The Big Mood: Greta Thunberg’s stare

Not been a great week for megalomaniac leaders of the Western world, has it? Donald Trump is finally staring down the barrel of that impeachment inquiry that’s been threatened since he heaved himself into office. Boris Johnson is at the centre of a firestorm with no historical precedent.

It’s been difficult to sum up the general fury and frustration felt on both sides, towards these callous, self-interested buffoons. When Trump offended his way to the White House, we knew it would be bad. Ditto Boris failing upwards until he reached the highest office in the land. But I’m not sure anyone predicted we would reach political DEFCON1 quite this quickly.

Perhaps this is due to the limits of the human capabilities to imagine change. Maybe it has more to do with a right-leaning media who insist on minimising or erasing the many terrible machinations of leaders hell-bent on wrecking their respective democratic systems. Either way, general sentiment towards both Boris, Trump and their cohort of enablers was summed up in a single and magnificent Greta Thunberg glare on Monday.

Thunberg was in New York for a UN climate summit, where she proceeded to give world leaders what can only described as a ​“huge bollocking” for fucking up for so long and with such greedy abandon. Her speech is an emotional, articulate and powerful must-watch. But her glare as Trump swaggers boorishly into the room deserves equal attention: furious but also utterly disdainful of the buffoon in front of her.

And this is the rub, isn’t it? What’s so truly rage-inducing about the terrible, terrible men we allow to run these countries into the ground is the fact that they aren’t special. They’re big dumb dumbs. Giant baby boys. Bigoted idiots whose ships are going down in flames. The only trouble is we’ve all booked one way tickets on the USA-Britannia and are going to drown right alongside them.

No wonder we’re glowering right along with Greta. Big mood.