Environmental activist Greta Thunberg, of Sweden, addresses the Climate Action Summit in the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters, Monday, Sept. 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

By now, we’ve all had plenty of opportunity to see the abject despair and utter meltdown of the Trump Derangement set, courtesy of Cocaine Mitch and the Republican senate (minus Milquetoast Mitt). Although the results of the Senate trial weren’t ever really in question, it seems a lot of people still hoped against hope that the Democrats’ Choose Your Own Impeachment strategy might somehow defy the odds. The immediate wailing and gnashing of teeth was both expected and entertaining.

Far less entertaining, however, was a video shot at ASU that showed a young man screaming at a Republican campus group shortly after Trump’s acquittal. The young man was recorded screaming maniacally that he wanted to “slash the throat” of Trump and every conservative and Republican.

This deranged leftist wants to "slash the throat" of the President and every conservative. pic.twitter.com/XBxyRHyUnd

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 6, 2020

I realize that some people may have found this video an amusing example of the unhinged Left. I was not that amused by the display. In fact, I was saddened.

Surely this boy looks stupid and surely he has earned his ridicule, but what stood out to me more than anything was not his outrage but his panic. For all intents and purposes, this boy is still just that…a boy…a child. He is at an age when his life should be filled with dreams and hopes, when he should be feeling invincible. He should feel like he’ll never die, never fail, and never get old. Those are the silly but necessary mentalities of the young, because that is exactly what allows us to marshal the unique energy of youth that propels us to take risks and reap rewards. Age makes us rightly cautious, rightly cynical. Youth is not wasted on the young, it is gifted to the young.

Instead of this naive optimism and energy, I see a young man who is already defeated. He already believes he’s dead. He is not screaming because he’s a brat. He’s screaming because he genuinely believes the end of the world is nigh. And that’s not his fault.

After all, what is he supposed to think? Every time he turns on the tv he hears adults who sell themselves as the ultimate authorities telling him that the world will end in 12 years if we don’t sign some papers, minorities are mere days away from being enslaved and Trump is Literally Hitler™.  Like poor little Greta, how can a young person be raised with every adult they look up to telling them their future will be short and not be freaked out?

The “smartest people in the room” told this boy Hillary had a lock on the 2016 election. Trump is a racist, bigot, fascist moron who has every intention of shredding the constitution to pieces and installing himself as President for life. There was no way America would elect him. It would be the end of everything.

Of course, we now know that was little more than wishful thinking from the land of unicorns. Hillary had no chance. The adults in the room were lying to little Maniac Manny here and they were lying to themselves. What is a child to think? Every adult/authority he trusts has not only ripped the rug out from under him, but is now telling him Donald Trump will literally murder him.

Take one second to consider what that does to a young mind, the panic it can cause.

My parents are liberal hippies. My mother was and is a committed environmentalist. She wanted to raise me to be concerned about the environment. Her intentions were good, but her prognostications scared the hell out of me. I often looked to the sky waiting for acid rain, nuclear winter or to be burned up by the sun’s radiation pouring through the hole in the ozone layer. I was sure I’d never make it to see my 25th birthday. Ted Danson told me the next Ice Age would kill me before then.

You may giggle (and I do now) but it was the cause of much anxiety for me. Because I trusted my mother. She was the ultimate authority on everything. If she was saying I had mere years to live, she couldn’t be lying. Children are not meant to grow up with a sense of fatalism. We laugh about how young people think they’re going to live forever, but that is really the way it’s supposed to be.

It isn’t fair to this child that he has been burdened with the weight of the world at his age. He needs a hug. He needs some education on how government and the constitution works. But most of all he needs to know that the world is not ending just because someone he doesn’t like is in the White House…or is his boss…or his professor…or his neighbor. The elites in media know this, but they sell the lie of impending doom because that’s what fills their pockets.

This young man does not really deserve our scorn, he deserves our sympathy.

And yes, maybe a few of our laughs.

But mostly our compassion. We live in the most prosperous time on earth, in the greatest nation on earth. He has every reason to be hopeful and excited. Instead, the adults in his world have saddled him with doom and hopelessness. Let’s pray for this young man. He’ll need every single prayer come November.