We live in a world where, for well-off white Americans, reality has often become easy to ignore. Our news and entertainment sources are fused into the same feed, and almost every local or global disaster rests behind the comfortably distancing screens of our phones. There is nothing to stop us from brushing off the planet’s ever-growing tensions: we can proceed, unaffected, with our daily lives. And the more we do so, the easier it becomes, all the while souring our insides with the one detriment even we cannot avoid: guilt.

It’s time for us to stop ignoring that guilt.

Within groups of white, liberal, economically secure American citizens, there’s a bizarre tendency to label ourselves as the “good ones” without actually making moves to counteract dangers in our country and across our world. Sure, we feel terrible for the fact that these things aren’t happening, but we aren’t committing them, right?

Yes, we are. Unless and until we actively stand up against these horrors, we are helping to perpetuate them.

We cannot respond to our heavy consciences by reassuring ourselves that we are already doing enough. For people who have kept a healthy distance from activism and serious political conflict all their lives, there’s a wide trap of self-assurance: I’ve been fine all my life. Chances are that I will continue to be fine, as will my family and a large number of my friends. And, most dangerously of all: other people will take care of it.

This isn’t an issue for other people. Those in less privileged positions are already giving everything that they can simply by existing; plenty of them are risking their lives to make a difference. Considering that in acting out, white Americans are putting themselves at far less of a risk, it is simply inexcusable to remain inert. It is our moral obligation as human beings to give as much as we can to the fight for other people’s lives. This has always been the case, but now, as we approach the last quarter of the first year of the Trump presidency, it is more urgent than ever.

We avoid taking action because it is frightening. Even if it doesn’t put us at risk of life and limb--and, as proven by the late Heather Heyer, it occasionally does--it disrupts the normality that we have so tenuously maintained. By protesting, we are acknowledging that human rights are truly in danger. This is not the happy world that we, privileged as we are, believed it to be when we were children. That objective truth is not going away, no matter how insistently we pull the wool over our eyes. Pretending that the country is at peace does not make it so.

But that does not mean that the situation is hopeless. As soon as we truly internalize and accept the fact that things need changing, the change can ensue. There are ways to take action, starting small, and they will open up more and more opportunities to further our activism. Telling your family, friends, and social media followers that you are unhappy with the state of the world is not enough: you need to show that you are willing to sacrifice your comfort and security in order to change it.

There are endless inspiring stories, both historical and fictional, of a people collectively rising up to defeat threats to human rights. As long as we sit in our homes and avoid reading the news, we are the villains of those stories. We are the concrete reason for the defeat of the people and the victory of the oppressor. Resisting will not be fun. It will not be easy. But it must be done.

I don’t consider it to be remotely far-fetched to invoke the memory of Nazi Germany. The passivity of the masses enabled the creation of concentration camps. The passivity of the masses enabled Hitler’s rise to power. The passivity of the masses killed girls like Anne Frank. The passivity of the masses cut short millions upon millions of realities, memories, futures, dreams, hopes, plans.

If we don’t take action now, history can and will repeat itself.

I would say we don’t have a choice, but we do. We are some of the only people in the world right now for whom action is voluntary. The decision is right in front of us. And we need to make it.