November 26, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
ENVIRONMENTAL
MADNESS:
The Second Coming of
Greta Thunberg
Friends,
I pass on
to you an original essay which has not appeared previously or elsewhere. This
one, titled “The Second Coming of Greta Thunberg,” was published today at the LewRockwell.com Web site, and it
documents an over-the-top example of what I call “environmental madness,” the
conversion of what was once a rational and legitimate concern for our
environment, our natural resources, and the goodness granted to us by God, into
a stridently fanatical, irrational, and hysterical semi-religion—which in a
very real sense attempts to supplant the traditional faith that created the two
millennia of our civilization. What it offers is a stark, verifiably mad
counter-reality, a new Barbarism without Hope, without Faith, and without God.
Hilaire Belloc’s characterization of the Barbarians is quite
apt:
“[T]he Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in
this that he cannot make;
that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every
Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation exactly that has been
true. We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the
long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his
irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds
refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and
awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.”
I pass on my essay at LewRockwell here:
By Boyd D. Cathey November 26, 2019
Back on November 20, 2019, Tucker Carlson had a guest on his
program, a self-denominated progressive—which he often does. But this time the
guest was an environmentalist “with a difference,” as the saying goes. And this
guest specifically reminded the television audience that formerly, not that
long ago, environmentalists—conservation voters—supported strict immigration
limits.
And the reason was simple enough: an overcrowded population
within our borders increases dangers and threats to our environment, to our
natural resources, and to our efforts to maintain those characteristics and
that natural goodness and beauty which, I suspect, most of us appreciate and
value highly.
One of the greatest blessings we have as Americans is the
amazing pristine beauty of our country. Ever been to the coast of Maine, or Big
Sur, or the Tetons? It’s incredible. Now, why is that? Well, even with 320
million people living here, this country still is not particularly crowded.
That’s the key, the old environmental movement understood that, and was why
they campaigned for lower immigration levels — because crowded countries are
never beautiful countries. But the modern left and modern environmentalists
care much more about identity politics than the actual physical environment, so
they’re pushing for open borders, because their donors want it.
Carlson’s point and the reason for having the guest on was to
emphasize just how contradictory the modern progressivist environmentalist
movement has become, how it had become captured by a zealous ideology.
And that point hit home the very next day. For then news leaked
out and spread like wild-fire on social media. Indeed, dozens of mostly
strident and frenzied Leftist Webzines featured the story:
“Greta Thunberg: Did She Time Travel from 120 Years Ago?”
The story was that someone had discovered an old, archived
photograph taken 120 years ago, now housed at the University of Wisconsin
Special Collections. In that photograph was the image of a young teen who could
pass—the Twitter world speculated—as climate activist Greta Thunberg’s
doppelganger, her exact twin.
Art News inquired breathlessly: “Is This Photo Proof That Greta
Thunberg Is a Time Traveler From the California Gold Rush?” Aol.com exclaimed with scarcely concealed wonder: “120-year-old
photo of Greta Thunberg lookalike is freaking the internet out.” The
Aol account continued, “The images show three young children working on a gold
mine in Canada’s Yukon territory in 1898, with the eldest child bearing an
uncanny resemblance to Thunberg, leading many to claim that the teen activist
is a ‘time traveler’ sent to save the world.”
Although many posters admitted that the story appeared to
partake of sheer fantasy, the Twitter Left remained abuzz. The image posted
online caused many to speculate: “…Thunberg might be superhuman (well, more than she is
already).”
Tweets posted by Indy100 reveal the
insanity of many on the environmental Left:
‘Greta Thunberg’ is in a photo from 120 years ago…. Greta’s a time
traveller, from the future, and she’s here to save us.
*****
Maybe in the near future she will decide the only way to save us
is by traveling to the past, so the pic is of a future her in the past.
*****
Wouldn’t this mean that she’s a time traveller from the past, or
from now and went to back then? I guess she could be from the future but that
would mean she time travelled twice for some reason. Maybe she realizes it’s
too late here in our time and travels again soon?!
*****
Great now she will be getting re-attacked by @foxnews saying the “Dems sent her back from the future”
*****
Or…Greta Thurnburg went back to the past to try to stop progress
there, and was so unsuccessful then as well, that she was able to come into
existence in a country that benefits greatly from industrialization, without
which her cell phone is not possible.
She even fulfills and complies faithfully with the precepts of
her own warnings. Unlike Bernie Sanders, or Al Gore, or Leonardo di Caprio who
love their private airplanes, she refuses to fly in those carbon-chewing
jets—none of those polluting machines for her. The Aol story relates: “After
three months in the United States, she’s currently sailing back across the
Atlantic with Australian Youtubers, a journey that is being documented across
social media. On Wednesday, she shared that the sailboat has encountered rough
weather but the team will hopefully ‘arrive in Lisbon, Portugal,
sometime in early December’.”
Indeed, this is fanaticism with logic and principle! Commented
another Tweeter: “Greta Thunberg is ‘The Doctor of Salvation’.”
Listen once again to Thunberg at the UN:
“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back
in school on the other side of the ocean… People are suffering, people are
dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing … and all you talk about is money and
eternal fairy tales of economic growth. How dare you?”
Was this indeed “the Second Coming of Greta
Thunberg”? Had that poor maid from circa 1899 all of a sudden
miraculously returned to earth—time traveled as the Twitter Leftists
speculated—to warn us of impending environmental doom (which will happen in
just ten years according to Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and now most
Democrats)? Were we in the awing presence of a pure and innocent young girl, a
secular prophetess, who had miraculously migrated through an entire century to
warn usof the consequences of our environmental and social “sins”? Were we
witnessing the 21st century’s paganized answer to the Holy Children of
Fatima or to St. Bernadette of Lourdes, who had received direction from the
Blessed Virgin to warn us of our apostasy from the faith of our Christian
fathers?
Or was this, rather, a wallowing in the demonic dross that now
overlays and dominates our culture, our politics, our entertainment, and
environmentalism? And from those who have turned real environmental
concerns and questions into a veritable religion where there can be no dissent,
no questioning—those who have created a counter-reality that seeks to replace
the two millennia civilization created by our ancestors and their faith?
Of course, this speculation, this demented “miracle-ism” emits
from those who, ironically, either openly deny or at a minimum pervert
traditional doctrines of the Church and Christianity, who doubt those miracles
recounted by Holy Scripture, and dismiss such accounts as myths and fables.
But when it comes to the meek and mild modest maid from modern
Sweden, well, she can do no wrong. She is the Angelic Child, chosen to speak
Truth to the Powerful, worshipped in thousands of school rooms across this
nation—indeed across the entire world.
Certainly, as some commenters allow, Thunberg suffers from
Aspergers Syndrome, she has a handicap, and criticism of her should bear that
in mind. And, yes, her parents and/or probably some officiously ideological
educators probably had much to do with the person she has become and the
beliefs she now espouses and spouts in front of admiring and gullible minions
across the globe.
But these factors do not lessen her personal responsibility nor
her agreement to become a pagan icon—becoming, as it were, a modern Image of
Baal for modern environmentalists and eyes-glazed-over progressivists. She fits
neatly into their ideological passions and desires as a demi-goddess, a “Vox
clamantis in Deserto”—a voice crying in the wilderness.
In this sense she incarnates both the fierceness and stridency
of the unrelenting assault on our civilization and the perversion of genuine
concern about our environment. And for that she must be held accountable and
judged accordingly.
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
Copyright © 2019 Boyd D. Cathey
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