My initial response was "not impressed". Not so much because I have a problem with people letting their hair down in private, but more because she looked like a stereotypical vacuous good-looking woman - not that there's anything wrong with being a stereotypically vacuous woman, but it's not what you want for a leader.
So my thoughts were that she must be another young, handpicked world leader. Competent and naive enough to be a handy frontperson for progressivism. (I've talked about this "young leader" fashion recently - freckledmonkey.blogspot.com/political-princes ). I was vaguely aware that Finland had a young female Prime Minister, and a lot of other female cabinet members, but aside from that I had no real idea who Sanna Marin was though, so my prejudice aside I thought I should really take a deeper look before hardening my disdain.
Anyway, I've watched her speak a bit and done a little bit of reading about her and I've reassessed my opinions a little. I was kind of half-right.
My reassessment.
Having watched her she's clearly very intelligent, and she comes across as very nice. She's definitely not vacuous.
She's another record breaker, being the youngest person in Finnish history to become prime minister, at the age of just 34.
I was hoping to discover what her opinions are - does she have any controversial opinions, or strong defining convictions? However, I didn't really get a sense of anything. Like many of these other young leaders - the Arderns and Trudeaus of this world - they don't need strong opinions as they fit so seamlessly into the current left-of-centre progressive landscape. They're swimming with the tide. In fact, they're of the tide. It's just taken for granted that the progressive narrative is the correct narrative. So there's no need to think, and no need to be an outsider politically in any sense.
Again though, she comes across as very nice and likeable in all the footage I've watched, so I don't doubt her political views are sincerely held.
She's a vegetarian apparently, which gets a tick in my book. I'm tempted to see this as a sign that she has some strong personal convictions, but vegetarianism and veganism are so fashionable now it's hard to tell. Also she was raised by her mother and her mother's lesbian partner - her mother and father split up - so in the interests of balance I should note that it clearly hasn't done her any harm. She's obviously turned out very educated, intelligent and successful.
[A few weeks back I was criticising the idea of gay people raising children - specifically gay men, my point being that children need a mother. In fact, I got into an argument on Twitter about it. I was accused of being a horrible homophobe which is par for the course. The person I was debating shared the following article in support of their point, which assessed studies on the well-being of children with gay/lesbian parents:
Aside from all the studies being very limited a large proportion were specifically just assessing children raised by lesbian parents - which is naturally a more common occurrence. So I thought it was typically disingenuous that a picture of two gay men was used to illustrate the article.
It's my personal opinion that it's ideal for a child to have a mother and a father, but there's obviously a huge difference between having lesbian parents and gay parents. As men and women are clearly different - a woman can actually give birth and nurture a new born child in a way a man simply cannot.
Again though, being raised in a same-sex home clearly hasn't hindered Sanna Marin, so in fairness I should note and acknowledge this.]
Party Out.
Anyway, my initial reaction to the footage of her partying was wrong, and on reflection I have no issue with it. Maybe you could even say it reveals a genuineness in her. I'm still of the opinion though that these bright young things have been helped into their positions of power because they're fully on board with the progressive narrative and are easily guided. I'd prefer to see this woman as a prime minister at the age of 54 with some real experience and gravitas.
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