Greta Wreaks Her Havoc

Greta Thunberg addresses the UN, September 23, 2019

LONDON, ONTARIO – In the final analysis, eco-warrior Greta Thunberg’s greatest gift to mankind might turn out to be her uncanny powers of clarification. Those powers are most certainly not manifested in anything that the George Soros-scripted, 16 year-old puppet actually says. Indeed, all of her alarmist tirades of imminent ecological Armageddon have been heard before ad nauseam. They long predate what we can only hope will turn out to be her fleeting notoriety. They also predate her birth and are not growing one iota more convincing by dint of their endless and hysterically escalating reiteration.

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Check out this new roundup of fifty years’ worth of disastrous planetary forecasting which the Competitive Enterprise Institute released this week – https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions – if you wish to see an historical survey of the sort of pseudo-scientific fear-mongering of which Greta is but the latest and feeblest proponent. I tell you, this bitter pigtailed prophetess stands on the shoulders of a whole succession of shameless mental midgets who’ve been stamping their little feet for more than fifty years and telling us that unless we disembowel our economies and reorganize our societies along the moonshiney lines which they prescribe, then we’re all going to hell forthwith.

No the near-miraculous ‘clarification’ I speak of is something that emerges in the responses which Greta arouses in others. I’m sure you’ve all seen clips of Greta’s long awaited speech to the United Nations Climate Action Summit last Monday. Not since Abba’s farewell tour has a Swedish entertainment export received such coverage in the world press. Her emotive rant – high on maudlin rhetoric and low on factual content – was full of such wise and well-considered counsel as this:

“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you have come to us young people for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words . . . People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.”

That last line evoked a round of applause from the assembled delegates and hacks as well as an accompanying groan of approval such as a masochist might emit when the lash has been applied to an exposed and proffered buttock cheek just so. “And lo – a child shall spank them,” I couldn’t help thinking as I watched this unseemly spectacle of a petulant and over-indulged brat berating a room full of ostensible adults.

Greta Thunberg is like a human Rorschach test. People gaze upon the very same spectacle and construe totally opposite meanings and messages. Where I saw a spoiled child who should be sent to her room for an indeterminate sentence of time out, London City Councillor, Mo Salih, saw a beacon of hope and inspiration: “All in favour of Greta Thunberg for the Nobel Peace Prize, raise your hands,” he tweeted the day after she threw the tantrum that was viewed around the world.

And in the next day’s Tweet of the Day feature in The London Free Press, they had this: “‘What a well-spoken, articulate, passionate, caring young woman. The world needs more people like her.’ @LdnOnt.Blair gives props to teen climate-change activist Greta Thunberg, who spoke this week at the United Nations.”

In terms of the sentiment which is seemingly expressed, it’s fascinating how closely the above tweet jibes with the words of troll-master Donald Trump who meant the precise opposite in his beautifully tuned shot across Greta’s grotesque prow: “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”

When Trump made a surprise flying visit to the U.N. summit on Greta’s big day, he stole the attention of every reporter in the room from the diminutive climate-dominatrix. And the look of shocked outrage on her face as he walked right past her without saying hello was priceless to see. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Trump is the only world leader in her entire months-long international tour who hasn’t felt the need to drop to his knees and kiss her ring.

A couple of days after that glorious snub, the ever-supine Justin Trudeau (identified on Saturday as our “Prime Minstrel” by the irrepressible Mark Steyn), thought he might be able to shake off some of the evil mojo still clouding his image in the wake of his ‘blackface’ scandals by presenting his bottom to Greta for a smack. She was happy (or as close to happy as she ever gets) to oblige him. Notwithstanding his single-handed dismantling of the Canadian petroleum sector since assuming the prime-minister-ship four years ago, she sternly informed him that he just wasn’t doing enough to bring the Canadian economy to a standstill.

It seems to be a demonstrable fact that Greta’s strongest appeal is to the female of the species. There was a picture in Saturday’s Free Press of a second Greta-inspired ‘Fridays for Future’ protest in downtown London and this picture was populated almost entirely by women and girls brandishing signs with such well-considered arguments for environmental stewardship as “Burn down the Patriarchy, not our Earth,”, “Protect, Restore, Fund our Environment,” “Earth is Crying: Act Now”.

There was a feeling of déjà vu all over again later that same day when my wife and I attended a worthy production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at the Stratford Festival in which an 18th century New England town’s people and way of life are destroyed when its religious, legal and civic leaders all submit to the hysterical delusions of a handful of demonically possessed girls. As John Proctor, the prime victim of their accusatory madness is caught in their snare, he asks, "Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God's fingers? I'll tell you what's walking Salem – vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!"

And it is sobering to consider that the haunted harpies set loose in Salem in the 1700s didn’t even have the vote yet.

Greta takes counsel from one of her advisors