No One Asked For An Invasion of Greenland
Don't listen to Trump's deranged rhetoric. Watch what he does instead.
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC – I’m having a really hard time taking Donald Trump’s gibberish about Panama, Canada, and Greenland seriously. In case you don’t know, Donald seems to believe it’s necessary to annex Greenland, maybe even Canada, while pledging to take back the Panama Canal. There’s one specific thing that’s freaking me out about it, but before we discuss that, let me be clear.
It’s all horseshit.
Not unlike his verbal diarrhea about water pressure, dishwashers, birds and windmills, and nuking hurricanes, it’s all about inciting the rest of us to perpetually triage the nonsense rather than focusing on what he’s actually up to.
Instead of talking about his profoundly unqualified cabinet nominees or the implementation of Project 2025, we’re all talking about whether he’ll somehow change the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America.” It’s the same signal/noise strategy we’ve witnessed since the escalator – get us to focus on the noise and then miss the signal.
Besides, no one asked for any of this crapola about Canada, Panama, and Greenland. It never came up during the campaign. It was never a thing in the Red Hat entertainment complex. He might as well declare his plans to ban the use of jetpacks made of beef. But suddenly, now, seizing and annexing Greenland is an issue of vital national security importance?
Likewise, it makes him feel like he’s a big boy, setting a big boy agenda, and having big boy ideas. Most normal elected leaders establish their agendas based around local, state, national, or international issues – established, publicly-endorsed fires to extinguish and goals to achieve. Healthcare, taxes, the climate crisis, the economy, war, peace, coalition-building, and so forth. Because Donald is a raging narcissist and profoundly out of his depth, he thinks anything that pops into his diminishing skull is worthy of pursuit, irrespective of whether it’s necessary for the betterment of the American people. Because it’s his idea, it’s therefore valid.
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And yeah, I get it. Here I am focusing on the noise rather than the signal. Why on Earth am I wasting my time and your time with this article?
There’s a cautionary tale in all of this that’s worth mentioning.
The stability of our international alliances isn’t nearly as rock solid as many believe. It doesn’t take much to set off a chain of events that could lead to unmitigated disaster. Donald believes he can kaiju stomp his way around the globe, disrupting whatever stability we enjoy in order to pursue his loony fantasies by ignorantly believing that everyone will bend to his will. I assure you, they won’t.
Already, Denmark has beefed up its defense spending for Greenland by $1.5 billion. Whether this is just Donald owning the libs or acting like the attention whore he’s always been, he’s playing with fire – fire that could easily touch off a domino effect leading to armed conflict or worse. World War I began with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which touched off a chain of events leading to one of the most nightmarishly destructive conflicts in human history.
Don’t laugh, but America is supposed to be a benevolent superpower. We don’t always rise to that standard, but even our worst pre-Donald leaders possessed some level of expertise that our allies and even some of our frenemies could respect, despite our more irrational actions on the international stage. With the disastrous Iraq War, for example, at least there was some vague justification for that invasion and occupation. But seizing Greenland or even Canada by force carries exactly zero justification other than Donald’s pointless, ungainly whim. It wouldn’t take much prodding for our allies to abandon us because of it, leaving us vulnerable when we need them – or worse, forcing them to militarily and economically line up against us.
This is the kind of madness that keeps me awake at night, stirring my anxiety and fueling countless horror shows playing out in my head. Hopefully, for the sake of us all, it’ll just be more errant bullshit from a deeply unqualified mad man, and he’ll move on to another kneejerk fantasy next week. At the very least, we can expect many more news cycles like this, so hang on tight.
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It's nonsense. But it's nonsense with a purpose. We have to figure out what they're trying to hide behind the nonsense. That's the dangerous thing.
I mean, Trumped asked for it. And that's all that matters, so...