This isn’t really about Greenland’s strategic value; it’s about the category error. You can trade goods, sign treaties, and negotiate basing rights. You can’t “buy” a people or their sovereignty especially when they don’t consent. That’s why Europe responds with process and principle: normalize coercion-as-bargaining among allies and you’re reviving a pre-1945 model of politics Europe built institutions to prevent.
It’s also lose-lose for the US. There isn’t a positive outcome. If it’s dropped, the damage is “just” reputational and partly repairable. If it’s pursued: tariffs, threats, coercion. It burns trust inside NATO, accelerates European strategic decoupling, and hands a propaganda gift to every US adversary. A forced takeover would be a catastrophic own-goal: legitimacy crisis, sanctions/retaliation, and a long-term security headache the US doesn’t need.
And the deeper issue is credibility. The dollar’s reserve status and US financial leverage rest on the assumption that the US is broadly predictable and rule-bound. When you start treating allies like extractive targets, you’re not “winning” you’re encouraging everyone to build workarounds. Part of the postwar setup was that Europe outsourced a lot of hard security while the US underwrote the system; if the US turns that security guarantee into leverage against allies, you should expect Europe to reprice the relationship and invest accordingly.
The least-bad outcome is a face-saving off-ramp and dropping the whole line of inquiry. Nothing good comes from keeping it on the table.
Yes. Ian Bremmer keeps pointing out that if the "law of the jungle" becomes the norm for relations between countries, the USA will not benefit as much as autocracies like China and Russia.
> Specially when the the difference between human rights in US and China are becoming smaller
Really? Seems to me that whatever you think that is happening that’s bad in the US right now it kind of still pales in comparison to the cultural and religious prosecutions of folks like the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong, Chinese Christians, and just about anyone who speaks against the CCP.
Right, because an agency supposedly meant for "immigration enforcement" being sent to cities of the President's opponents so they can crackdown on protests and harass citizens is different... how? Is being persecuted for your religion worse than being persecuted for your political beliefs?
There is a secret police force actively patrolling the streets, going door-to-door asking for papers, shooting American citizens and your response is "it's not that bad"?
No, ICE is sent elsewhere as well, but because those places aren’t sanctuary cities you get local law enforcement cooperation with immigration enforcement and the enforcement doesn’t make the big headline. The enforcement is not as confrontational because ICE just scoops the folks up at the jail after a phone call when the immigration status of an arrested individual appears to be problematic.
It just so happens that the sanctuary cities are in very blue areas which are within Trump political opponents and prevent federal immigration enforcement cooperation from their local government agencies.
If you don’t want the door to door enforcement, have your local officials become cooperative in enforcing the immigration laws. If you don’t want immigration enforcement at all, call your congressperson to change the law. The law being enforced is one that had wide bipartisan support until relatively recently. If your congresspeople not actively working to change the law (not just bitching about it, but doing something about it), hold them responsible.
So no, I am not going to downplay and dishonor the victims of the the human rights violations of China by comparing it to what is happening here.
People speaking out against Trump and ICE are getting shot in the head. So I really see no difference.
ICE is sending brown people and people with accents to concentration/death camps. Say what you will about the Uyghurs, but China provided them with their own rooms and toilet facilities. ICE has been forcing detainees to drink toilet water and eat moldy bread [1]. All while hiring rapists and violent criminals for their enforcement.
Really, the US is actually worse than what China was at this point and China was bad.
Warren Buffett once said: "You can't make a good deal with a bad person"
Which is exactly the case as long as Trump is POTUS. There's no good deal to be made for Denmark, Greenland, or Europe in general. Trump is a bad person, and can not be trusted.
Any deal that is made will either be altered or voided. And he'll continue to move the goalposts.
There are two outcomes with Trump:
1) He tries to bully someone into submission, and keeps coming back for more if successful.
2) He is slapped so hard that he gives up entirely.
Unfortunately (2) is a bit shaky these days, as he views the US military as his personal muscle.
Yes, people expect SCOTUS to rebuff Trump on the tariffs. [0]
Lately SCOTUS has been providing stricter textual interpretations of Constitutional questions. Many of these have aligned with Trump administration arguments based on the power of the executive as outlined in Article II. The text says, "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America," and, "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." One of the key arguments is that Congress can't take that power away from him. For example, Congress can't tell him that he can't fire executive-branch staff, because the executive power rests with him, not with Congress.
