The REAL message in Davos.

 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.

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 come here and insult you and you have no choice but to take it. The real message is Trump's contempt and insult. Indeed, the real message is that Trump can come 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, and the fact that you will put up with it, and try to make the best of it and treat it as normal, proves his point.

The third message is the one with the biggest consequence. 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 campaign rally speech at a meeting of world leaders. The complaint about the Nobel Peace Prize isn't a one-off.  Trump is really, truly like that. 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 hold power.  Nope. 

It is a bit like understanding that one's neighbor owns a pet lion, huge and potentially dangerous, but in fact generally tame.  Then realizing that the lion was in fact very much a wild animal,, willful, uncontrollable, and hungry.  Yikes!

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 there noses in his shit and do anything he darned well wanted to do, other countries be damned.

Thery are busy making other arrangements to protect themselves.

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