there's a possiblity that he's upset they're not really THINKING, so much as yelling slogans at each other. They're not thinking about him as a symbol of what we all have in common, instead they see him as a powerful enough symbol that they can bludgeon the other side with him.
That's a double-edged sword, though. Steve always disliked empty sloganeering, vitriol, and reactionary finger pointing from all parts of the political spectrum; this is the man who gave up his shield in What If? #3 during the jingoistic Reagan years (Reagan years our time, of course) because he was struggling with feelings of disillusionment vis a vis the U.S. government and didn't like the idea of being manipulated by same and/or being seen as its superhero embodiment. So, yeah, I totally get that Steve is averse to all of that.
But Steve also had a fundamental gift for understanding human nature and for forgiveness. So it's doubly hard for me to read this sequence and see that despite his incredible ability to cherish and nurture the human spirit, Steve's doomed to be haunted by the fact that people talk about him. He was larger than life; he was very self-consciously a symbol, and he understood that, although various writers have also shown that he was very uncomfortable with it. I was hoping that JMS would throw Steve a figurative bone and show us all the people that quietly loved him and felt/feel no need to publicly articulate who they think he was. That would have been nice.
I do like some of the bits in this sequence. Steve's greeting, Thor's praise, and what Thor does to give him a bit of peace at the end. But it's only one minute out of billions that Steve will have to endure if we take this at face value and conclude that Steve's sense of self and spirit live on eternally.
Poor Steve. Can't catch a break either way. Here I was hoping that he'd be chilling on some sun-drenched beach in his version of heaven.