People who ff are making a good parenting decision based on the information available to them and their personal circs - just like any other parent. Other people might not make the same one, other people may have different circumstances or more or less information.
Anyone who looks at stuff like this (the political side) and thinks people interested in it are only out to 'make ff mums feel guilty' is truly making a mistake that learning more about the issue would help to avoid. It's usually a sign that someone is missing a lot of information about bf and ff - boring, factual, research information, like the fact that less ff and more bf would save the NHS a lot of money, not to mention avoiding illness in babies - even in this country - it's a myth that it doesn't affect health here.
I'd speculate that the more ludicrous someone finds the idea of caring about whether or not there's a 'bottle feeding culture' (and taking away a toy bottle), the less difference they believe there really is between breastmilk and formula. I'm sure there are exceptions, but from some of the reactions to statements about, say, the illness in babies in this country, it's clear that there are people on this thread who believe that the difference is just not enough to be worth making any kind of fuss over.
The problem with this whole issue is that we've got two pretty much conflicting aims:
(a) Reassuring people who have already ff or know they will have no choice to do so, by saying neutral/nice things about formula, minimisig the differences, talking a lot about personal choice and so on.
(b) Getting more babies drinking the significantly healthier milk (breastmilk), by making everyone in society care enough about bf that they truly make an effort to support a mother and baby in getting it working.
You just can't get (a) and (b) happening at the same time because they need people to be saying quite different things about bfing, breastmilk, the research and so on. The only way to get (b) to happen is if you're truthful about the difference between the different milks, so you get people feeling let down if anyone pushes them towards formula or doesn't help them bf, and everyone around them cares enough to help them to get it working. The only way to get (a) to happen (never upsetting a ffing mother by talking about bf being better) is to keep quiet about the differences and talk about the issue as one of individual choice with neither option being much better than the other.
I'm generalising now, but it seems to me that most people who have read a lot of the research tend to think (b) is very important - that it really matters that more babies are bfed (not any individual baby, but looking at the whole of society, the big numbers). People who've heard bland 'breast is best' messages but don't know many details tend not to see (b) as all that important and have more of a 'bf is fine if it works but we mustn't say anything that would upset someone who ffs' attitude - (a) is more important to them.
Talking about like this is talking about bfing at a macro level and it's a world away from talking about it one to one with a friend, say. I would never dream of saying or even thinking 'you should have bfed' to someone who ff - how can I know anything about their circumstances, even if I'm a close friend I still wouldn't know everything that would have gone into their decision. If I meet an individual person who ff, I tend to think 'that was probably right for you, you made a good parenting decision wtih the information you had (which may be a little or a lot - I can't know)'. Most people make the best parenting decisions they can. But I can look at 100 000 people say and if only 25% of babies are getting any breastmilk at all at six weeks, say to myself 'that's a bit rubbish', because that represents a lot of extra illness over that many people. And that's where things like a bottlefeeding culture are relevant. It's a huge complex issue and we are all influenced by all sorts of things - it's not as simple as 'see a bottle, ff later'. And the people who are interested in the whole issue in that way - as a big social and political issue - are just not interested in other mums individual feeding decisions, or in comparing them with their own, or in 'making people feel guilty' - honestly I can't think of anything more boring than making someone who ff feel guilty - but I do find the whole issue of the influences on infant feeding, the politics and so on, interesting and important.