Two-Glock Greta
Follow me on Instagram: @michaeldavidmodern
I'm always on the lookout for
exceptional young people, and a few months ago, I first become aware
of Greta Thunberg. I had just misspelled her name “Great” and I
felt like leaving it. Greta was only known to a few people, but I
suspect now she is known throughout the world. I haven't listened to
the speech she gave at the UN yesterday—I'm saving that for later
when I really need to get inspired—but I watched the video of her
talking without sound (you really don't need the sound to know that
she's coming after people!). I read a few of the quotes and decided
that I needed to make a few remarks.
Since my earliest memories, I've been
disturbed by the way we shut young people out of leadership roles in
society. I felt this more and more as I got older and realized that
I was a person fortunate to have some exceptional capabilities, and I
watched adults fumbling around with things that I knew how do to
easily. And a lot of these kids I run into are smarter than me.
There are a ton of twelve year olds in the world who are smarter than
all but a very few adults.
It was simultaneously inspiring and
hilarious reading the quotes of how this young girl told these world
leaders how it is, and then, it occurred to me this morning as I was
on my way to get some pancakes for breakfast that, instead of having
Greta have to come yell at these people, why don't we just give her
their job? Why not? I don't know who the EU parliament member from
Sweden is. Perhaps they are doing a great job, and facilitated
Greta's UN appearance. But why shouldn't Greta Thunberg be allowed
to stand for that position, or any position that she may be qualified
for?
People will say she too young, too
immature. Really? What is that based on? There is no money in
honest political activism, so Greta qualifies for the MAT Girl club
because she is doing things that are incredibly important. And the
MAT Girls in entertainment here in America have proven that there are
young people that can handle enormous responsibility. It would
appear that yesterday, Greta was the responsible adult in the room.
Yes, there may be things she would need
to know that she doesn't. But do you really think THAT girl isn't
intelligent enough to ask for advice and help when she needs it?
What the hell does she need to waste the next fifteen years of her
life in school learning quantum physics for? She can call me or a
thousand other people, and I'll explain that. All more school is
going to do for her is make her jaded with all the shit she's going
to have to watch in the next decade if we don't do something, and she
might give up and go do something else.
Smart people know how to ask the right
questions, and I'd bet that Greta does. It's just that she won't be
asking the entrenched political cronies, so they are afraid of her.
And that's the bottom line. Power is AFRAID of Greta Thunberg and
all the young people like her. That is why the promote the idea that
you have to be fifty or have a PhD to know anything. And that is why
our world is chained to the past. I'm not proposing we cut out older
people—I think we need more ninety year olds in the public
discourse too. More on that later.
But I do think young people need
mentors, and if younger people were allowed to stand for such high
offices, I would propose a system where they have an official mentor
in the body that they are joining. Not someone seventy years old;
that would defeat the purpose. The mentor should be someone else who
is also young, but with a little more experience so that they can
show the young person the ropes. We need this is sports, in business
and in entertainment as well. Any young person who enters a field
should have an official mentor that they can choose.
I don't usually like to nominate people
for jobs as I don't know if it is something that they would want to
do, and certain ideas, once they are out there, can put pressure on
people to do things they don't feel comfortable with. But in this
case, I think it will be okay. I would nominate Greek European
Parliament Member Eva Kaili to be Greta's mentor if she became
Sweden's MP. I know Germany and Greece have some tension in recent
years, but I'm not aware of anything between Sweden and Greece where
Swedes would be uncomfortable with their EU MP being mentored by a
Greek.
Eva Kaili seems to be a capable and
responsible young leader, and it doesn't hurt that she's also
beautiful. Am I going to get in trouble with Interpol if I say that
Eva Kaili is smoking hot? Because she is. And she's an architect?
How would I not like that girl? She also looks like a young lady
that really needs a break. If Jane Galt doesn't want to marry me, I
would love to go spend a few days on a Greek island with Eva and talk
about Frank Lloyd Wright, Aristotle and where to find the best gyros. I might not come
back...
