Child Saint

I find the fixation on Swedish climate hysteric Greta Thunberg fascinating; she resembles one of the “child saints” who often appear in cults and relatively young religions, and are held by the True Believers of that faith to be especially pure in their prophetic pronouncements from the deity or other metaphysical source.  Thunberg just parrots the same old apocalyptic “the world will end in 12 years” nonsense as other fanatics trying to hijack genuine concern for climate change to support their mad social engineering schemes, but her worshipers imagine that her complete lack of adult life experience and her scant knowledge of either meteorology or economics somehow makes the silly pronouncements more true when she repeats them (especially if she screams at adults while doing so).  And when sensible people (or even foolish ones who pretend climate change isn’t real because they find it inconvenient) correctly point out the absurdity of venerating a troubled teenager who isn’t actually an expert in anything (except perhaps histrionics) as the font of all wisdom on a very complex scientific subject, the Gretists get as offended as any fundamentalist Muslim confronted with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.  The most interesting and disturbing part of the phenomenon is the proliferation of icons of Thunberg serving simultaneously as objects of veneration for the faithful and, presumably, as a sort of scarecrow to the infidels.  I mean, what’s the intended message of this one from a cafeteria in Tel Aviv?  “Holy Saint Greta, bless our utensils that we may endure these raw vegetables thou hast given us to sustain our sinful bodies…”?  As one who attended Catholic schools for a dozen years, I find this very familiar.  Then there’s the giant mural in San Francisco, whose unmistakeable “Big Brother” vibe reveals a hilariously-huge blind spot on the artist’s part, unless of course he’s intentionally trolling One Atmosphere, the patrons who paid for the ugly thing.  Naturally, their spokespeople uttered all the usual fashionable nonsense about “raising awareness” and “sending a message”, but don’t want people thinking too hard about the fact that the project used over 700 cans of petrochemical-based aerosol spray paint (plus sealers, plus the detergents used to prepare the surface, plus transportation costs for the workers, plus…)  As you can probably guess, this observation met with some pushback from her disciples on Twitter, who claim that the environmental impact from the project is negligible; actually, I agree with that, but I’m not the one who tries to shame people out of using plastic straws or spray deodorant, or who flies two crew members across the Atlantic so she can make a big show of crossing the ocean in a sailboat instead of flying only one person (herself).  But in religion, facts are not important; only symbols and “messages” are.  And apparently Thunberg’s devotees think her “message” is important enough to justify littering the Earth with creepy testaments to their adoration.