Everyone Definitely Having A Normal One Over Greta Thunberg
The absolute rage the activist inspires in the world's worst men is one of her most admirable qualities.
Ever since Greta Thunberg first came on the scene as a 15-year-old climate activist, there have been those — adult conservative men, mostly — who have been positively enraged by her mere existence. Like, take the amount of thought you have given to Greta Thunberg in your entire life, multiply it by a million and you are maybe somewhere near the amount of real estate she occupies in their minds.
This week and last, Thunberg has been in the news as she and a group of other activists from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition attempted to bring food and humanitarian aid to starving Gazans, which made the Israeli government very, very mad. It’s hard to tell if their position is that “killing 54,000 Palestinians, starving and maiming even more and refusing to let aid into the country so that people can have food and medical supplies is a good thing, actually, and Greta Thunberg should congratulate them for doing that,” that everything is actually fine, or that it’s just gauche to bring it up, but whichever way, they were not letting their ship, the Madleen — which the Israeli government had been referring to as a “selfie yacht” full of “celebrities” — in.
Unfortunately for Thunberg, her fellow activists, and those in Gaza who might really like a sandwich right about now, their ship was intercepted by the Israeli government — with some of the activists being deported and others, including Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament, being detained.
“Greta Thunberg just departed Israel on a flight to Sweden (via France),” the Israel Foreign Ministry posted to Xitter on Tuesday, sharing pictures of the famously anti-plane travel climate activist sitting on a plane.
“The operation of intercepting and blocking the Madleen in the middle of the night and in international waters violates international law and put the safety of those on the boat at risk,” Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said in a statement. Of course, for that to have any impact, someone, somewhere, aside from activists, would have to give a flying shit about international law, which absolutely no one does (least of all the United States — have you seen our prison system?).
Since March 2, Israel has instituted a blockade on humanitarian aid going into Gaza. They started allowing a trickle in around May, but it’s barely a fraction of the “practically nothing” they were getting before the war and the region is in serious danger of famine.
Anyway! This has been very, very exciting news for the aforementioned adult conservative men with a hate-on for Greta.
Here, from the National Review, is one of the most overwrought, batshit things I have ever read in my life:
We should be prepared for the day when Thunberg succumbs to the temptation to outdo herself, begetting an ignominious end to her career in public life that hopefully takes all her thoughtless boosters’ reputations down with her.
In the meantime, however, we can enjoy the efforts from targets of Thunberg’s thoughtless agitation to impose some shame on their tormentor. Quite unlike the beaten and broken Western commercial interests that supplicated before Thunberg when her hobgoblin was environmental apocalypticism, the state of Israel still possesses enough self-confidence to stand up for itself. […]Whatever discomfort Thunberg experiences as a result of her uninformed agitation, it will prove cold comfort. The adulation and funding she will receive from the political dilettantes to whom she caters will prove more than compensatory. But we can take some measure of solace in the degree to which Thunberg and company are being forced to reconcile their blinkered worldview with the reality they’re encountering right now. It will have to suffice for a comeuppance — at least, until Thunberg and her ilk take their protest-flavored performance art too far.
Tag yourself, I’m “beaten and broken Western commercial interests!”
I mean, we’re talking about a 22-year-old woman who wants to protect the environment and for people to not starve to death. Even if you disagree with her, it’s just a little bit of an overreaction, no? Like, this is an outsized amount of anger over a 15-year-old having dared to try to make you feel bad about not recycling.
Speaking of batshittery, before the Madleen was intercepted, the boat had some trouble with its navigation systems — which world-famous spoon-bending fraudster Uri Geller claims he made happen with his psychic powers. You know, the ones that were famously and repeatedly debunked by James Randi (once in cahoots with Johnny Carson)?
If anything in this whole world made sense, Geller would have disappeared after that. Or, you know, at the very least, anyone aware of who he is would be aware of the fact that he is a fraud — but even The New York Times, in an all-too-glowing 2023 profile of the man, refused to outright state that he can’t bend spoons with his mind, because “civility and fairness demands this.”
“I stopped the navigation systems of the ship,” Geller told the Jerusalem Post. Geller, an Israeli native who, again, cannot fucking bend spoons with his mind, had posted on Xitter on Friday that he would use his “psychic powers” to mess with her boat, along with a picture of Thunberg in a shirt photoshopped to say “I’m doing it for the publicity.”
You know, unlike the guy who is out here claiming he has magic powers.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump — who has been positively hysterical over Thunberg’s existence ever since she became the youngest person to be named Time’s Person of the Year — whined on Monday that Thunberg is a “strange and angry” person who needed anger management classes.
Thunberg, as she arrived in Paris after being deported from Israel, responded to his well-thought out criticism: “I think the world needs many more young angry women, to be honest. Especially with everything going on right now. That’s the thing we need the most of.”
Agreed! And only partly because it clearly drives the worst men in the world absolutely insane.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Psychics, eh?
As one policewoman said: "In all my 20 years on the NYPD Bunco Squad, I never met one 'psychic' who figured out I was an undercover cop."
I made Uri Geller look like a hilariously transparent fraud with MY MIND!!
(... stares intently at camera / waggles eyebrows...)
In other news, Greta has been a very useful litmus test. Men will whinge about her, and you will know you do not want them in your life.