Roy Exum
She had me from the get-go, this scrappy little girl from Sweden who walked into the front lobby of the United Nations on Monday, balled up her pint-sized fists in front of those do-nothing diplomats and barked, “How dare you!! How dare you continue to look away!” Immediately my lights went from dim to bright because this would be the freshest thing to hit the UN since the final coat of paint back in 1952, the first day the still-dazzling building opened in New York City’s fabled Turtle Bay district.
Yes, you go girl, and whatever it is you’re selling I’ll take two.
I’m hardly an admirer of what the UN has become – in my opinion it is now little more than some oversized bank branch where all the free-loading world leaders flock to pick up their foreign-aid checks. Barely more than 30 percent of our cash-bought “friends” vote like the U.S. does on a consistent basis, you know, and “Uncle Sam” pays about 25 percent of the UN’s total operating costs every year. The pseudo-intellectual fat cats who openly belch after lunch each day in the General Assembly hold little adore from me, brother, and I dare say a public vote of America’s tax-payers would send the lot of them packing to some God-forsaken place.
Her undeniable grit was the first thrill my new gal pal Greta Thunberg delivered when she came into focus with her Tuesday stare-down of the world’s order but then I learned her mettle has been forged by Asperger’s syndrome, which I pray will immediately embolden every autistic girl and boy the world over. Are you kidding me? She calls her affliction her “superpower,” by golly gumbo, and as a child activist for worldwide climate control, she’s got to have raw guts to back up her moxie. “Some mock me because of my diagnosis, but Asperger is not a disease, it’s a gift. People also say because I have Asperger I couldn’t possibly have put myself in this position … but that’s exactly why I did this!
“If I would have been ‘normal’ or social I would have organized myself in an organization of some type, but since I’m not good at socializing I did this instead … I was so frustrated that nothing was being done about the climate crisis I felt like I had to do something … anything!” the 16-year-old said to the nation’s equally-enchanted media. Blend in the fact that she came to the UN Climate Action Crisis by sailboat, daring the Atlantic Ocean by golly, and you have the brightest young voice is the world.
But … but … but …. steady – my dashboard warning lights tell me there is something you’ve yet to see, I thought.
Push aside the thought she must have a lightning bolt for a momma and equally-determined daddy, one who carries a nice-sized satchel. There is a picture of her with her signs on the square in Rome, another in England, and Egypt, too? Greta has not only been to the U.S. a good bit but for somebody who is admittedly not very social, she appears to be quite adroit at worming her way into a lot of thoroughbred circles and several continents to boot. I’m not a cynic by nature, and I’m proud she made a trans-Atlantic crossing but not only do you have to have a big-bucks sailboat, a smart hand on the tiller, and strong arms for the sails. The early give-away for me was her carefree sail to the United States … I know the North Atlantic even in the summer is a mean and unforgiving body of water with 6-to-8 foot seas, this more the average than not, on even the sunniest day.
Sure enough, what first sounded like the sharpest female voice since the cry of Joan of Arc began to get more garbled by the hour. Ol’ Joan, the French maiden, may have commanded the French Army back in the 1400s but today scholars think she might have had some “disorders,” ranging from epilepsy to schizophrenia, and her savage temper is actually what caused her to become a Catholic saint. Hmm?? Sound like anybody else in this brain-twister?
Then there is this … she’s what? An activist? Man, I’ve steered clear of extremists my whole life. And climate control. Al Gore put me on the other side of that argument many years back when he said the Polar Bears were almost extinct. Back then people literally cried because there were less than 6,000 doomed by a climate breakdown for extinction, or whatever it was. Coca-Cola was so smitten it dedicated an entire Christmas campaign to the white bears. Well, the things are admittedly hard to count where the snow never melts but there are now well over 50,000 polar bears and many times that of learned people who believe climate warming is no more than a liberal’s hand toy brought out during a luncheon where it is mentioned illegal aliens are costing the American people over $120 billion (with a ‘b’) every year, something the liberals had rather not mention.
As fast as the public was swept up by the pig-tailed kid whose message to the UN was gentle versus what mine would have been, the same fickle public came a-tumbling down the other side of the curve when the wisest among us finally caught on. President Trump tweeted Greta appeared to be “a very happy girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future” and immediately the leftist media pounced, assailing his sarcasm as they put it. No, the trick had been unveiled and the adults outed who tried to use a pawn unwisely.
