In an enlightened administration, the remarkable 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg might be in line to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was initiated by President Kennedy to honor those who engage in significant public or private endeavors. The bestowing of such an award on one like Thunberg will never happen under Donald Trump.
This president has presented the prestigious award to 11 individuals, seven of them figures from the world of sports. There has been no awarding of it to any representative of the arts and culture, no humanitarian, no one who has fought for the downtrodden, no journalist who has risked life and limb to report the news, and it is difficult to envision any such individual enthusiastically accepting the award from a president who is so often anathema to what is laudatory and honorable, and who is lacking in basic human decency.
The president heads the only major political party in the civilized world that rejects science, holding out against the reality of climate change and the need to address it — hence we have what in reality is the Environmental Destruction Agency, an entity which now nods to big business as regulations which helped to facilitate clean air and water are weakened, rendering us an outlier among the nations.
Perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize will someday be in the hands of an extraordinary young woman like Thunberg. May she know that she has the admiration of myriad people throughout the world and that our president does not legitimately act in our name.
Oren Spiegler
Peters Township