Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:30 PM | May 12, 2024
meme

Greta Thunberg is in the news again, and it's as good a time as any to reflect on what that means about our culture. 

What I have always found appalling about the Greta phenomenon is not the young woman Greta Thunberg, as annoying as she is. 

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After all, Greta burst on the scene as a 15-year-old girl who got her start as essentially a high schooler having a tantrum. That was her claim to fame: she refused to go to school because the world was dying. 

Within months, she was addressing the United Nations Climate Conference. 

Think about that. A high schooler has a tantrum, and suddenly, she is a world-historical figure to whom we are all supposed to listen about global energy policies. That is not normal. Not normal in the least. 

To me the Greta phenomenon is all about the people who made this happen. I can assure you that with the many, many millions of 15-year-old girls unhappy about one thing or another, it turns out to be very unusual to have the gathered world elites sit in rapt attention while she unloads on them. 

Greta became a worldwide phenomenon and remains so to this day. Not because of who she is or her ability to articulate a compelling message--if anything, she is remarkably off-putting to the point of being unlikeable--but because some very powerful people decided they needed a child as a symbol for their propaganda. 

The Nazis did that, as has every Left-wing ideological movement. The Soviets did it, and the Red Chinese even created a children's cult that created the cultural revolution. It is all about short-circuiting the reasoning faculties in people and turning something into a raw emotional movement. 

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Greta is a creation, not even really a person. Perhaps there is a person buried under all that manufactured hate, but as with child actors whose lives are ruined for the benefit of adults, she was set on this path before she could even develop a genuine identity. 

What was done to her is similar to what was done to Jazz Jennings and many of the children being dragged to Drag Queen Story Hours. Rather than being given childhoods to discover a healthy version of themselves, these kids are being misshapen for the purposes of the adults around them. 

Now, Greta is an adult and must be treated as one, and she should be held responsible for her hideous behavior in Malmo this week. Protesting Eurovision for platforming a Jew is a very bad look, and she is surrounded by very bad people. She is no longer 15. 

I am as happy as the next guy to see her manhandled and carted off to jail, and only regret that her stay will be all too brief--as it is for all these protesters who break the law. Breaking the law in the name of a political movement shouldn't get you a get-out-of-jail-free card, although it apparently does. 

But I have never been able to work up much animosity for Greta because she is not the problem. She is a tool of some very bad people who want very bad things for you and me, and they are willing to irrevocably twist the life of a child to do it. 

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That is sick. Those people are evil. Greta is just annoying. 

But for those elites who decided that a 15-year-old would make a nice prop in their war against us proles, we would never have heard of Greta Thunberg and all of us would be better off for it, including Greta. We would lose out on a great meme, of course, but it would be worth it. 

Children's crusades are repulsive and I instantly recoil when people try to short-circuit my rational capacities with an appeal to the innocence of a child. Children are to be loved, protected and instructed. They certainly are not there to become policymakers or moral exemplars. 

I would love, though, to ask adults who look up to Greta, "What the hell are you thinking?" The idea that an adult would admire and look to a child having a tantrum and think that she is a role model is frankly bizarre. 

The child is easy to forgive; we were all young once, and did dumb things. 

The adults have no excuse. 

Now, onto the smiles...

















































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