What? Did they? How?
It’s a mess of a sentence, and a mess of a thought, and should be a shame to the news organization that pushed it.
You don’t use vandalism. You commit it. And who is this “us” in the headline that are now being “made” to question our priorities? And what priorities did the writer have in mind?
How to meet the mortgage payments now that inflation has bitten fast and hard? Going to church, if one is religious? Fixing your small business after the COVID madness? Worrying about your pension in a time of rampant inflation? Out of work and trying desperately to make ends meet?
Have any of these real “priorities” of normal people been challenged because two strange people brought tomato soup into an art gallery?
I can’t speak for all Epoch Times readers, but two nits in a London art gallery throwing soup over a masterpiece (which thankfully was protected by a layer of glass) hasn’t made the slightest dent in my few priorities, let alone “question them,” or even question the most trivial activities of my extremely trivial days. I still put on socks without any reference at all to the soup-activists.
Note the key description in that headline. They are “climate activists.” Is this a special status of regard? What if they were “moose hunters” or “shoe salesmen”? Or “political scientists” or “lobster fishermen”? Is there some aura I have failed to observe that grants “climate activists” mass coverage and genuflectory attention not granted to, say, farmers, oil workers, used bookstore owners, or grocery clerks? I leave out truck drivers for what I hope are very obvious reasons.
In any case, “climate activists” is perfectly overwrought to begin with. It might have been nice to make it clear from the very start that it was two people. And (from what I have seen and read) two sad, immature, shallowly arrogant, and clearly mis- or under-educated juvenile attention-thirsty nuisances.
They may have said they were climate-activists, but why should the world press yield to their self-description? Why did the world press give them such prominence? And why does the simple claim of their being climate activists give them any standing at all? If two veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces throw soup on a painting of the Group of Seven, would it awaken all Canadian journalism to headline and comment? I doubt it.
These are just two people who before their insolent idiocy were known to no one outside their pathetic acquaintance. And why these two, in an adult world, got any coverage at all, apart from a deep-buried scribble at the last page of every newspaper under, say, Odd Things in a Weird World, should be a question for all journalists.
Here’s the gist of the logic in play here. Two self-absorbed juveniles think, or say they think, the world is going to end because of oil. Life on our sweet planet is over.
They think this, it must be noted, in the capital city of one of the most advanced and cared-for societies in the world—London, England. They have never missed a meal, faced any crisis of want or security. They are heedless of the concerns faced by those in multiple countries in this hard world who know real scarcity, lack of development, civil war, invasion (Ukraine), but in the service of their precious feelings, go off to a great art gallery to show off their mindless obsession.
Why?
Throwing a can of Heinz tomato soup (was this a brand preference?) on the glass-face of a famous artist’s most treasured work—now there’s a pure wonder of civil courage. Standing up to “Big Oil” in an act of audacity and heroism that will echo through the ages and live along with the Roman hero, Scaevola, who thrust his hand into fire to prove his bravery.
These two are one with Rosa Parks. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Nelson Mandela. They are the “soup throwers.” There will be stamps with their faces on them.
Maybe.
Protest of a real kind, protest in the face of real oppression, protest that carries extreme risk and is spurred by conscientious respect for the deepest principles—human dignity, the autonomy of the individual, freedom from terror and state persecution—that kind of protest is mocked by these shallow, pretentious publicity stunts.
There is no Siberia following a street glue-on, just accommodating news reports. And should she not decline the resources of Western technology completely, perhaps a cellphone call from Greta Thunberg, queen of climate virtue.
Say “but it’s about climate change” and you may be both stupid and silly, but newspapers and TV stations will give you a hail. They drop all inquiry and skepticism. They are obedient to the point of subservience.
These two are sisters and brothers of the equally vacant minds who, under the Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion brands, have adopted the tactic of street protest, gluing their fatuous hands to pavement, causing annoyance and worse—ambulances held up, fire-trucks delayed, hospital runs interfered with.
These same heroes of their own imagination wouldn’t dare lie across a road in Moscow or Beijing. They wouldn’t stop traffic in Havana. They wouldn’t try a protest in any jurisdiction other than the West, which offers no penalty, and in many cases a subservient report in the press. Protest is easy when it carries no consequences.
To return to the article I started with, has the London gallery theatrical challenged any normal person’s priorities? Has it altered the European energy crisis? Are you less worried now that the warming world may save itself? Are you a better person because van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” was mocked and insulted?
Or has it, perhaps, indicated that our current political environment has elevated the trivial and the silly at the expense of adult reasoning?
The apocalyptic climate change phantasmagoria represents an abandonment of serious thought, and a deep carelessness about the life we have and where we are going. And the majority of Western politicians and leaders, especially our own, have jumped to the cause to advertise their virtue without the slightest attempt to deal with the reality of energy and the world’s need for it. It is a shame.
We’re at the “soup throwing” stage of political thought. It’s been quite a journey from the Enlightenment.
Mainly downhill.
