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)

There has been a minro kefuffle this week over President Trump’s lèse majesté towards Greta Thunberg. Thunberg, of course, is the Swedish kid who has achieved something like cult status because she’s following the progressive line on climate change and because the climate change nutters can use her as a human shield. You can read about that incident here:

Greta Thunberg: Child Shield

If Greta Thunberg Isn’t Up for Criticism Then the Left Should Stop Hiding Behind Her

That set off all manner of chin pulling and genital scratching in the media.

Asked about Trump mocking the climate activist, who is a teenager, GOP Rep. Mike Johnson says Trump has a “unique way” of communicating

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 13, 2019

The president of the United States made fun of a 16 year old girl with Aspberger's.

If we can't universally condemn that, then what the hell is wrong with us?https://t.co/7jb8cbR2fJ

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) December 12, 2019

#BrookeBaldwin calls out 'silence' after Trump's @GretaThunberg attacks.@BrookebCNN @CNN https://t.co/ZYpqxM4LN2

— Global News Thailand 🇹🇭 (@GlobalNewsTH) December 14, 2019

On the merits, President Trump is right. If she had parents were were sane, she’d be at home, going to school and learning to be an adult rather than hectoring world leaders and trying to bully them into reducing the developed world to Third World sh** hole status. Some have tried to draw a comparison between this and the bizarre pseudo-joke told by one of the aging harridans the Democrats called in to opine about impeaching Trump that used Barron Trump as the punchline. Some have called it bullying. Both views are silly. Barron Trump is not (at least as far as I know) out conducting rallies and speaking to the UN on Pokemon Go or some other critical topic. And if you can be bullied by a tweet you have no business interjecting yourself into politics.

Here are come cold, hard facts. If you are a bratty kid who has never been given any boundaries by your parents, you don’t get to insinuate yourself into adult affairs and claim that you are immune from criticism. It doesn’t work that way, or at least is shouldn’t. For reasons that I never did understand or agree with, many conservative outlets–including this one–gave that noxious punk David Hogg a free pass to a life of grifting on gun control. We, some of us involuntarily, stood by while he insinuated, and even said, that people who defended the Second Amendment were complicit in mass shootings because somehow it would hurt conservatism if we called him out. We had the chance to refuse to be lectured by that cretin and we failed. We chose to let a mediocrity have unchallenged access to a debate upon a subject on which he had zero qualifications at a point at which he could neither vote nor buy a firearm. We will not make that mistake again and we gave him a free pass from all criticism.

I don’t care if she places somewhere on the autism spectrum. That isn’t my problem and it is not a reason that I need to listen to her or take her as anything but a very sad case of borderline child abuse. If anyone cares about this it should be her parents, and because they obviously don’t, neither do I. Again, if she had sane parents they should be trying to raise a well-adjusted young woman who has developmental difficulties rather than rearing a 16-year-old with a boundless sense of importance and entitlement that is unjustified given her age, her experience, her education, or her apparent intelligence. I’m very much with Kurt Schlichter here:

If she’s so damaged you can’t criticize her, why are you people telling us we have to listen to her? https://t.co/S6Nz0rJ60v

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) December 13, 2019

Thunberg is welcome to pontificate on things she doesn’t understand as much as she wants. It is, at least here in the US, a free country. What she cannot expect is to be taken seriously or treated as anything more than what she is. She is owed no respect or deference especially as she seems incapable of showing respect for others. If she wants to play an adult game, then she is going to be treated like the mouthy little kid that she is.