Greta’s Strange World

 

The left, it seems, tends to choose its examples poorly. They want to highlight police brutality against innocent black men, and they choose Michael Brown, a known criminal who died while trying to kill a police officer after robbing a convenience store. They want to highlight the corruption of Donald Trump, and they choose Ukraine, where Vice President Biden’s son earned millions of dollars selling influence in the Obama administration. They want to highlight global warming climate change, and they choose an autistic high school sophomore who struggles to demonstrate any emotions beyond contempt and anger. Who comes up with this stuff?

Greta Thunberg must live in a strange world right now. She went from a teenage girl who struggled socially and had no particular gift for math or science, to a worldwide authority on meteorology, oceanography, thermodynamics, solar nuclear physics, botany, geology, agriculture, petroleum engineering, international transportation systems, and lots of other stuff she’d never heard of until the day before yesterday. Her handlers arrange her public appearances and write her speeches. Powerful people from corporations and agencies she’s never heard of beg for her endorsement. She becomes a slave to her own celebrity, which must seem to her to have appeared suddenly, like a genie from a bottle. I would struggle with all the pressures on her, and I’m 50 years old. She’s 16.

Like many teenagers, she is extremely sure of herself. I often say that I wish I could have practiced medicine when I was a teenager, back when I knew everything. But when you combine her youthful certainty with the echo chamber that she lives in, whatever small interest she might occasionally have in opposing views will be completely suffocated.

She projects utter contempt for those who take a different view than her own, like many children and leftists. This is not endearing and would seem to reduce one’s effectiveness as a spokesperson.

Those who lack humility also tend to lack curiosity. This is an enormous problem in the climate change industry. I wonder if it is a problem for Greta?

I wonder if someone asked her what the ideal temperature of the world is, I wonder what she would say? I wonder if she believes that climate change is bad? I wonder if she believes that the climate should never change? I wonder if she wonders how clouds form? I wonder if she lays in bed at night and prays that she’s right about all this stuff? I wonder if she sometimes thinks about the possible consequences of being wrong, about everything?

I wonder if someone told her that they had invented a thermostat to control the temperature of the world, and as our unbiased spiritual leader, we had selected her to set the thermostat to the correct temperature – I wonder if she would do so? Or I wonder if she would be afraid to touch it, as most of us would?

Her handlers (or perhaps their handlers) probably understand that those questions about the climate are irrelevant, because this is all just about money and power.

Does Greta understand this?

In the movie “The Shining,” the little boy who rode the tricycle down those long hallways didn’t know that he was in a horror movie. The child actor was six years old, and Stanley Kubrick told him that he was acting out scenes in a drama about a family that lives in a hotel. Why would you tell an innocent six-year-old kid the horrible truth that would give him nightmares for years? Makes sense.

I think Greta is an actor in a movie that she doesn’t understand. Her handlers might understand. But she doesn’t.

At least, I hope she doesn’t understand. I like to think that such cynical duplicity is the realm of adults, not children.

And if you’re cynical enough, it doesn’t really matter who you choose as your examples, I suppose…

Published in General
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 44 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    I understand she is autistic and her parents seem to be doing some Munchausen by proxy.  Even Latitude 38, a good sailing magazine (from San Francisco) got in the act on Facebook.  The details, like flying the sailboat crew around the world are ridiculous.

    • #1
  2. Douglas Pratt Coolidge
    Douglas Pratt
    @DouglasPratt

    The left is not above child abuse. They will use her until she is no longer useful.

    • #2
  3. Brady Allen Inactive
    Brady Allen
    @BradyAllen

    How dare you ?!?                             Sorry, just wanted first crack at that.

    • #3
  4. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    Dr. Bastiat: She went from a teenage girl who struggled socially and had no particular gift for math or science, to a worldwide authority on meteorology, oceanography, thermodynamics, solar nuclear physics, botany, geology, agriculture, petroleum engineering, international transportation systems, and lots of other stuff she’d never heard of until the day before yesterday.

    Meanwhile , Dr. Will Happer, the greatest living expert on the physics of CO2, is treated by the media as a nutjob.   It’s a cult not a science.

    • #4
  5. John H. Member
    John H.
    @JohnH

    I wonder if someone asked her what the ideal temperature of the world is, I wonder what she would say?

    I wonder what anyone would say.

    • #5
  6. Phil Turmel Inactive
    Phil Turmel
    @PhilTurmel

    John H. (View Comment):

    I wonder if someone asked her what the ideal temperature of the world is, I wonder what she would say?

