, it's just very black and light. And you know, nuance just doesn't survive in that kind of environment. Like anything complex, any kind of complexity just feels there's the word, feels threatening because it destabilizes their moral hierarchy. So when something like the Minnesota shooting happens, their response is never. The response from them is never, well, what do we know? Um, what don't we know? What actually happened? Maybe I'll wait to see different perspectives. Maybe I will reserve judgment to the whole story. Is out. Their response is for them, what does this symbolize? And symbolism always wins over substance. It's always going to win with that type of mentality because they need their symbolism, they need their pause, they need their, you know, their passion project. It doesn't matter, it really doesn't matter what it is, it's just whatever it is at the moment. Um, you know, but in this particular case, and many like it, this is how law enforcement becomes a cartoon villain before evidence is ever even reviewed. And, you know, we're living in the social media age, right? Where everybody has their cell phone out and they're recording everything, you know. So it in as bad as all that is, that's probably one of the good things because there were so many angles from that, and they were put out so uh immediately almost um that you were able to see that the um that the ICE agent actually did get struck by the vehicle. Um, and he was moving out of the way and she hit him, you know, whatever. You can you can everybody's analyzing all of that uh over and over again, frame by frame, all of those things, but it doesn't change the fact that um, you know, she defied direct orders by law enforcement, and then she stepped on that gas pedal. And what happened next was a result of all of her actions up until that moment. So um, you know, sap for any loss of life, always um it is a tragedy, it absolutely is. Um, but the ICE agent did what needed to be done. The job of an officer of the law is if there is a threat, their job is to stop the threat. And that's what he did. But anyhow, back to our liberal white females. Um, this is exactly how a tragedy becomes a prop to them. And you know, here's another part that people just do not like to hear. This is not about kindness, this is about power, uh, moral power is what this is about. They they don't really care about Renee Good. They they just they don't really care about this woman as an individual. They they care because she is a prop for them, for their cause, for their fight. In uh in progressive culture, women are often granted automatic moral authority. It's just a thing, I'm sorry. Women are framed as more empathetic, right? More nurturing, uh, more emotionally intelligent, typically. It's questionable, but sure, yes. Let's be real, those assumptions obviously aren't always earned. They are just like the cultural defaults that we all automatically uh lean on, right? And and when you combine that default moral authority with ideological certainty, you tend to get something very, very volatile. Uh case in point, right? You get people who believe their feelings are not just valid, but superior. So superior. You get people who think disagreement is cruelty, you get people who believe that in intention matters more than outcome, uh, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless, unless the outcome contradicts the narrative. Always, always a way to turn that about. We know that historically women were taught to be caretakers of moral order. Um that role has not disappeared, like it didn't, it didn't disappear, it got politicized. Instead of um tending households and communities, there's a large segment of women who now see themselves as caretakers of society's conscience, right? I mean, if you think about it, if you believe that you, you are the conscience, you don't question yourself. You correct everybody else around you, right? And that's basically why any type of dissent from this perspective is treated as immoral. Morality. I mean, that is why they won't debate conservatives. Like next to never do they debate conservatives, because then they would have to have actual talking points and not sound bites, right? But anyhow, that that's why every every issue becomes like some existential crisis for them. And you know, the mistake I think people tend to make looking at these liberal white women is the default, right? They're so stupid. Oh, they're so stupid. It's really quite the opposite. Most of them really are actually very intelligent, uh, very articulate, and they are deeply sincere. Um, you know, it's not always these septimarine blue-haired, ridiculous women children who, you know, just say the most absurd things. Uh there, they make great sound bites, speaking of sound bites, um, but really the majority of them are very, very smart. And they are, you know, if you've ever had a real conversation with one, they're deeply sincere. They are truly very sincere in what they believe and how they feel and all of that. And that is technically what makes them so dangerous. Why is it dangerous? Because sincerity without grounding is is it's just dangerous, guys. I mean, we see it constantly. How many examples can I possibly give you here? Intelligence without wisdom, different, is dangerous. When you have empathy without truth, it becomes manipulation. And even when it's unintended, that is what happens. There is a very, very visible lack of emotional resilience in these women. There's a fragility that shows up in their public meltdowns and their online pile-ups and their moral