If I did come back, if I'm asked if we
visited the Parthenon, I'll say what Shaquille O'Neal said when asked
that question after returning from the Athens Olympics: “I don't
remember the names of all the clubs we went to.” One of Shaq's
many hilarious one-liners. But if Eva likes the Parthenon, and
hasn't already seen it a million times, I'll go with her. And I'd
like to know if she agrees with me that a lot of what's wrong with
the world today is Plato's fault.
We need more diversity in leadership,
not just ethnic diversity, but we need more age diversity, more
economic diversity, more diversity of educational background. Hey,
if we can find a baby smart enough to follow things, then we should
have babies represented in the public discourse. Perhaps holding
public office would be too much for a baby, but then again, I don't
know. Some of these so-called leaders, all they do is whine and cry
and shit their pants on television. But I certainly think that there
are plenty of teenagers qualified to hold public office, and we
should start putting them in there.
Now, I know what would happen. Older
people will try to conspire to make them fail, and then say, “See!”.
First page in their playbook. I'm going to be the number one cop on
the beat looking out for that shit. And I'm a nice guy,
rehabilitated to peacefulness from pacifism, but I'm the last one you
want after you because you tried to sabotage Greta Thunberg, or any
other young leader. I won't even come in with guns, I'll come
bare-handed so you know I'm dead serious. And I've been though page
two, three, four, page ten thousand of your playbook, so don't even
try it. Give them an honest chance to do the job.
While I'm deeply concerned about
environmental issues just as Greta is, I have some different
perspectives on some of these issues. I think that we have to begin
to recognize that polarization is a tool that powerful people use to
avert change. A lot of young environmentalists have been pushed to
an almost anarcho-primitivist worldview because of all the seemingly
pathological actions they have seen perpetrated by industrial
society. This is not good, and to combat it, we need more voices in
the conversation, rather than voices yelling at each other from a
distance.
I saw an exceptional twenty-one year
old young man named Benji Backer give an interview. He represents a
conservative group focused on environmental issues. Benji was more
articulate, informed and thoughtful in discussing these issues than a
lot of the leaders twice his age that I've heard, and in about ten
minutes disseminated a lot of good information. If I saw him talk,
and then saw Donald Trump talk, and didn't know otherwise, I would
think Benji must be the president and that they changed the age
requirement while I was sleeping. We should change it. I'm not a
conservative, so I might not support Benji for that job if he even
wanted it. But I'll support him when he right, and he's right on
this.
Benji and I probably disagree strongly
with Greta on a lot of things, and Greta and I probably disagree with
Benji on a lot of things. But the three of us all agree we want to
live on a planet that is green and bio-diverse, with fresh air and
clean water, and safe healthy communities. So, I would propose that
the two of them form a leadership team on this issue, and forget
about the areas where they may disagree and work to find a solution
plan that everyone can embrace. And I'll support them in any way
that I can.
We need more of this. This is the
medicine to cure social and political polarization. Instead of
everyone acting like Gollum and trying to be the “One to Leader To
Rule Them All”, we need to form leadership teams—two leaders from
opposite sides of the spectrum who agree on a fundamental issue, and
a person who has connections to both sides of the spectrum who
endorses and supports them. Then we can really start to get this
train rolling.
The establishment has had literally
forever to solve these problems and they can't. But we must give
them credit for the fact that most of them aren't bad people, and
they were trying, but the voices of the 21st century will
have to be people who are closer to the 21st century. But
the leaders we have had did a lot of good work, and many of them will do more still. But there are some that, like a coach subbing in a new
player, we need to pat them on back and say “Good job, your work is
done. Go have a seat on the bench.” By that I mean, take your
family to a nice resort and relax. Take your kids to the park and
museum and remind yourself what real life is like. Go back to that
favorite old cheap restaurant where you used to go with your wife in
law school when you were struggling. But in any case, GET OUT OF THE
WAY!
Follow me on Instagram: @michaeldavidmodern
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