    I wonder what anyone would say.

    Well, based on the historical record of human flourishing during the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period, one could at least say “Warmer”.

    • #6
  7. Brady Allen Inactive
    Brady Allen
    @BradyAllen

    Phil Turmel (View Comment):

    Well, based on the historical record of human flourishing during the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period, one could at least say “Warmer”.

    How did these so-called “warm periods” occur without SUVs ?

    • #7
  8. Phil Turmel Inactive
    Phil Turmel
    @PhilTurmel

    Brady Allen (View Comment):

    Phil Turmel (View Comment):

    Well, based on the historical record of human flourishing during the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period, one could at least say “Warmer”.

    How did these so-called “warm periods” occur without SUVs ?

    Bovine flatulence, I suspect. /:

    • #8
  9. OkieSailor Member
    OkieSailor
    @OkieSailor

    Dr. Bastiat: Does Greta understand this?

    Pretty obvious to me that she understands nothing at all. That’s not at all unusual for someone her age though. She does seem to know that she has become a celebrity and maybe that’s enough for her. What I wonder is just how many adults that are worthy of being called adults understand just how she is being used and how despicable that is.

    • #9
  10. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    John H. (View Comment):

    I wonder if someone asked her what the ideal temperature of the world is, I wonder what she would say?

    I wonder what anyone would say.

    Dad keeps asking “When you take the Earth’s temperature, where do you stick the thermometer?”

    • #10
  11. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Percival (View Comment):

    John H. (View Comment):

    I wonder if someone asked her what the ideal temperature of the world is, I wonder what she would say?

    I wonder what anyone would say.

    Dad keeps asking “When you take the Earth’s temperature, where do you stick the thermometer?”

    A wit on a previous thread suggested, “Detroit, if it’s a rectal thermometer.” 

    • #11
  12. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Brady Allen (View Comment):

    Phil Turmel (View Comment):

    Well, based on the historical record of human flourishing during the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period, one could at least say “Warmer”.

    How did these so-called “warm periods” occur without SUVs ?

    Many scientists point to Eocene-era monster truck rallies. 

    • #12
  13. GrannyDude Member
    GrannyDude
    @GrannyDude

    Poor kid. 

    I know that there are people who are, or plan to be, making serious bank on the Climate Crisis, selling indulgences carbon offsets , investing in or manipulating government-backed can’t-fail “green” projects, taking lucrative positions as consultants and advisors etc. 

    Which would ordinarily not bother me all that much, except that the wealth is being created by scaring the bajeesus out of children. They aren’t generally hypocritical about these things—“it keeps me up at night”
     is a metaphor for the environmentally conscious, virtue-signaling adult, but her child is actually lying there in the darkness, wondering what tomorrow’s weather portends for her future or lack thereof. It’s unconscionable. 

    • #13
  14. Mark Camp Member
    Mark Camp
    @MarkCamp

    Phil Turmel (View Comment):

    John H. (View Comment):

    I wonder if someone asked her what the ideal temperature of the world is, I wonder what she would say?

    I wonder what anyone would say.

    Well, based on the historical record of human flourishing during the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period, one could at least say “Warmer”.

    Well, based on our afternoon babysitting big :-) brother Jack and Baby Coco I would say, “whatever it was this afternoon.”

    • #14
  15. Charles Mark Member
    Charles Mark
    @CharlesMark

    In Ireland today the primary legislative chamber was handed over to a bunch of teenagers to ruminate on climate change and to make proposals to tackle it- all promoted by our taxpayer-funded national broadcaster RTE. The wokeness all but dissolved my alimentary canal. 

    • #15
  16. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    Dr. Bastiat: In the movie “The Shining,” the little boy who rode the tricycle down those long hallways didn’t know that he was in a horror movie. The child actor was six years old, and Stanley Kubrick told him that he was acting out scenes in a drama about a family that lives in a hotel. Why would you tell an innocent six-year-old kid the horrible truth that would give him nightmares for years? Makes sense.

    This is a brilliant reference. It makes me feel sorry for her.

    (Sorry in a way I totally do not feel for David Hogg.  That dude has been a nosy little self-promoting prig since long before the shootings. If you haven’t seen the beach video he shot with his surfer friend and the beach guard asking them to obey the rules, you should.)

