I had intended to write about what a profound geopolitical error President Trump is making by threatening NATO with tariffs and a direct takeover of Greenland.
Trump has changed the world.
Our great-grandchildren will learn in school about this turn of events and its consequences.
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| President Trump, speaking in Davos, this morning. |
Instead, I will write about Trump's three messages.
1. The denoted message about American strength, and our justification for taking possession of Greenland.
2. The real message Trump intends.
3. The received message absorbed and integrated into the world's leaders minds.
The first message, the denoted one, is that the USA is strong and that Denmark and NATO are weak and that realistically only the USA can defend Greenland. Moreover, we possessed it once, after Nazi Germany conquered Denmark in six hours, and then we foolishly gave it back, so it is really legitimately ours. Besides, we have been so generous to NATO and Europe for so long that we have already paid for it many times over. You owe us. Besides, we will put it to very good use, protecting ourselves (and the ungrateful Canada) from Russian and Chinese missiles.
The second message is Trump''s real message. I am strong and smart. You Europeans are stupid and weak. You are destroying yourselves by letting yourselves get overrun by non-Europeans; you foolishly believe the climate/carbon scam; you are cheapskates on your own defense and have sponged off us in trade and defense. The USA is so strong, and I personally am so very good at governing -- I really am, I am very, very good at this -- that I can go there and insult you and you have no choice but to take it. The real message is Trump's contempt and insult. Trump can go there and shit on the floor and then rub your noses in the shit. Not only can Trump do it, he is doing it right now. And you won't like it, Trump knows full well, and the fact that you weaklings will put up with it, and try to make the best of it, and treat it as normal, proves my point.
The third message is the one with the biggest consequences. Trump has permanently re-positioned the United States. The world sees a president, elected and then after seeing who he is and what he did, was re-elected by voters and enabled by our Congress and courts, to be a raving bully. A loose cannon. A dark force full of resentments, in denial about his political opponents, a man who is so out of touch with reality that he gave a wild campaign rally speech at a meeting of world leaders. The weird, petty complaint about the Nobel Peace Prize isn't a one-off. Trump is really, truly like that. He really is going to finagle a way to seize territory from a NATO ally. He is lucid but crazy. He is profoundly unreliable, which means the U.S. is profoundly unreliable. The U.S. isn't a bedrock of democracy. It isn't a bedrock of anything. The U.S. is a rogue state.
The world can never go back to the prior status quo. Americans chose this. We tolerate this. He is popular enough to retain power. Maybe every democratic country always has the ability to elect a rogue leader, but the U.S. supposedly had mechanisms in place not to elect and empower a man so flagrantly unsuited to holding power. Nope.
There is no taking back this third message. This president can smile, he can make a deal, he might "purchase" Greenland under compulsion, there might be a kiss-and-make-up phase, but some things cannot be taken back. The world knows that Americans elected and re-elected a man who would come to Davos and rub their noses in his shit for the fun of it, and do anything he darned well wanted to do, other countries be damned.
They are busy making other arrangements to protect themselves.
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4 comments:
Trump never disclosed his intentions regarding Greenland during the presidential campaign. He didn't discuss Venezuela either. So, conservatives didn't vote for what Trump is doing now. Trump has gone rogue. We don't approve. Actually, a large number of conservatives threatened to impeach Trump if he invades Greenland, which is why today he is saying he won't use force to invade Greenland. Trump is going to do his agenda until he gets stopped. Some conservatives have already established limits for Trump. The Democrats need to stop whining, and grow some balls, and start filing some lawsuits in federal court in order to stop Trump. Democrats have to be willing to fight Trump, or else he'll run over them.
Trump took credit for the COVID vaccine, but it would have been fast tracked regardless, and the infrastructure that made it possible was in place.
No longer.
Trump doesn't have an agenda; he has whims, and he's never been conservative.
Trump also took U.S. credit for defeating Hitler in Europe---never mind the Russian army, which did the bulk of that heavy lifting--and repeatedly said "Iceland" when he meant Greenland, in the course of an astonishingly (even by his standards) unfocused, undignified and repetitious speech a full seventy minutes or so long before captive and doubtless uneasy world leaders. He might as well have been rambling to a rally crowd in North Carolina. Another nadir in national embarrassment reached.
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