One thing the Constitution is very clear on, though, is that only Congress can impose tariffs ("The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises"). Furthermore, recent rulings of this Court have established the major questions doctrine, which says that even if Congress delegates the specifics of implementing its powers to the Executive branch, that delegation cannot be interpreted broadly. It can't be used to create new broad policies that Congress didn't authorize.
Therefore, because the text of the Constitution explicitly grants the right to impose tariffs to Congress /and/ Trump's imposition of tariffs is both very broad and very substantial, many people believe that SCOTUS will deny Trump's tariffs.
The case as argued is about Trump's right to issue tariffs under the IEEPA (a law Congress passed to give the President some ability to take economic actions due to international emergencies, which do not explicitly include tariffs), and there is some debate about what a negative ruling would mean for the return of tariffs to merchants who have paid them. Both of those points require careful consideration in the decision. Will the ruling limit itself to just tariffs issued under the IEEPA or to the President's ability to establish tariffs under other laws? If the Court rules against the tariffs, will the government be required to pay people back, and if so, to what extent? It's not surprising that the decision is taking some time to be released. There's a lot of considerations, and every one is a possible point for disagreement by the justices.
Picking better next time won't be enough unless a lot of work is done to put in place safeguards to make it impossible for a future government to act the same way.
Indeed, but it might be many decades - once this lesson is first learned, it will take a long time to unlearn because it tends to become self-reinforcing.
To give an illustration of how long institutional memory over things like this can be:
As of when I went to primary school in Norway in the 1980's, we were still taught at length about the British blockade of Norway during the Napoleonic wars due to Denmark-Norway's entry into the war on Napoleons side and its impact on Norway (an enduring memory for many Norwegian school-children is having to learn the Norwegian epic poem "Terje Vigen" about a man evading the blockade).
Norwegian agricultural policy to this day has had a costly cross-party support for subsidies intended to provide at least a minimum of food idependence as a consequence of learning the hard way first during the Napoleonic wars with a reinforcement (though less serious) during WW2 of how important it can be.
A large part of the Norwegian negotiations for EEA entry, and Norways rejection of EU membership was centered around agricultural policy in part because of this history.
The importance of regional development and keeping agriculture alive even in regions that are really not suited to it is "baked in" to Norwegian politics in part because the subsidies means that on top of those who are about the food idependence a lot of people are financially benefiting from the continuation of those policies, or have lived shaped by it (e.g. local communities that would likely not exist if the farms had not been financially viable thanks to subsidies), so structures have been created around it that have a life of their own.
Conversely, a lot of support for the US in Europe rests on institutional memory of the Marshall Plan, with most of the generations with first hand experience of the impact now dead.
Create a replacement memory of the US becoming a hostile force, and that can easily embed itself for the same 3+ generations after the situation itself has been resolved.
You have to be incredibly naive to give that much credibility to the US system. A lot more than just a switch of parties would be needed.
Personally I highly doubt a possible democratic would return a conquered Greenland. And even if it did, it would have to ensure that kind of derailment doesn't happen again. The opposition so far seems to be about as ineffectual as centrist parties across Europe at dealing with the far right.
Sort of. Those of us outside the US are aware his support hasn’t cratered. There’s going to be the concern the US will just swap him out for someone similar.
Trump's passing and his admin getting tossed won't erase the memory that a good third of America was always happy with him and wanted what he actually did. America is now branded with MAGA in a way that will take generations to fade.
At this point, I'd say terms rather than generations.
I mean, I'm old enough to remember people saying "Never Forget" about 9/11, but it's barely in any discourse at this point, and that was a single generation ago and had two major wars a bunch of PoW scandals, war crime scandals that led to Manning, and domestic surveillance that led to Snowden. And yet, despite all that, I've only heard 9/11 mentioned exactly once since visiting NYC in 2017, and that was Steve Bannon and Giuliani refusing to believe that Mamdani was legitimate.
So, yeah, if Trump fades away this could be forgotten in 8 years or so; if this escalates to a war (I'm not confident, but if I had to guess I'd say 10% or so?), then I see it rising to the level of generations.
I'm saying "never forget" fades. That's a human condition we all share.
