Theland - // Malala got shot in the head, (tragic), Lady Lawrence had a son murdered, (tragic), Greta is ill, (tragic), but why because of, not in spite of, are they given an authority to pontificate to the rest of us? //
I would absolutely dispute that Greta Thunberg has anything approaching 'authority' in anything.
She is not given a platform because she has authority, she is given it because she has novelty value, and there is always a portion of the public, in our internet age, who will confuse novelty with validity and parroting for insight.
// Do they have special insights denied the rest of us? //
Of course not, but they do have a different way to present a message that makes it look like its an insight, when clearly, like a soap opera scenario, if you investigate it in even the slightest depth, it evaporates before your eyes.
As you will know if you have read all this thread - my view is that Ms Thunberg is stage-managed and manipulated in order to appeal to a gullible and unquestioning section of society - young people, because young people may not know that they are being sold an old argument dressed up in new clothes, but their money has the Queen's head on it just the same, and that is all that really matters.