Liberals love to feel guilty—and then relieve that guilt by “virtue signaling” to each other about how “woke” they are for imposing upon themselves (and the rest of us) ridiculous codes of conduct and regulated speech.
For liberals, there is just so much to feel guilty about.
Of course, not the 56 million babies killed worldwide every year in the womb, or America’s $21 trillion dollar debt, or the fact that we are selfishly robbing our children and grandchildren by bankrupting the entitlement programs they’re paying into.
But they definitely feel guilty about plastic straws, cow farts and now… air travel.
Can you say “indoctrination?”
This new wave of guilt all started with a young girl.
Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old student in Sweden, and like most kids her age, she probably doesn’t like going to school.
Hearing all the scary, “It’s the end of the world as we know it!” (yeah, now you have REM stuck in your head) rhetoric about climate change on the news, she decided to do something about it.
Greta organized a strike, whereby she would not attend school until her concerns over climate change were addressed.
Teenage girls can be very persuasive and the shame spread all over the country.
In London last year, she spoke at an event organized by the group, Extinction Rebellion, saying, “We’re facing an immediate unprecedented crisis that has never been treated as a crisis and our leaders are all acting like children. We need to wake up and change everything.”
No, you’re a child, Greta. You’re not helping your cause by using that as an insult.
But I digress.
And now “flygskam” – meaning “flight shame” – has become a national buzzword in Sweden because obviously it’s easier to blame the ills of the world on airplanes than our own behavior.
The Blame Game
In typical leftist fashion, when someone complains about something, the first thing to do is find a scapegoat to deflect blame from the real problem.
In this case, it was air travel.
Air travel has skyrocketed in Sweden over the last couple of decades with several low-budget airlines having made travel affordable.
Of course, scientists had to verify that because of this, the per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in Sweden had soared to five times the average of other nations since the 1990s.
Thus they put two-and-two together and thought, “Aha! It must be all those airplanes we’re flying through our atmosphere! It’s all their fault!”
So the Swedes decided air travel was ruining the environment. And since social justice warriors love their hashtags, the #stayontheground movement was born.
But we can’t overlook that no proper SJW movement is complete without the help of celebrities, so many Swedish notables started spreading the anti-flight message on social media too.
These celebrities also promised they would limit their air travel when shooting on location.
Then the European Environment Agency let the Swedes know that the average flight emits 285 grams of carbon dioxide, compared to 14 grams for the same trip taken by train.
Now the Swedes are traveling as much as possible by rail, even if it takes them ten times longer to get where they’re going.
In fact, little Greta took a 32-hour train trip to make her speech in London. I’m assuming she got to skip school that day.
Train travel in the country has increased over 20 percent in recent months, and the Swedish national rail system has vowed to add pretty much 24/7 train services to all major European cities in the next few years.
Did you get that? “National rail system”—i.e. government owned and operated.
The government doesn’t own the airlines, so it’s interesting that they’re raking in the dough all of a sudden and planning a massive expansion.
Hmm, conspiracy theory, anyone?
Trust us, we are always right.
You can’t argue with a liberal. And if you do, you’ll be in big trouble, mister!
But one Swedish psychologist with a good head on her shoulders says other factors must be taken into account.
Much of the concern that sparked the anti-flight movement started during a particularly hot year in the country. Massive wildfires were reported. And what do fires emit? You got it – carbon dioxide.
I think we know what comes next — #nomorematches. I hope you don’t plan on building a campfire and roasting marshmallows on your next camping trip!
There were also new taxes imposed on air travel in the country within the last year, as well as financial woes that attributed to the shutdown of some of those budget airlines.
The sad irony…
You may be thinking, “Well, they’re trying to be good stewards of the environment. What’s wrong with that?”
Well, nothing – except that in trying to save their country from the big, bad climate change, Sweden has a 28 percent higher abortion rate than the U.S.
Teen sex is highly accepted there, and in fact, is expected. Adoption is very unusual in the country – almost stigmatized – so nearly all unplanned pregnancies end in abortion.
The nation has a dark history of eugenics, and they are still trying to come out from under the government-forced sterilization programs in place as recently as the last generation.
So if you’re really trying to save the future of your country, how about protecting life?
And if the government thinks they’re creating a booming economy by making everyone dependent on their national rail service, they can think again.
But it’s too late to turn back now.
Completely eliminating air travel in one nation will have a crippling ripple effect on not only Sweden, but the entire world—as businesses everywhere would suffer the effects.
The left may wish we could all go back to being hunter-gatherers in a perfect utopian society (of course wasn’t that when the cavemen ruled over their wives?), but then who would film their temper-tantrums and broadcast them all over the world in order to spread their agenda?
It wouldn’t surprise me if their next step is to blame the poor Wright brothers for inventing aircraft in the first place.
Just as liberals are destroying our historic monuments in an effort to erase anything that offends them, Orville and Wilbur may be the next ones written out of the history books.
So what’s next?
Sorry, Sweden. Your sudden stroke of conscience is not the first we’ve heard on this matter.
In fact, scientists all over the world, including in Sweden, have been working with aviation experts for years to find ways to reduce the emissions of planes, just as we’ve seen with automobiles.
Even one Swedish professor is telling his people to back off the blame game.
“Reducing emissions needs to be balanced with allowing people the opportunity to fly — I believe that’s a settled consensus amongst the mainstream for many years. It’s not up to people in one part of the world to take it on themselves to deny people in other parts of the world those opportunities,” says Professor Stefan Gössling of the Lund and Linnaeus Universities, according to DW.
It will be hard to convince those Swedes who have their sights set on blaming air travel, though.
After all, a good little social justice warrior doesn’t want to hear anyone else’s opinions – much less facts – that would prove them wrong.
So maybe we should start riding cows. Oh, wait, that’s right — they emit methane. Crap.