I mean, I live in Germany these days, and this country absolutely got the multi-generational thing, and I'm from the UK whose empire ditto, but… the UK doesn't spend much time thinking about the Falklands War and even less about the Cod Wars.
But it's not US who is in charge of US, unfortunately. It's Project 2025 who is in charge of US, and it has a vastly different win and lose criteria. For Project 2025 dissolving NATO, UN, WTO and whatever is a win. For Project 2025 weakening dollar is a win. For Project 2025 isolation in the Americas is win. And US is no longer in charge. Congress has voluntarily surrendered its power and others are following the lead. Project 2025 may or may not become future US, we'll see how it goes this year.
its bad optics for both US and Europe that neither side insists on holding a referendum, how can I know what the local population wants for themselves?
Its damning when neither Europe nor US insists on a referendum, and the population in Greenland is the new soccer ball...
Greenland already has the right to independence from Denmark, via chapter 8 of the law for the self-governing of Greenland, that was enacted in 2009 [1]:
> The decision on Greenland's independence is made by the Greenlandic people.
Technically, the Danish government has to OK the decision, but this is largely viewed as a formality by Danish politicians, should Greenland choose to move forward with independence.
“Optics” is the wrong frame: this is about legitimacy and consent. A referendum demanded by outsiders under pressure is just coercion with a procedural costume. Imagine Cuba proposing a referendum on Puerto Rico joining Cuba and calling it “bad optics” if people won’t play along, the absurdity is the premise, not the lack of voting.
Maybe that's the answer - the USA needs to hold a referendum on becoming a British colony again. It's 250 years since they declared independence, maybe they've changed their mind on having a king? (/s)
I fail to see what is damning here. What would you even hold a referendum on? Independence? Replacing the arrangement with Denmark with whatever unclear arrangement the US is proposing?
If you trust independent polls, you can get a pretty clear picture of where Greenlanders stood as of Feb. 2025:
Danish citizenship or independence are overwhelmingly favored over US citizenship in these polls. And for independence, only really if it does not affect living standard too bad. And there, it's hard to imagine the US being able to match Denmark's social security system...
I believe you write in good faith, and that you sincerely and non-agressively hold your opinion, and that you believe you don't lack a well known piece of information.
But first let me quote a short piece of text, and later in the comment I will reveal where it comes from.
"After World War II, colonial power was increasingly frowned upon on the international stage. To ease pressure from the United Nations, Denmark decided to reclassify Greenland, not as a colony, but as a region. A new Status that required Denmark to guarantee EQUAL LIVING STANDARDS for both Greenlanders and Danes."
Hold on to this "EQUAL LIVING STANDARDS".
So now on towards the poll.
Back when I was studying physics, one of the courses was statistics. Now statistics in physics or mathematical courses is very different from "statistics" in applied / social / political sciences where students are merely required to execute a procedure, like linear regression to fit a line, or the steps to calculate average and variance, ... Those are fixed formulas without rearranging terms and applying mathematical deduction to statistical statements. One can't fully grok statistics in this light form, it needs more rigorous foundations, only then can students learn to derive their own original conclusions in a correct manner and be able to see through the honest mistakes or manipulations of statistical results by others. The professor recommended a booklet called "How to Lie with Statistics". Of course the goal of the book is NOT to breed dishonest statisticians, but to show the myriad of ways statistical results are depicted and phrased to convey intentionally convey an incorrect impression or conclusion, so that we can detect and see through it.
One of the classic things is for example the distribution of top classes: consider mortality rates for different afflictions, lets pretend we buy into the mono-causal paradigm, so tree like, not DAG like. Then if some entity is embarrassed about the top entry, you can just split it up in similarily balanced subcases (instead of a category cancer, splitting it up into all the different kinds of cancer might result in say cardiovascular diseases becoming the top category, simply by splitting up the top class. (My example is arbitrary, I care naught about top mortality, personally).
A false dilemma (false trilemma etc.) is when all the options combined don't form the universe of possibilities, like "would you prefer pestilence or cholera"?
Please take a careful look at the actual poll options [0]:
1. I want independence unconditionally, regardless of the impact on the standard of living
2. I want independence, even if it would have a major negative impact on the standard of living
3. I want independence, even if it would have a small negative impact on my standard of living
4. I only want independence if it doesn't have a negative impact on my standard of living
5. I don't want independence
6. Don't know
It's almost like some Dane made up the vote-able categories and decided to troll the Greenlanders with a reference to the broken promise: LIVING STANDARDS ?!? Some Good Old forced contraception foisted of as the required EQUAL LIVING STANDARDS between Danes and Greenlanders ?!!
