Climate activist Greta Thunberg has a lot going for her. She’s old enough to have a strong opinion, brave enough to voice it strongly to the masses, articulate and passionate enough to be effective, yet young enough and - dare I say it - disabled enough to be effectively shielded from criticism. In other words, the 16-year-old Swedish activist, who has Asberger’s Syndrome, is the perfect propaganda face of the left’s weird climate change cult. And there’s no denying that they’re using her to maximum, politically devastating effect.
Consider leftist and media reaction to President Donald Trump’s reaction to Thunberg’s becoming the youngest person to win Time’s “Person of the Year.” “So ridiculous,” Trump tweeted Thursday. “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”
At which point the tried-but-true ‘Donald Trump Is A Big Mean Bully’ narrative predictably reached fever pitch. CNN’s Brooke Baldwin and virtually every other non-conservative media figure accused the president of essentially “bullying a child.” Reaction on Twitter was just as fierce. Liberal filmmaker Rob Reiner called Thunberg a “passionate caring champion for the survival of our planet,” and Trump a “Soulless Pathologically Lying Malignant Narcissist who cheats to win and pisses on our Constitution and the Rule of Law.” Star Trek “resistance” clown George Takei wrote, “So...kids stop being shielded from adult bullies the minute they stand up for something. Got it.”
I could fill up a whole other column or three with the liberal tears, but you get the picture. However, although Trump’s tweet undeniably gave his critics an opening, it wasn’t entirely beyond the pale. The president probably tweeted that because Thunberg appears, well, angry … pretty much all the time, especially when she’s up on stage wagging her finger at world leaders. And giving her a “Person of the Year” award IS more than a little “ridiculous.” Instead of using what is likely mostly-natural and cyclical slight global temperature changes as a vehicle to seize power for the left, Thunberg SHOULD be in school with other kids, or even, yes, watching a “good old fashioned movie with a friend.”
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But instead, she’s out there, in the public eye, giving speeches to world leaders and becoming Time’s “Person of the Year.” And yet, we aren’t supposed to criticize her because she is young and has a disability. To borrow a pithy phrase from Takei - “Got it.”
But first lady Melania Trump didn’t “get it.” Instead, she issued a statement defending her husband, sort of, and drawing a key distinction between her son, Barron, and Thunberg: “Their son is not an activist who travels the globe giving speeches. He is a 13-year-old who wants and deserves privacy.”
The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty wrote an entire op-ed slamming Mrs. Trump for using what she considered a “classic dodge that bullies can be relied to fall back on when they abuse someone who is smaller and weaker than they are.” The “dodge,” according to Tumulty, was “He (or she) asked for it.”
Trump wasn’t, Tumulty opined, “airing his differences with her over the issue of climate change.” Instead, “He was calling attention to her demeanor. Thunberg has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. Those who have this condition often do not express their emotions as others do.”
While that may be true, it does beg the question: Why aren’t leftists then speaking about against Thunberg being thrust onto the world stage as she has been? This young woman is, after all, a person with a disability, who does not “express their emotions as others do.” Is she not? Isn’t taking advantage of her passionate, emotional speeches in order to seize power for the left in effect taking advantage of this teenager’s disability? Finally, isn’t that just a bit, uh, manipulative?
Of course, leftists are perfectly content to take advantage of Thunberg, and her disability, for their own ends, which belies any false outrage they pretend to have at Trump’s comment or, for that matter, any other punch-back from the right.
Speaking of Thunberg’s influence on the climate change debate in September, Fox News host Tucker Carlson opined that the Swedish activist has become “a kind of human shield.”
“You stole my childhood,” Carlson sardonically said after playing a clip of her now famous UN speech. “Do what I want you to do or else you are evil. How do you respond to statements like that? The truth is, you can’t respond and of course that’s the point. When you use children to demand power, they become a kind of human shield. You can hide safely behind them. No one can criticize you. But who would do something that unscrupulous? Anyone who would do that is someone who would literally do anything to seize control, and that’s exactly what they are doing.”
But fight back we must, or the left could eventually succeed in using the wacky climate cult that Thunberg has become the face of to implement their Communist ‘utopia.’
And if that happens, we may ALL someday find ourselves “against the wall.”
Follow Scott on Twitter @SKMorefield
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