
Every little world-saver, and the big ones, too, are stars in their own private movie. They write and direct as well. The script never changes. They, and they alone, see a world in menace; they and they alone know, absolutely know, what the danger is and what the world must — must — do to avoid collapse and devastation. And that salvation always — always — means they must be granted the power to change the world and all it does, so that their vision and certitude can be validated.
Frequent world-saver Naomi Klein has a cause every half-decade, but the title of one of her books in particular, gives the trend: This Changes Everything. Naturally she was on about global warming, being the universal queen bee of protest politics. That title is the DNA of every radical — give way to my superior vision, let me change everything, and I, the social justice warrior superhero, will give you salvation.
Down in the states, another hero, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recently released a Green New Deal with which to avoid “the extinction of life as we know it” — in 12 years no less. As a result the greatest economy in the world has to be, root and branch, transfigured and to a certainty, devastated in the process. Global warming, naturally, demands it.
A terrible hubris and arrogance walks with the world-savers. And I suppose if you think you’re the one to save all the world, it will inflate the ego a tad. It will also make you reckless, careless about lesser people, the “unanointed” — those outside the light, people who are not prophets and saviours, but who work, raise families, scrape by as best they can. Mere drones these.
[…]