Thread by @SteB777

1) There are many people nitpicking Greta's very fine tweet, generally taking issue with what they presume or present to be Greta's definition of both democracy, with the underlying tacit assumption being that Greta is naive about both, in definition and practise.

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1358056887204384770

2) Firstly, and most importantly, Greta just made a single tweet, to make a very cutting observation about what is happening today in countries which previously described themselves as bastions of democracy. Greta was not writing a detailed academic essay.

3) Self-evidently, if you just make a single tweet, or say some in few words, you can't go in the definitions of the terms you have used, the concepts, the caveats etc. Therefore, making up your own definition and arguing against is the straw man logical fallacy.

4) The crucial issue here is whether there is any evidence as many of these sniping comments suggest, of Greta using terms and arguments, without understand the terms and concepts she has used, as these criticisms tacitly imply.

5) To be blunt, absolutely not. I am not aware of a single incident where Greta has said something, and then had to walk back on it because she'd not thought about what she said.

6) Greta is a master of honest rhetoric, using a few words to make very powerful points in speeches. She has been very effective. I was quite prepared for Greta to have just been lucky, or even naive as many are implying here, as she was very young.

7) However, what has seriously impressed me is that in response to subsequent questions in interviews, Greta has made it very clear that she was aware of the approximation of what she said, and the deeper subtleties.

8) In other words, there is no reason at all to assume that Greta doesn't understand the difficulty of defining both democracy and science, and that what happens in reality is often quite different to the ideals of both democracy and science.

9) I am quite certain from everything Greta has said so far, that she is in no way naive about either democracy or science, in the way those criticising her tacitly imply i.e. she doesn't have naive assumptions about either.

10) Out of the two terms, democracy is the most difficult to pin down, because the term democracy now, does not mean what it meant in the 19th Century, before then, and in Ancient Greece, where both the concept and the term originate.

11) In Ancient Greece only free men could vote i.e. slaves and women could not vote. So it was quite selective in who was represented. There are many countries claiming to be the oldest democracy, but the modern concept of democracy only arose well into the 20th Century.

12) By the modern concept of democracy, I mean universal suffrage, where at least every adult can vote, male and female, regardless of economic, ethnic status etc. Prior to women getting the vote, this form of democracy did not exist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal…

13) I don't want to go too deep into this, because still certain demographics are at the least inhibited from voting by design, and of course there are big questions about how much influence someone can have with one vote every several years.

14) So I'll cut this short because of the lack of space and say self-evidently Greta was talking about the acceptance of the election result, because of recent happenings in the US. Likewise, self-evidently Greta is also alluding to science denial by the same side.

15) In other words, it is very clear what Greta is referring to overall, and that is the tendency of certain factions, especially the populist right, to only accept election results and science, when it concurs with what they want.

16) Therefore this was not a deep examination of what is democracy or science as many are wrongly presuming in their sniping criticisms. Rather it is about the outlook, where certain factions will only accept election results and science, when it is in their favour.

17) The give away is where Greta says "respect", because both democracy and science can both produce results and conclusions, we might not find agreeable, or easy to accept. Overanalysis beyond this is not valid, because it is all about context.

18) In other words, it really is crystal clear that the context here, is the events of recent years. It is a profound observation on these events, and not a deep exposition into what democracy and science are.

Obviously it was meant to be "both democracy and science".