hysteria. When a worldview teaches you that words of violence and discomfort is harm, you raise adults who cannot tolerate conflict. And people who cannot tolerate conflict will always escalate it. And I know that sounds contradictive, but proof over and over again, proof, proof, proof in every other video. These women, these people, they don't self-soothe. They externalize everything. Every problem they have must become everyone else's problem. These are people who do not reflect, they simply react. They don't ask, could I be wrong? They ask, why are you hurting me? Why are you doing this to me? Except they scream it in your face and with their megaphone or cat block it in your comment sections. You know, can I just state the obvious and say that that is not strength, that is arrested development in the most extreme way. And it's just so sad. And I know I'm kind of chuckling here and laughing, but I mean it. It's just so sad. Uh, and I and I want to say this next part very carefully because it matters. This doesn't make someone evil, it makes them unformed, basically. Uninformed, but also unformed. Like they're just not complete whole humans. Like a culture that tells women that they are victims first and individuals second, it robs them of agency. Like it encourages perpetual grievances and grievance when rewarded becomes identity. This is what we're dealing with when we're looking at these people. You know, so what looks like insanity from the outside is a lot of times a combination of anxiety, moral insecurity, social reinforcement, and um profound, profound lack of grounding in objective truth. Now, if you contrast that with a worldview that is rooted in faith and responsibility and order, where emotions are real but not sovereign, um, where truth exists outside of the self, and none of this stuff my truth kind of thing. Uh, what else? Where tragedy is met with humility rather than conclusions, that is the difference between us and them. Like that's I think there's a lot of differences, but that is a very, very significant multi uh part difference between us and them. The Minnesota incident didn't expose I don't know whenever they think it was trying to expose racism. I don't even know anymore. Um, but it it exposed how disconnected modern activism has become from human reality. It shows just how quickly performance replaces compassion. And oh boy, it shows us how easily grief can be weaponized uh against everyone, basically, you know, uh how readily facts are sacrificed for their feelings. I mean, let's talk about that, right? Who cares about facts, right? I feel like this or that. That's way more important. And yet, and honestly, unless we're willing to talk about the psychological factors that are shaping this uh behavior, it's going to keep happening just more and more louder and uh more extreme and more, you know, with more tragedy uh on the horizon because they have just completely lost all sense of um stability. And I think I'll tell you what, I I'm not trying to win any arguments with anyone. Yeah, I'm not gonna be going back and forth with anybody in the comment sections. Um, you are free to put your opinions and your disagreements in there. Um, this is my perspective. I've been reading on this and studying this and and just observing it for a long time now. And uh I feel really, really solid in my take on this. So I, you know, agree, disagree, it's all good by me. I'm certainly not going to be screaming into a megaphone in your face or uh calling names for disagreeing with me. Uh, like I said, I'm I'm not trying to win any arguments here. Uh for me, uh, this is about trying to understand why so many people who claim to have empathy have so dramatically lost the ability to see others clearly. And uh maybe the takeaway I'm here, you know, or the most uncomfortable truth of all of this is that a culture that tells women they are always right because they feel deeply is not empowering them. Someone please change that record in these academic institutions that's telling them that, because what it's actually doing, it's uh infantilizing them. They they are just giant children. Um and uh guys, real strength, and let me talk directly to these women because maybe one will watch. Here's the thing: real strength requires restraint, real compassion requires humility, but real justice requires truth. Anything else is just noise, it's just feelings. All right, I think that's all I got. Yeah. So um, how long did I go here? Oh, okay. We're in the uh half hour-ish range. I talk for a half hour straight. Okay, I will spend the rest of the day in mostly silence, probably. Yeah, all right. So uh this was actually somewhat enjoyable. I mean, it's just basically long form of what I make short videos of, I guess. But um, yeah. So I I would love to hear from you in the comments section. Agree, disagree, um, do you have different layers to add to the conversation? Um, I would love to hear that, you know. And uh I listen, I'd love to hear when you disagree with me too, because um I I'm all about the learning and all about the learning. And um yeah, so I don't know. I guess that's all I got, guys. Thanks for uh hanging out with me on this uh rare, rare solo episode. Uh I will see you very soon with uh play sitting to one side or or the other of me and um some upcoming interviews. Um, I love doing my interviews. They're a lot of fun for me. Uh it gives me an opportunity to uh platform people who maybe wouldn't have had the opportunity to do this uh otherwise. So it's a it's a great treat for me to be able to do that. I will see you guys soon. Take care.