So we can classify already: Don't Know (option 6: 9%) vs Know (presumably options 1 through 5: 91% claim to know what they want), so far so good since we have mutually exclusive but exhaustive split.
Now consider the universe of possibilities for those who Know:
Those who know they want independence (from Denmark; options 1 through 4: 84% of all respondents) and those who know they don't want independence (from Denmark; option 5: 9% of all respondents)
So far so good.
Those who want independence (from Denmark) unconditionally (option 1: 18% of all respondents) and those who want independence (from Denmark) conditionally (option 2 through 4: 66%)
Here it gets vague because the boundaries one is asked to get classified in (divide and conquer style) are subjective: on condition there is no "major", "small" or "negative" impact on standard of living.
Is "negative impact" more or less negative than "small negative impact"? I want to see HN commenters discuss if "negative impact" is better or worse than "small negative impact".
This is just non-quantitative gerrymandering.
But let's ignore the gerrymandering: the phrasing is not neutral, as if it is a given there will be negative impact on standards of living!
Imagine the poll stated not the above but:
1. "I want independence unconditionally, regardless if the Danes perform a new round of population control as a goodbye present for old times sake"
2. "I want independence conditionally, regardless if the Danes perform a new major round of population control as a goodbye present for old times sake"
3. "I want independence unconditionally, regardless if the Danes perform a new small round of population control as a goodbye present for old times sake"
4. "I want independence unconditionally, regardless if the Danes perform a new round of population control as a goodbye present for old times sake"
It would be the exact same logical fallacy, but probably with different results, thousands of women (and men) would keelhaul their nearest Danish officials under the nearest ice shelf.
It's just insulting for an (unverifiable) poll to pull these tricks, especially if the poll was co-organized by a Danish newspaper.
> The poll, which was carried out by Verian on behalf of Danish newspaper Berlingske ...
Something else that is insulting: I saw pictures of immense crowds protesting Trump's comments, and read the number of protesters involved: practically the population count of whole Greenland... until I saw the fine print: the numbers were for a protest in Denmark, not Greenland!
Let people speak for themselves, and don't gerrymander polls, its just doubly insulting, and shows that the colonial mentality is still present, sigh!
that power goes both ways, what happens if the Greenland population demands the full list of doctors involved, what type of doctors: military or civilian?, their extradition for legal proceedings on Greenland soil, the confiscation of their pension funds, ... the whole shebang, or else --- who knows they might become a state joining a Union of States, perhaps EU perhaps US. The US has a similar history, from a similar time frame, but the Danish government took a remarkably longer time to even acknowledge what happened.
Check this documentary (about 30 minutes), horrendous crimes. And then "apologizing", apologizing is when all forms of help have been exhausted, instead of apologizing reveal the lists of doctors, so the Greenlanders can question them, who they got commands from, and were those people got their instructions from, extraditions, confiscation of their pension funds (think about it: having been raped by the doctor, or sedated (another crime if for non medical reasons). The normal order is acknowledge, then help, help, help, and only when all forms of help have been exhausted, apologize.
And Europe is angry how Trump plays the realpolitik game, but by not insisting a Greenland run referendum, but instead backing Denmark, they are playing the realpolitik game just as well, you know "maintaining good relations"
Recommended viewing (30 minutes), its where the quote comes from:
It doesn't seem to discuss Trump's "offer". Voting independence from Denmark is different from being given the option to join the United States.
As Chomsky would say "whenever there are multiple pictures, the darkest one tends to be closer to the truth". What if natural resources would be more expensive (for both US and EU) to buy if Greenland were independent, than if it were still half-colony of Denmark. Then EU and US would have a common interest in manipulating in the same direction the referendum you referenced (for independence). Both US and EU might have cheaper access to natural resources if the population votes no for independence. Good Cop Bad Cop stuff, to scare the population to stay subjugated (and enjoy imaginary protection from EU against imaginary threat from US).
his comment was not specific to Western nations, it would apply equally well to asian, african, south american, russian,northern, southern, ... nations, but you are right, he wouldn't treat Western nations with an exception, and that always makes the relevant population feel addressed, and this subjectively feels different, or being picked on with precision, but its just when a population feels addressed.
