The force is strong, with the swedish police!
Itβs super bizarre seeing this girl grow up exclusively by photos of her being arrested.
How likely is she to be elected there in the next decade ? Would be quite ironic to have the officer who removed the today to welcome her in a decade
The problem with politics is that it tends to chew up and spit out people with a modicum of honesty, integrity and a moral compass. They either give up, or become corrupted to the point that they can no longer fulfill the purpose that they went into politics for.
This is generally true, but there are also many notable exceptions. Here in Germany I could name:
- Gregor Gysi
- Of the left Party
- Always does what he thinks is best for the people
- Many political opponents tried really hard to stick dirt on him and failed
- Nico Semsrott
- Arguably not that long in politics
- Took a stance against Martin Sonnenborn (who is the very popular leader of a satirical party) in an affair and is now without a party (Yes this makes it likely he will not be in the next parliament)
- As far as I have seen votes always in favor of the people
- Patrick Breyer
-Pirate Party
- fights for digital freedom and privacy since decades
- Always follows the pirate paradigm: transparency. He publishes all his meeting with lobbyists.
- Helps to educate the public and discovered quite a few hidden legislative attempts to undermine privacy
I have great respect for Gysi, and always did since I first listened to a campaign speech from him in the mid-90s. Heβs a politician who has stuck to his principles and prevailed through adversities where many other people would have just given up. But, even if you disregard his flaws, blind spots around Russia, and the poor handling of the internal crises which have now led to a split of his party, he has hardly ever been in a position where he could truly make a change in politics. His party may have been part of the government in some German states, but he himself never has been. And this may sound cynical, but itβs relatively easy to be a principled politician when thereβs not much at stake. Itβs when you actually have some power and influence, that the wheat separates from the chaff - when you actually have to handle all kinds of pressure from all sides and see what your principles are worth to you.
This is not a defense of any other politicians - I wish there were way more who didnβt give up their principles at the first sign of pressure. Iβm just saying that Gysi has rarely been in a position where he had to do that.
I am unfamiliar with the other two, but I would say similar concerns may apply there.
Gregor Gysi
Gysi disappointed me massively when he defended Russia in the Nawalny poisoning and speculated about who might βactually profitβ without the slightest shred of evidence.
Itβs a little counter-intuitive, but she probably feels like sheβs more helpful in her current role than she would be in politics. A politician has to be a jack-of-all-trades, learning about a lot of different fields, dealing with education, military, civil law, budget, etc etc etc. Where an activist can specialize exclusively in one thing, gaining a lot of clout and helping provide leadership.
Global climate activism has long needed a leader, its own Mahatma Gandhi. Now its getting one, and it leaves her very, very influential. She canβt be thrown out of office either, she could only be assassinated, which would turn her into a martyr like Navalny. So, sheβs steadily growing powerful and is virtually unstoppable right now.
She probably wants to keep it that way. Getting elected would derail that a little bit, and having these kinds of non-governmental civil leaders is actually very important.
Yea, everyone thinks politicians need those skills, but do the current bout of politicians even have those skills, either?!
There seems to be an assumed competency that doesnβt match reality.
I think a greater problem is that some of them actually are. In this case, theyβll know more than the average citizen about a given issue, with a certain understanding of the nuance and complexity that the citizen, with mainly just access to major media, lacks. This makes their decisions look strange to us, in the same way someone might wonder βwhy did the engineer design this this way? makes no sense to me.β
Additionally, since theyβre also knowledgeable about a lot of other considerations, theyβll have to balance them against each other, where even a highly-knowledgeable specialist might not fully understand the reasons something cannot be done yet.
Lastly, they have to win re-election, so they have to balance all of that against normal peopleβs perceptions and ignorant opinions. All this balancing is going to naturally make them seem very out-of-touch with an average citizen.
And thatβs just any good ones. You also have plenty of crazy ideologues running around these days, that actually want to undermine democracy and seize greater power, or want some unchecked laissez-faire system or whatever. People whose faith has blinded them to reason and rationality.
All that said, politics has always been messy and ugly, thatβs inherent. The only alternatives open the door for unchecked corruption to run things, like Russia deals with. As Churchill said, democracy is terrible. Itβs just that everything else is a lot worse.
Iβm out of the loop, what is she doing these days? How does she make a living?
Sheβs constantly doing political activism in the name of ensuring environmental policies and getting into a lot of trouble with the law because of it.
