Posted on 12/13/2019 3:50:11 AM PST by Kaslin
Who better than a finger-wagging teen bereft of accomplishment, or any comprehension of basic economics or history, to be Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2019? Greta Thunberg's canonization is a perfect expression of media activism in a deeply unserious time.
Has there ever been a less consequential person picked to be Person of the Year? I doubt it. I mean, Wallis Simpson, 1936's Person of the Year, got King Edward VIII to abdicate the throne. Thunberg can't even get you to abdicate your air-conditioning.
These days we celebrate vacuous fire and brimstone. "Greta Thunberg" -- the idea, not the girl -- is a concoction of activists who have increasingly taken to using children as a shield from critical analysis or debate. She's the vessel of the environmentalist's fraudulent apocalypticism-as-argument. Her style is emotion and indignation, histrionics and fantasy. She is a teenager, after all.
How dare you attack a poor defenseless child who suffers from Asperger syndrome!
You'll notice that, on one hand, Thunberg's champions demand that the world take her Malthusian crusade seriously, and on the other, they feign indignation when you actually do. The argument that young people, because they will inherit the future, are also best equipped to comprehend it is as puerile as any of Greta's positions.
Perhaps a better question is this: What kind of parents, editors, producers or U.N. officials would thrust a vulnerable child, with Asperger syndrome, no less, into a complex and contentious debate? I have great sympathy for her. It's her ideological handlers who have stolen her childhood.
Surely, we should be allowed to consider the positions of Time magazine's 2019 Person of the Year? Because the problem with Greta Thunberg -- the idea, not the girl -- is that she proposes not only that the people of her native Sweden abandon modernity but that billions of people in Asia and Africa remain in destitution. Greta, unlike many of her ideological allies, does not hide the truth of modern environmentalism. She believes that wealth and economic growth -- modernity -- are the problem.
Shamefully, radical environmentalists have convinced Greta and millions of others that the world is on the precipice of "mass extinction." Even poor Prince Harry struggles to get out his Kensington Palace bed and start the day, so crushed is he by the weight of "eco-anxiety." (You know, I have some ideas on how he might lower his carbon footprint.) Like Joan of Arc, as Greta's mother tells it, she experienced her first vision in her early teens, going months without eating properly. Greta, her heart rate and blood pressure indicating starvation, stopped talking to anyone but her parents and younger sister.
Rather than helping Greta overcome this irrational dread, her parents sacrificed her childhood to Gaia. Now, Greta is a child warrior, unrestrained by fact or reason, the human embodiment of years of fearmongering -- in our schools, in culture, in our news -- over progress, technology and wealth.
Greta is merely repeating "unassailable science," Time claims. "Oceans will rise. Cities will flood. Millions of people will suffer." The unassailable truth is that climate deaths have plummeted dramatically and billions of people have been lifted from abject poverty by the system that Greta assails. There is no "unassailable science" that tells us how the future looks: what technologies humans will devise, how they will adapt. One imagines a magazine such as Time, which once published pieces about now-discredited predictions of a "population bomb" and global cooling, might understand that the future is always more complicated than we imagine.
The reality is that Thunberg was bequeathed the healthiest, wealthiest, safest and most peaceful world that humans have ever known. She is one of the luckiest people ever to have lived. And unlike most of her ancestors, she can continue to be a professional activist her entire life, thanks to market economies and emerging technological advances. In a just world, she would be sailing her high-tech multimillion-dollar ocean-racing yacht and crew to the United Nations to thank the United States for helping to create this uniquely wonderful circumstance. In a just world, she would be in school with her friends and teachers.
It's been years, of course, since Time, or the magazine's Person of the Year, mattered very much. The truth, though, is that Time did an admirable job of mapping out consequential people of the 20th century. Looking back now, I see a list populated by the men and women, nefarious and heroic, who helped shape the modern world. Sadly, Time has come a long way from "The Hungarian Freedom Fighter," its choice for Man of the Year in 1957. If we Americans lived in a more serious time, the Hong Kong freedom fighter, the men and women who risk their lives for liberty, would be Time's Person of the Year. We don't.
Can you say, “The Emperors New Clothes”?
She’s the perfect “hero” for Luciferian child abuse.
Thanks!
like this current day Joan of Arc, will be, well, never.”
Funny thing is Joan of Arc herself would have scorned and dismissed this despairing idiot.
The power of youth? More like the power of a clueless, Soros-backed puppet manipulated by adults.
We're the virgin they're wanting to sacrifice so they can continue to live their lives as they see fit.
May want to re-ping here.
If Hitler had had a daughter.....
White Liberal Elites want pollution ended because pollution ruins the ocean views from their mansions. Yes, factories produce jobs for the little people but White Liberal Elites don’t care about the little people...
All she needs is a green ecoNazi armband, and a scarf around her neck with an Iron Cross slide to hold it in place.
LOLOL!!!
Herd the little heifer back to school
Thunberg is the poster child of the “Trophies for Participation” group.
When you reward nothing useful-—you get an even bigger NOTHING USEFUL at the top of the heap.
You have been pinged because of your interest in environmentalism, alarmist wackos, mainstream media doomsday hype, and other issues pertaining to global warming.
Freep-mail me to get on or off: Add me / Remove me
Please ping me to all note-worthy threads on global warming.
Global Warming on Free Republic here, here, and here
Most leftists are stuck in a teenage emotional and illogical mindset. Their minds stopped developing. I am positively convinced of this.
Makes sense that they deify children and emotional idiots; while simultaneously hating those who use their minds, logic, and experience to make decisions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.