The referendum is on independence. Which they might want if they weren't under the threat of annexation. When given a choice between the US and Denmark, they chose Denmark, and might choose to go all in rejoin EU.
To people here just a week ago saying it was just insane joking and even MAGA didn't support it, something I pointed out didn't matter, we have moved from 'it's meme'ing' to 'here's why it's good' 'here's why it's needed' 'it's 4d chess' in less than a week. Please NEVER give an inch to this trash that will justify anything. Don't accept 'meme'ing' from an American President by saying 'it's Trump being Trump'. Push back on everything, everytime.
As the nazi's were happening, everyone was waiting for the 'one big thing' that was too big of a line cross. We have waited until the point the US is using it's power to take land. And everyone is still waiting for that 'big thing' or some line (even though we've passed countless lines already). MAGA freaked out over Epstein for what a decade? And suddenly when it's almost released they stopped caring. If MAGA dropped that almost instantly, MAGA is NEVER going to care about anything.
As a side note. Beware when exporting to the USA using UPS. Especially when having the receiver pay for imports and taxes. UPS does not enforce payment. They will hand out the package before receiving the taxes and tolls. Then, they force you, the exporter, to pay, since you’ve agreed to it by accepting their terms and conditions. I’ve learnt this the hard way.
Yup. Now people outside the US pay tariffs going both ways. Sending a package to the US? Pay the US tariffs for the receiver in advance. Getting a package from the US? Pay any tariffs/duties/taxes as per normal.
They typically do this because they don't have enough warehouse space to keep the packages temporarily, and also because it wouldn't be very Express if it adds another day or two.
But if the value is high or you've landed on their naughty list, they'll have you pay before receiving the package.
I wonder how the current events in Greenland will impact the safety and sovereignty of Taiwan.
The US is Taiwan’s most important military ally, even if that relationship remains unofficial. It is also the most critical power in the First Island Chain. If the US stopped being a global superpower, countries like Japan and South Korea might not be willing to aid in defending Taiwan on their own.
I wonder how the current events in Greenland will impact the safety and sovereignty of Taiwan.
That was my thought as well. It's a dangerous rhetoric being displayed by USA. "We need this land for our security". Turns out, what if other powers start using the same rhetoric? Russia did it already for Ukraine, China might say "We need Taiwan for our security".. where does it stop and ultimately it leads absolutely nowhere good.
Diplomatic relationships are rarely about justice, because they are almost always about power and influence.
In fact, the US and its allies have been the only major powers advocating for a "rules-based international order." On the other side, you have Russia annexing Crimea in 2014, and China building artificial islands in the South China Sea to forcefully claim territory that isn't theirs under international law. Not to mention that all authoritarian states, by their very nature, are a clear violation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which defines democracy and freedom of speech as basic human rights.
But at the same time, the US doesn't need a moral justification to sanction China over AI hardware. It is, as always, about power and influence.
The worrying part is that the US is losing its global influence by threatening an ally over Greenland. If they ever resort to military measures, they would lose all influence over the EU, and that would leave Taiwan in a very dangerous spot.
China already claims Taiwan, and has for decades; the only thing keeping it practically separate is uncertainty over the outcome in various dimensions if China tries to take it militarily. I don't think there's any doubt that if they were sure they could take it relatively bloodlessly and without significant repercussion, they would do so immediately.
The US recognizes Taiwan as part of China since the 70’s though its position is quite ambiguous! I found this document by the US congress that explains the history behind the rather bizarre situation Taiwan finds itself today: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12503
Nope. The US One China Policy (not to be confused with China's One China Principle) only "acknowledges" China's claim over Taiwan. The wording is intended to be vague so that each side can interpret the meaning according to their own interests (like China claiming "acknowledge" actually means "recognize").
You're right, of course. What I'm saying is what happens if anyone with any lethal force proclaims they need territory which isn't theirs for their own security. Dangerous rhetoric and extremely dangerous precedent if this plays out.
Consider the following - Trump has tried again and again to make a business deal with dictators, regardless of the previous outcomes. And since he is in a steep mental decline he is not likely to change his ways fundamentally. He also repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction of having to protect "others" with USA army, at least for free as he sees it. He repeatedly tried to break NATO and break Ukrainian support.
