Trump and His Generation Have Declared War on the Planet’s Youth
Greed alone can’t explain obstructionism toward climate change. It’s an annihilating wish to take everything with them when they go.
Once, when I was teaching my undergraduate students a class in writing opinion pieces, one of them asked me why adults should care what they thought about anything. It was a good question; I didn’t give her an answer until the following week. Then I told her: “Because they don’t understand you. They’re afraid of you. And they know you’re going to replace them.”
I thought of that conversation again when I saw that image of young Greta Thunberg and Donald Trump crossing paths at the UN: she staring at him like a laser, he, as usual, oblivious as fog. It is already iconic: in its meme form, he’s labeled “dinosaurs” and she’s labeled “asteroid” (though I think the more apt comparison would be mammal). Although their near miss was undramatic in real life, it’s rare that history offers a visual contrast as stark, polar, almost cartoonish — maybe in the surreal photo op of Elvis, herald of the counterculture, shaking hands with arch-square Nixon, or that old class picture that happens to include noted philosophers Wittgenstein and Hitler. They’re almost like tarot figures embodying their respective…