     

    • #16
  17. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat: In the movie “The Shining,” the little boy who rode the tricycle down those long hallways didn’t know that he was in a horror movie. The child actor was six years old, and Stanley Kubrick told him that he was acting out scenes in a drama about a family that lives in a hotel. Why would you tell an innocent six-year-old kid the horrible truth that would give him nightmares for years? Makes sense.

    This is a brilliant reference. It makes me feel sorry for her.

    I view her as a sympathetic figure.  This is why we have laws about statutory rape.  Even if a 30 year old high school teacher convinces a 15 year old girl to have sex with him, it’s still rape.  It’s rape because we agree that a 15 year old girl cannot give consent.  

    Greta is a 16 year old girl with emotional problems.  She’s being used – taken advantage of by adults she trusts.  

    Poor kid.

    • #17
  18. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Douglas Pratt (View Comment):

    The left is not above child abuse. They will use her until she is no longer useful.

    Above it? They positively glory in it. Prenatal abuse unto death. Drug regimens prescribed for obstreperous behavior, the pharmaceutical impedance of puberty; whatever happened to “boys will be boys?” Strict control of their exposure to ideas until they must resort to “safe spaces” in college when their world view is challenged.

    • #18
  19. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Charles Mark (View Comment):

    In Ireland today the primary legislative chamber was handed over to a bunch of teenagers to ruminate on climate change and to make proposals to tackle it- all promoted by our taxpayer-funded national broadcaster RTE. The wokeness all but dissolved my alimentary canal.

    Why couldn’t those clever young teens convene in their dorm rooms over pizza and quality weed like every other climate change authority in their age group? 

    • #19
  20. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Children will be the victims of climate change. Greta is a child so she has the magical aura of victimhood;  ergo, She has holiness that will help her understand climate change. In a similar fashion, a black dude has more authority about the economics, history and morality of race in America than a white guy who has read all of Thomas Sowell, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Martin Luther King (the white guy needed to read Ta-Nehisi Coates to explain to his white lefty friends why he is wrong).

    There is no sense in identity politics or in Greta but it isn’t about logic. It is all victimhood and it is all emotion. That’s the point Dr. Bastiat.

    • #20
  21. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    Children will be the victims of climate change. Greta is a child so she has the magical aura of victimhood; ergo, She has holiness that will help her understand climate change. In a similar fashion, a black dude has more authority about the economics, history and morality of race in America than a white guy who has read all of Thomas Sowell, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Martin Luther King (the white guy needed to read Ta-Nehisi Coates to explain to his white lefty friends why he is wrong).

    There is no sense in identity politics or in Greta but it isn’t about logic. It is all victimhood and it is all emotion. That’s the point Dr. Bastiat.

    It will be such a disappointment for her when she survives her 28th year.

    • #21
  22. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    I was in a waiting room today with an FFA — Future Fascists of America. This girl looked younger than Greta and spoke in a loud whisper to her mother for a good thirty minutes about how we have to empower the government to take money from bad people in order to improve society. The words “force” and “power” and “take” were used frequently. She also talked about “teaching generosity” — without irony. And her mother sat there the whole time nodding along and affirming the self-righteous little monster as if she had wisdom to teach her. Sickening. These parents are vile and don’t deserve the title. They’re exploiters, at best. 

    • #22
  23. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    I was in a waiting room today with an FFA — Future Fascists of America. This girl looked younger than Greta and spoke in a loud whisper to her mother for a good thirty minutes about how we have to empower the government to take money from bad people in order to improve society. The words “force” and “power” and “take” were used frequently. She also talked about “teaching generosity” — without irony. And her mother sat there the whole time nodding along and affirming the self-righteous little monster as if she had wisdom to teach her. Sickening. These parents are vile and don’t deserve the title. They’re exploiters, at best.

    Where does she go to school? I’m going to take her lunch money and give it to the General Fund. 

    • #23
  24. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    TBA (View Comment):

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    I was in a waiting room today with an FFA — Future Fascists of America. This girl looked younger than Greta and spoke in a loud whisper to her mother for a good thirty minutes about how we have to empower the government to take money from bad people in order to improve society. The words “force” and “power” and “take” were used frequently. She also talked about “teaching generosity” — without irony. And her mother sat there the whole time nodding along and affirming the self-righteous little monster as if she had wisdom to teach her. Sickening. These parents are vile and don’t deserve the title. They’re exploiters, at best.

    Where does she go to school? I’m going to take her lunch money and give it to the General Fund.