I think it is likely that he wants to stop protecting Taiwan, give it up to China and then expect to make a deal with China to buy stuff manufactured on the island with money, afterwards. It would be totally in character for him and match his actual actions across the world.
True. Taiwan is an important ally, unofficially. The folks the US is feuding with right now are also allies, but officially. As are Japan and South Korea. It can't be encouraging.
IMO, China will get back Taiwan without firing a single shot, the US is slowly de-risking itself from it and will eventually make Taiwan redundant. After seeing how the US is "helping" Ukraine, will the Taiwanese think fighting an all-out war with allies like this is worth it? China doesn't have the same genocidal intentions russia has towards Ukraine, so less reasons for people to fight it out
Edt: would love some arguments instead of downvotes
The problem with Taiwanese (I am one) is ideological, they see themselves as too socially different than mainland China. Reliance on US support, or TSMC as another popular absurd copium, for security guarantee, is not realistic, and any Taiwanese can see this now. Absent other ways to secure its self determination, Taiwan is stuck playing a thin-line game between a crazy eagle and a very possessive panda.
Maybe if Xi dies and the next guy is more reasonable. A lot of the animosity towards China is a result of Xi's authoritarian turn a decade or so ago...
One thing I never heard a talk about. What would happen to all the US bases in the NATO countrys? I can't imagine the US could fly from NATOs countrys bases and attack Greenland and partner. Would for ex. germany attack Ramstein?
"Why should the U.S. continue to have access to these bases, or receive support from allies’ naval assets, air forces, or even intelligence services, if it tries to take sovereign territory from a NATO member like Denmark? "
You are right. But it's a matter of perspective. In the mainstream perspective those bases are based on contracts and a method of mutual security. But there is indeed also the perspective in Germany that those bases are factually occupying forces and given their history the option of having those bases removed have been limited.
And there is a kernel of truth in it. The USA likely wouldn't give up Ramstein under any circumstances safe the German military mobilizing against them, the base is (was?) too important for the US. When Trump invades Greenland we will see this play out (how the base stays active and Germany is powerless to stop that).
Novo nordisk's biggest mistake was refusing to create a direct to consumer business. Eli Lilly sells most of their product through their website at large discounts, this superior distribution method is largely how they were able to gain such a large market share. Their product is also better than ozempic, so that definitely helped too. But its not like Novo Nordisk was stuck with ozempic, they couldve developed new advancements as well.
Sure, it could blow up its economy and have the U.S. just switch to the existing domestic alternative, which also appears to be superior (tirzepatide).
It has more upvotes and comments than anything else posted since it’s been posted 2 hours ago, and has been on the front page for an hour before disappearing
I think that was much more a cooperative agreement type situation than childish threats like we have now.
I'm not opposed to changes in territory in principle... but there's no principles involved in the current US administration acting out like a fragile child.
Threats are always a part of negotiations. There was also a proposal to trade Greenland for 1/3 of the Philippines (which the US got from Spain just for showing up to a war that nobody wanted).
The sport who's leader shoved his head so far up Trump's ass he was able to taste his orange make-up. All for the sake of giving him a farce of a "peace" prize.
(I'm talking about FIFA in case you are not aware)
This "EU is weak" rhetoric straight from right-wing Twitter is exactly what's fueling Trump and Miller. China already called Trump's bluff, EU will too. We'll see how long the US economy is going to last when it can't even fund its own government.
That's true for all governments who issue treasuries. For the US it's the kindness of the Japanese, the Chinese and the British. But mostly their own kindness.
They are either being paid, or they are so lost in propaganda that they're willing to do it >for free. They have more time that they are willing to waste on propaganda than you, unless you decide to dedicate every waking moment to a rebuttable you are behind the eight ball. Even then, they're probably in dozens of communities and threads at the same time, repeating the same garbage.
The only way this sort of rhetoric can be fought is at the level of moderation. This site has user-driven moderation, which in theory means that you can fight the tide this way, but in practice the authoritarians and fascists have access to these tools as well, and bad faith use is rarely punished, so these tools are less of a panacea and more of a race to who can down-vote who first.
The only other alternative is for the paid moderation of this site to put their foot down and say "We are not okay with fascists and authoritarian apologists on our site" and ban them. The admins of Hacker News are another on a very long list of social media site hosts who have decided to wash their hands of the responsibility. They don't care.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. If you decide you still want to engage, I recommend viewing the interaction through the lens of an attention economy; spend less time on a rebuttle than they did on their post, and only in places where you think it will actually be seen.
