If someone wanted to write a parody of climate activist lunacy, he or she could do worse than construct a scenario in which a crazed defender of the planet earth disguised himself as an old lady in a wheelchair, complete with wig and lipstick, and then entered the Louvre in Paris, where, in front of shocked crowds, he jumped up and tried to smash the bulletproof glass protecting Leonardo da Vinci’s renowned Mona Lisa, finally settling for smearing the glass with cake. But the Left is beyond parody these days, as you can see from the large number of Babylon Bee stories coming true, and the cake-wielding climate activist is real: he smeared the Mona Lisa with his dessert on Sunday.
The Art Newspaper reports that the cake-smearer proclaimed: “Think of the planet… there are people who are destroying the planet, think about that … That’s why I did it.”
All right. There are people destroying the planet, so he tried to destroy the Mona Lisa, which has been called “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world.” This man would likely recoil in horror at the prospect of cutting down a tree, but he willingly hatched and went ahead with this plot to destroy a 600-year-old work of art, one of the global masterpieces of human achievement. Human achievement, of course, means nothing to hardcore climate activists, who would happily see it all destroyed if to do so would ensure that “the planet” would be freed from the alleged depredations of the human race.
The intrepid climate warrior failed to harm the Mona Lisa; he couldn’t break the protective glass, and the cake he smeared upon it was cleaned off easily enough. But what was this individual thinking, if that word can be justly used to describe the processes of his mind? Was he enraged at Leonardo for daring to wrest paint and a white Lombardy poplar panel from the earth in order to create the painting? Was he lashing out at the Mona Lisa in a rage at all painters, in all times, who have destroyed trees and plants to burden the earth with their ridiculous scribblings, when they should have left well enough alone and let us marvel at the natural artwork of the earth instead?
Most likely, of course, he was calculating that this absurd stunt would call attention to his allegedly worthy cause, and perhaps even move some of the world’s power brokers to act for the “planet,” since, after all, one noble young man went so far as to try to destroy what is arguably the foremost artwork in the world in order to call attention to the immense plight that the poor old planet is in. That’s as ridiculous as the stunt itself. If this guy had destroyed the Mona Lisa, he would have been the focus of worldwide outrage for a news cycle or two, and would then be forgotten. That would have been about it.
There is, however, a real lesson in this incident: The man who tried to destroy the Mona Lisa is a product of today’s educational system. He was clearly a good, dutiful student, and he absorbed the lessons he was supposed to learn. He learned that the number one threat in the world today is climate change, and that if we don’t act now to destroy the economies of the Western world, it will mean nothing less than the end of the world.
The Mona Lisa attacker is also proof that the climate hysteria that is ubiquitous nowadays is doing nothing less than driving people crazy. Here is someone who could likely be living a worthwhile life if he hadn’t been made mad by pseudoscientific fantasies and fallacies. The clown who attacked the Mona Lisa likely calculated that it wouldn’t matter much if he destroyed it, as the whole earth is going to be destroyed in nine years anyway. His head has been filled with nonsense to such an extent that he is willing to break the law and go to outrageous lengths to try to compel those who hold power in the world to act on a problem that they have been relentlessly telling us about for years. The very people he is begging to act should instead be apologizing for this man’s derangement, and that of so many.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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