    One of the local charters (she was in uniform), surprisingly. Not one my kids ever attended, because if that’s what they’re teaching, we wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. We really need to destroy the public education system.

    • #24
  25. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat: In the movie “The Shining,” the little boy who rode the tricycle down those long hallways didn’t know that he was in a horror movie. The child actor was six years old, and Stanley Kubrick told him that he was acting out scenes in a drama about a family that lives in a hotel. Why would you tell an innocent six-year-old kid the horrible truth that would give him nightmares for years? Makes sense.

    This is a brilliant reference. It makes me feel sorry for her.

    (Sorry in a way I totally do not feel for David Hogg. That dude has been a nosy little self-promoting prig since long before the shootings. If you haven’t seen the beach video he shot with his surfer friend and the beach guard asking them to obey the rules, you should.)

    Hogg comes across as a teen grifter, far more self-aware of how he’s being used by the progressive media and enjoying it, while getting into other areas of activism outside of gun control, as a way to try and expand the Hogg brand. But I don’t think it’s playing all that well outside of the progressive base.

    Thunberg offers up the same type of angry scowling as Hogg — if she was Billy Mumy in that old Twilight Zone episode, she’d constantly be sending people to the cornfield — but her self-awareness seems to be more in the mode of Cindy Sheehan, who the Washington Post wouldn’t allow into their building in early 2005 because they saw her as a woman who was troubled and obsessed at the same time. It was only when some progressive public relations people decided she could be useful against Bush that she became a celebrity and was given Absolute Moral Authority by Maureen Dowd.

    Sheehan never saw her downfall coming when she crossed Nancy Pelosi in 2008, and Thunberg is probably the same way — if her crusade suddenly targets the wrong people or group, she’d find herself non-personed.

    • #25
  26. Marjorie Reynolds Coolidge
    Marjorie Reynolds
    @MarjorieReynolds

    Charles Mark (View Comment):

    In Ireland today the primary legislative chamber was handed over to a bunch of teenagers to ruminate on climate change and to make proposals to tackle it- all promoted by our taxpayer-funded national broadcaster RTE. The wokeness all but dissolved my alimentary canal.

    Oh God that climate change week was neverending wasn’t it? George Lee scolding every night on the 6one and even the flippin’ Bank  adverts lecturing about ‘doing more’. I particularly destested George Lee’s interview of the beef farmer in Leitrim. 

    • #26
  27. Charles Mark Member
    Charles Mark
    @CharlesMark

    TBA (View Comment):

    Charles Mark (View Comment):

    In Ireland today the primary legislative chamber was handed over to a bunch of teenagers to ruminate on climate change and to make proposals to tackle it- all promoted by our taxpayer-funded national broadcaster RTE. The wokeness all but dissolved my alimentary canal.

    Why couldn’t those clever young teens convene in their dorm rooms over pizza and quality weed like every other climate change authority in their age group?

    Because virtue-signalling doesn’t work in a dorm room. 

    • #27
  28. Charles Mark Member
    Charles Mark
    @CharlesMark

    Marjorie Reynolds (View Comment):

    Charles Mark (View Comment):

    In Ireland today the primary legislative chamber was handed over to a bunch of teenagers to ruminate on climate change and to make proposals to tackle it- all promoted by our taxpayer-funded national broadcaster RTE. The wokeness all but dissolved my alimentary canal.

    Oh God that climate change week was neverending wasn’t it? George Lee scolding every night on the 6one and even the flippin’ Bank adverts lecturing about ‘doing more’. I particularly destested George Lee’s interview of the beef farmer in Leitrim.

    Long past time to take away the license fee. Everything that station produced is agenda-driven progressivism. Their reporting on Brexit, US politics (“evil GOP”), climate change and the Middle -East ( “Great Satan/Little Satan”) is particularly odious while Jeremy Corbyn gets a totally free ride!

    • #28
  29. Steven Seward Member
    Steven Seward
    @StevenSeward

    The thing that got me about Greta is that the Left is constantly holding up children as having some sort of unique wisdom about the World.  This is completely backwards of what I was always taught – that older people were wiser than younger people.  It doesn’t even take any smarts to figure that our.  But for some reason, the Left perverts this age-old idea just like they pervert many other hallowed ideas.

    • #29
  30. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    “No more coal, no more oil, keep that carbon in the soil” is the new slogan.  I read she is being considered for a “Nobel Peace Prize” – maybe Obama could just give his to her (called recycling?).  He didn’t use it.

    • #30
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.