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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
White boy got into Harvard with substandard SAT’s as a reward. He’s set for life.
Haven’t you been following the ‘science’ – these warm periods occurred because white men.
I absolutely love Trump’s tweet after her speech , “she seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!” , while searching for it I got a glimpse of the lefty media outrage over it, hilarious.
I also appreciated your analogy with the little boy in The Shining (Danny Loyd). The tragic difference is that, in the case of the Stephen King movie, Danny was being protected from the knowledge that he was acting in a piece of horror fiction. In contrast, child actress Greta Thunberg has been convinced by her ersatz guardians that she is living through a real-life horror, when in fact she’s not. Her terror is probably real.
And Judith Curry, a serious climate scientist, is being called a nut by people who have trouble balancing a checkbook. Make no mistake. There are trillions of dollars behind this. Big companies are getting huge subsidies. Windmills, solar panels, electric cars and charging stations. Ethanol, Exxon is bragging about all the work they do on “sustainable fuels.” This is big money and they will not give up easily.
Indeed, insulting one’s potential customers does not seem like very good marketing. Yet this is the tone of much (most?) ‘progressive’ communication. And it seems to be working surprisingly well.
I’ve come around to thinking that the purpose is not *persuasion*, but rather *intimidation*….it is to ensure that the expression of dissident opinions will be met with such an unpleasant response that they speaker will *just shut up* in the future.
Somebody observed that the Nazis didn’t make any effort to convert those who they arrested on grounds of their political opinions…political prisoners in concentration camps weren’t made to listen to lectures on the correctness of Naziism…rather, their experience was made as unpleasant as possible.
Well in fairness many of them were only 10 years old and probably already on some kind of medication. Perhaps that’s not nice.
But probably true.
I don’t get how the country convulsed a few years ago over the water charges (I live in the countryside so we always paid for water) and yet tolerate that Tubridy, Darcy and Finucane are paid the astronomical sums they are out of the public purse. I’ve made the decision not to have a TV in my own house because I refuse to pay a licence. It’s bad enough that RTE is on day and night at my parent’s house.
I’d be interested in hearing more details since I do not know much about Ireland’s politics.
Not strange at all; the young are much easier to hornswaggle. They’ll believe pretty much anything, especially if they are prevented from hearing any contrary information. The left is quick to exploit this as they have no boundaries nor honor, simply goals whatever it takes. And people are just tools to them, even kids. So don’t swallow all the talk about everything being “for the children” because they don’t really mean it, that’s just one of the ways they shut down conversations.
This is spot on. And the intimidation is working well enough that many, if not most, Americans are silenced and/or convinced to espouse the ‘correct’ line. When I try to use facts and logic to poke holes in such claptrap the usual response is a horrified countenance and attempts to either change the subject or shut down conversation. The fear is palpable.
The only thing I see that can overcome this cowering reaction to intimidation tactics is a hit to folks pocketbooks serious enough to shock them into reality.
I’m not great with details and I didn’t care about this issue but I’ll try to summarise. The government created a company called Irish Water (in 2012 or 13? I was back in college as a mature student anyway). It was to replace existing water management arrangements including group schemes which many families in the countryside were already paying for such as mine. However people who weren’t previously paying for a water utility, which was basically everyone in urban areas, were very angry and took to the streets in massive numbers to protest again and again and again. They had plenty of political support from the anti- austerity and socialist pols particularly Paul Murphy who got arrested after a particularly ugly incident when the Tainiste (that’s a deputy PM) was trapped in her car by protesters (one was a teenage boy).
There were many incidents where Irish Water workers were threatened while installing metres and this was in a time when people were glad to get the work after the recession. I mentioned here before how the recession in 2008/2009 unleashed a rage in Ireland that hasn’t subsided, this was one manifestation, repeal of the 8th amendment was the most devastating. But you’ll find the same characters on the streets for all these protests. I met a young girl who went on a bus to a protest of the housing crisis wearing her Love Both badge. She was jeered at and harassed from Galway to Dublin by these bullies.
Marjorie Reynolds (View Comment):
That’s not to say there wasn’t plenty to criticise about Irish Water, not least the fact that there are still problems like boiled water notices. There were legitimate reasons to protest. But it was seized on by the opportunistic left as they do with everything else.
You’re much more sanguine about it than I am. I’m incensed that anyone uses government power to muscle what others have earned into their pockets for even necessary projects, let alone boondoggles that totally waste scarce resources that could be creating productive jobs and real wealth for those who actually deserve these things.