Nothing warms the heart of a parent more than witnessing their child study a modern-day heroine. In recent weeks, my youngest child has been finalizing her middle school year by researching the celebrity-activist Greta Thunberg. Now, as you can imagine, the opportunity to clarify the underlying realities we silently exist in was not something I would let pass through my fingertips. As electricity remains, as Hemingway once put it, “a science not yet dominated by the workers,” so too do we have progressive intelligentsia and academia on high funneling their (oft-financially rewarding) agendas though a 23-year-old Swedish activist.
Let’s start with the matter of climate change. Living among the bluest of the blue on this stretch of I-91 from Northampton to Putney, I relish those ever-occuring situations where those who do not adhere to the green dogma of “humans bad, trees good” are openly ridiculed and cast into academia’s waste-bin for the uneducated. Translating this into words my daughter can understand, I cautiously point out to her that when danger is called out by humanity, second off the tongue is usually related to human stewardship.
Wait, that’s not true. Those who bang the drum that the Earth is going to cook itself by way of human behavior are not selfish people. Right?
The second emblem on Greta’s shield of peaceful protest is that matter of Palestinian liberation.
Venture within 500 miles of Greenfield, and you will likely find numerous “community-based” organizations which state they are in “solidarity” with those people from a land which is now controlled by Israel. Each town, educational institution, and community-based organization appears to have some “for Palestine” subgroup which is responsible for the Average Joe knowing the “truth” about the present situation.
Such wonder it is to see a child witness the reality of politick. Though middle school curricula often leaves out the unpleasant associations between movements and machinations, I’m fortunate to have pages of my own reality that I can reflect upon hoping it assists this end-of-the-year project. Tying this into Greta’s own projections, it is kindly revealed to my offspring that both climate change and Palestine liberation appear to be controlled by those who share a philosophy more akin to our present overlords (i.e. Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump).
Peeling down the present rulership of our world to its bare bones, one may find it resembling the genus of other ideological battle lines. Since math at the middle school level involves the use of fractions, and Greta’s handlers are likely to at least be at that level of mathematical ability, we could theoretically break her philosophy down to separate parts. A tidy four-part collage as there ever was: socialist-style government control, elitist notions of leadership, nationalist appeals to unity and self-determination, and academic-sounding reverence for education and cultural theory all placed upon an innocent Swede for the sake of those who own. “How do we save the marsh and the woods? We OWN the marsh and the woods.”
Take that line from I Heart Huckabees and you may find it fits with whatever agenda Greta is modeling for the youth of today. Want to effectively respond to climate change? Buy these green-washed products and give land stewardship over to those who “care” about the earth. Feel like Palestinian people are being oppressed? Push upon them socialist and submissive ideologies and get in line for the non-fungible Nobel Prize of joining a group who makes decisions for a people that honestly may be better off just deciding for themselves.
To many, it would seem a bitter and disrespectful move to point out the realities of a child’s hero. Our society has grown too accustomed to the hero which is, and has forever been, perfect and always doing the “right” thing. Criticism of Greta Thunberg, I would suppose at least in this neck of the woods, places me in the same line of sight as someone who questions climate change. It is to agree, or to be cast into the role of enemy. This is the apparent philosophy of our age; and even though the voice of a child is precious and sincere, those who feed them breakfast may have more selfish ideas in mind.
The exciting part of parenting today is awaiting the changes of what our children will hold as “fact” in the years to come. Children become adults as heroes become villains, and seeing past the hype never seems complete without looking in the mirror and saying aloud, “I told you so.”
Ahmad Esfahani lives in Greenfield.