Belated congratulations to Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg for winning Time magazine’s Person of the Year Award. True to form, the gold medal narcissist who occupies the Oval Office, one of four runners-up for the award, was all jealousy and mockery in reaction.

Trump won the award in 2016 when still president-elect. Though a runner-up in 2017, he lost to “The Silence Breakers” (people, mostly women, who went public with stories of their sexual victimhood); and he lost again in 2018 to “The Guardians” (journalists who endured persecution, even death, in pursuit of truth). When Trump was asked who he thought should win the 2018 award, he answered, “I can’t imagine anybody other than Trump.”

Many would agree, but not for the self-conceited reason Trump has in mind. I mean, is he aware that the award goes to the person or persons most influential in world affairs — not only for the better but for the worse? Hitler, for example, was the winner in 1938, five years after the pre-genocidal stage of the Holocaust began. And Stalin was a two-time winner. (No, I’m not suggesting Trump is an ogre of their kind.)

Trump was pleased to call Thunberg’s win “ridiculous.”  But, truth to tell, his go-to words reserved for people and things that rile him in some way, such as “ridiculous,” “foolish,” “wacky,” “disgraceful,” “disrespectful,” “nasty,” “sick,” “fake,” “bad,” “dangerous,” “disgusting” and “liar” are all words that millions the world over regard as aptly describing him.
William LaRochelle, Lewiston

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