Until we moved to our current home in 1996, my wife and I had always lived in cities or on military bases. Small town life was a revelation for us. We live in a rural area and I worked in a small-town high school for 16 years after leaving my corporate job. Going to town is always an experience, as everyplace we go is staffed by former students and their parents.

Waitresses know your name and usually have an idea what you will order. When we respond to medical or other calls for our fire department, we typically know the family, which is a big relief for people under stress. When I visit the schools in town (I’m on the school board), I see the children of my former students, and other former students work in the schools now.

We tell our kids that the world is ending because of global warming and anything they do about it is insufficient. We teach them that their country is something to be ashamed of, not proud. We make sure that they have no heroes by describing anyone admirable in the worst possible way. We preach that if they are white or male they are to blame for most of society’s problems, and that their repentance will never be good enough. We denigrate or remove any masculine influence in their lives. We sneer at religious faith and teach that morality is relative. And we’re surprised when they shoot up a school?

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.

One of Ricochet’s finest has encouraged us to be more concise. No problemo. My title is my article. Almost. I just can’t conform myself instantly to these new disciplines. I need some time to adjust. I’ll try to keep it short, though:

1. Mark Steyn said, on Tucker’s show tonight, that Kellyanne Conway shoved Wolf Blitzer’s ploy down his throat.
2. She said that Blitzer had embarrassed himself (about five seconds earlier…I wish I, and other American liberals, were that quick on our feet) by asserting on national TV that she, Kellyanne and her husband had marital problems, but that he didn’t want to talk about these presumed problems on national TV.
3. Kellyanne brought the obvious contradiction to Blitzer’s attention, leaving him desperately dodging and trying to change the subject. (Wolf’s script presumably read, “Kellyanne is flustered by your personal attack, and starts weeping like any fragile woman would who is attacked by a famous, powerful Man like you, Wolf…”

Like Mark Steyn, I remarked–to the Boat Wife–on what Kellyanne did in real time to Blitzer, and by association to CNN and the establishment propaganda machine, in anatomical terms.

Reporter James Rosen of Sinclair Broadcast Group asked Nancy Pelosi a question at her weekly press briefing Thursday. A very reasonable question, I think anyone would agree.

He asked, “I wonder if you could explain to the American people why the legal rights of the whistleblower should prevail in this political setting over those of President Trump, who should ordinarily enjoy a right to confront his accuser?” His question is reasonable because Mr. Trump is an American citizen with constitutional rights that do not disappear when he is elected to political office.

Nancy Pelosi’s response was remarkable: “Well, let me just say this, I will say to you, Mr. Republican Talking Points, what I said to the President of the United States. When you talk about the whistleblower, you’re coming into my wheelhouse. I have more experience in intelligence than anybody in Congress.” Holy Toledo.