Sheβs not throwing tomato soup at Da Vinci, mind you, but she was present during the environmental protest occupation when Germany decided to start mining brown coal again. Youβll know it; itβs the same protest with the mud wizard meme.
For all the disgruntled people saying sheβs a family funded shill she seems rather dedicated to her cause. A shill wouldβve stopped ages ago when theyβre no longer front page news.
She wrote a book that has a lot of reviews in Amazon. Arguably, thatβs probably enough to allow her to continue doing activism for the time being.
That and family. I mean, typical 21yo wonβt take a charter flight to another continent for some eco-event.
Frankly anywhere near me in the social fabric sheβs a joke, but you never know.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/25/8881364/greta-thunberg-climate-change-flying-airline
Here you go, try to stay up to date. She doesnβt fly apparently.
Greta has become mostly irrelevant since she got caught up in the generic SJW protest movement.
She has even protested new wind powerplants.
Had she stayed an environmental activist she would still be relevant.
Fair, I tried to find a better word for it, but drew a blank.
Reading this made me realize that I havenβt heard that term for a long time and that I probably missused it.
I am sorry for the misstake
I mean my comment was not only making fun of the outdated phraseology, but also the idea that social justice isnβt a legitimate branch of sociological and legal change that persisted ~10-20 years ago has been far blown out of the water
βsocial justice warriorsβ - who were considered risible in 2010 have since achieved
- criminal justice reforms for youth jails
- minimum pay raises and unionization of global corps (eg Starbucks) as a direct result of Occupy, to which the entire world now talks about Bank bail outs, billionaire taxes/wealth tax, borrow-die schemes, income inequality over the breakfast table
- legal weed
- BLM instrumental in making politicians renounce stop and frisk, to the extent Bloomberg had to renounce all his policies in his presidential run
- #metoo leading to the conviction if Weinstein, and massive revolutions in the use of intimacy and consent coordinators and supervisors in entertainments Productions
- DREAM act to DACA
- rent reform in Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Long Beach, Orlando etc
- no solutions as yet but everyone is mad about gerrymandering and voter suppression every election cycle now
- New Green Deal
- Slow but incremental advances in protecting children (and indeed adults) from gun violence and the slip of power from the NRAβs influence over elected politicians
Iβm involved in various leftist causes and see this shit so often. Like you feel like you need to be a βthought leaderβ instead of just staying in your lane. Or organizations just get taken over by people who have completely antithetical agendas.
For instance I was somewhat involved in our local DSA chapter for a few years after Bernie and Iβm still on the email list. They just sent out a email about organizing a βqueer and transgender promβ but that in order to attend you would have to have proof of up-to-date covid vaccination.
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Now donβt get me wrong, queer and transgender proms are great if youβre into proms, but what does it have to do with democratic socialism?
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Why on earth is the DSA the organization that is still flying the Moderna flag in 2024? Everybody else has given up on their mostly ineffective vaccines years ago. Also last I checked Big Pharma are the bad guys!
One of the things that excited me about Bernie and groups like DSA originally is that they seemed to serve as a new and revitalized economic left focused on salient issues and rejecting identity politics. I remember one of the rally cries was βracial politics are class politics.β But now theyβre basically just yet another moveon.org or something.
Her dabbling in things like the Near-East conflict absolutely hurt her cause. Itβs generally not a good idea to fragment something that youβre fighting for.
Thatβs a pretty German exclusive perspective. German media on the near east is not only extremely one-sided, it is completely isolated in its one-sidedness.
Respecting the rights and land of indigenous people is not protesting wind power.
Just because you donβt agree with her opinions on neo-nazis and Sami people doesnβt mean all of her opinions are suddenly wrong.
This latest protest is especially relevant, because the current government in Sweden doesnβt believe in climate change and is actively trying to violate Swedenβs international climate obligations.
I never claimed that her oppinions were all wrong, she could just have stayed outside the discussion and kept focus on the environmental issues.
Climate change is an ecological, social and economical issue. You cannot reduce it to either dimension.
And you cannot solve climate change without adressing the social injustices in our societies that are excarberated by climate change, in the same way you cannot keep the economy afloat without adressing climate change.
Donβt remember the context, and donβt want to defend Greta, but windmills can be very bad for the environment if done wrong. Hell, everything can be bad for the environment if done wrong.
I am not complaining about windmills as a concept, I like them, they look cool, I just brought it up as a reason why Greta is hypocritical.