Soon everybody was taking sides, one spat between two ‘talking heads’ – one liberal and the other conservative – so entertaining that within hours there were almost 2 million views of the YouTube tape. Almost everyone laughed delightfully as Michael Knowles (R) and Christopher Hahn (D) each allowed their rants to be sucked into the mindless patter of the nightly news.
I adored what Charles C.W. Cooke wrote on The National Review:
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ONE CAN’T BE BOTH THE SWORD AND THE SHIELD
Written by Charles C.W. Cooke, an editor for The National Review, on Sept. 24, 2019
Here is the first rule: If you comment on politics, you are liable to be criticized. Here is the second rule: The more vehement you get in your rhetoric, the more vehement the reactions against you are likely to be. Here is the third rule: There are no exceptions to the first two rules.
There are no more rules.
I do not know whether the people who are trying to inoculate Greta Thunberg from criticism genuinely believe that we’re too stupid to see the game that is being played, or whether they know that we can see it, but imagine that they can win it by brute force. Either way, they are wrong. What is being attempted with Thunberg is one of the oldest tricks in the book. First, you find a young person who shares your politics and cast them as the uncorrupted prophet of a new generation. Second, you have them argue their case as often and as loudly as possible. Third, you cast all pushback as “inappropriate” or “bullying” or “punching down.”
“Why,” you ask, “are you criticizing this sweet little girl who is just trying to help us in our quest to reorder the entire world?”
This process is not only transparent; it is grotesque. There exists no universe in which one can simultaneously cast a person as a brave truth-teller whose words must be heeded, and as an innocent, fragile child who is beneath the notice of any well-rounded adult.
A sword is not a shield and a shield is not a sword. One must pick one.
If Thunberg’s tears are notable on one side of the political ledger, then they are notable on the other. If her anger and fear and instability are the key to her message and appeal, then they may be referenced by her critics, too. If her age makes her different, then . . . well, her age makes her different: “Gosh, she’s only sixteen!” “Yes, exactly, she’s only sixteen.” To indulge any other approach than this is to permit one group within our raucous political conversation to short-circuit it completely.
Were Thunberg merely emoting, there would indeed be a case for ignoring her. But then, were she merely emoting, she wouldn’t have an audience. Her audience has grown because she is making concrete claims: The world will end in eight-and-a-half years; my future has been ruined; the economy can’t grow indefinitely; nuclear power is bad; the following countries are guilty, etc. To sit this one out would be to permit the adult advocates of those presumptions to smuggle them into the media, the United Nations, the European Union, and so on, and to do so without evaluation, pushback, or discussion. That will not stand — and it shouldn’t.
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His colleague, ever delightful Rich Lowry, adds this excerpt from his column, “Don’t Listen to Greta Thunberg,” appearing on The National Review website the same day:
“Greta Thunberg needs to get a grip. (She is a pawn being used by adults for their own interests.) … On Monday (She told the UN) dutifully-assembled worthies: “You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
Someone may have stolen her childhood, but the guilty parties can’t be found at Turtle Bay … Greta Thunberg is the leading edge of a youth movement against climate change — including a global “climate strike” last week — that is being promoted and celebrated by adults who find it useful for their own purposes.
Kids are powerful pawns. The catchphrase “for the children” has a seductive political appeal, while kids offer their adult supporters a handy two-step. The same people who say, “The world must heed this 16-year-old girl” will turn around and say to anyone who pushes back, “How dare you criticize a 16-year-old girl?”
There’s a reason that we don’t look to teenagers for guidance on fraught issues of public policy. With very rare exceptions — think, say, the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who was a child prodigy — kids have nothing interesting to say to us. They just repeat back what they’ve been told by adults, with less nuance and maturity.
Instead, the youthful climate activists claim they’ve been sold out by their elders. Greta Thunberg put it with her usual accusatory starkness at the U.N.: “You are failing us, but young people are starting to understand your betrayal.”
This is laughable. By no global measure of social and economic well-being have we failed kids. According to HumanProgress.org, the global poverty rate fell from 28 percent in 1999 to 11 percent in 2013. Life expectancy increased from 63.2 years to 71.9 years from 1981 to 2015. The completion rate for primary school increased from 80 percent in 1981 to 90 percent in 2015. The same benign trends hold for hunger, child labor, literacy, and so on.
If climate change proves a significant challenge, today’s youth will have more resources and technology to grapple with it than any other generation in the history of mankind.
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I believe what both columnists say is right. If all other adults have toned the Climate Change zealots out, find the cutest kid on the planet, jockey her before the U.N. and coach her beforehand like Vince Lombardi. Boom! You are back in the game …. but in this day and age, for less than a day.
royexum@aool.com