Picturing Disaster These Days

What if this same young child were holding up a drawing that – instead of denouncing the filth of carbon emissions – took something like the ‘filth’ of homosexuality to task? Some of us would be quick to object on grounds that clearly she’s too young to fully understand what she’s against. If I’m a mainstream conservative encountering this photograph, that’s probably what I think.

Healthy children typically prefer good over bad, nice over mean, pretty over ugly. Rhetorically speaking, then, a child interjects an effective dose of pathos into an argument against X. Compared to the innocence and pure moral intuition of childhood, the filth of X is self evident. Depending on what the child learns X is, so goes her drawing.

The beauty and pride in this child’s expression may be more linked to her satisfaction with the creative experience and photographic recognition than it is linked to a deep understanding of the fossil fuel problem.

I see billowing smokestacks, no burning towers. Not sure what the glob of black is, lower right — carbon sequestration?? Love the little bit of the sun, top right. Excellent detail. And of course, the shower of hearts, channeling the Bard –

… droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

No entry ever made by any accountant into any ledger has as much value as any beat of any little girl’s heart.

Yes, my first thought was “Twin Towers”–which immediately derailed when I counted 3 of them.

Then I recognized them as billowing smokestacks and only then noticed the thin “slash=NO!” through them.