Correct, it's literally their main job to spew propaganda. As demonstrated repeatedly by power outages in st. petersburg, moscow and most recently iran.
Unless one verifies every single user by ID, there needs to be at least a platform-level detection of user jurisdiction and the application of appropriate penalties and limits to their activity.
You don't have to go that far, there's a lot easier solution - prefer socializing in spaces that actually vet their users to some degree and have humans who have an active hand in moderation.
It's the old way that social spaces on the internet used to work, and you don't need ID verification for that, you just need spaces that are conducive to that style of community-building. Think Discord, not Instagram. Think (invite-only) Mastodon, not Twitter. Think lobsters, not HN. Think Tildes, not Reddit.
"We'll see how long the US economy is going to last when it can't even fund its own government."
This is fantasy thinking, projection of a subjective wish.
The dollar is the global reserve currency and is under no serious threat to be displaced (and no, the dollar dropping back to where it was a couple of years ago vs the Euro, is not a meaningful event).
The US economy is by far the world's largest and now dwarfs the Eurozone.
To answer your question: the US economy is going to last a very long time yet. So far it has lasted hundreds of years. Please provide a comparison to any other economy that has lasted so long and done so well. You'll be able to name two or three examples maximum.
In the moment people tend to get hyper emotional, hyperbolic. They think something fundamental is changing. That's almost always nothing more than personal subjective projection of what they want to have happen, rather than an objective assessment of reality. Back in reality the US has survived and thrived through drastically worse than anything going on in the present. The Vietnam era was far worse both socially/culturally and economically. WW2 was drastically worse. The Civil War was drastically worse. The Great Depression was drastically worse. But oh yeah sure, the US superpower is about to end any day now.
Europe survived 2 devastating home wars in the last 100 years, a lot of it was under Soviet occupation, and has smaller natural deposits. The US economy is being propped-up by cheap credit and blitzscaling of tech, and the money is running out. Those companies have to start making money, and the european market is critical to that. The rest of the US market is stagnant at best. The US consumer market is being held up by the top 10% of spenders. The real US economy is disconnected from the stock market and GDP. The average US consumer is weak, and the US is not going to last a trade war with EU and China. Meanwhile the EU signing trade deals.
> The US economy is by far the world's largest and now dwarfs the Eurozone.
Nominal, Eurozone, yes.
But, being the reserve currency boosts the exchange rate all by itself. I'd argue that this acts as hysteresis, that it adds strength that keeps it a reserve currency longer than it would if there was no memory in the system. Therefore, if anything does induce a shock, the PPP rate is more relevant when considering who might displace it; this other currency (or currencies) would then also get the same hysteresis benefit.
The EU, PPP, is about the same as the US (30 T), and I'd argue that "the EU" is important measure for near-future stuff rather than the current Eurozone, because the EU has the no-specific-time-constraint preference to become all Eurozone… except for the bits that opted out. But also some more neighbours who opted in without being in the EU. It's weird.
China, PPP, it is bigger than the US, 40 T by PPP. Not quite as big as the gap between the US and India, but close enough I had to get the calculator out I can't eyeball the ratio on a linear graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/jfgbd60rb...
> To answer your question: the US economy is going to last a very long time yet. So far it has lasted hundreds of years. Please provide a comparison to any other economy that has lasted so long and done so well. You'll be able to name two or three examples maximum.
You didn't do well for all of those hundreds of years, if you squint hard enough to ignore the great depression you get to about 150 years, which basically means about the same as every other industrial economy that didn't have a war in the middle split it apart. If you don't do that (because the great depression really sucked), the half of Europe whose national boundaries explosively reorganised, and also the Soviet Union, wave hello.
The USSR is an important reference, because basically nobody saw the collapse coming until a year or two before it happened. It was unthinkable.
> In the moment people tend to get hyper emotional, hyperbolic. They think something fundamental is changing. That's almost always nothing more than personal subjective projection of what they want to have happen, rather than an objective assessment of reality.
All true.
> Back in reality the US has survived and thrived through drastically worse than anything going on in the present. The Vietnam era was far worse both socially/culturally and economically. WW2 was drastically worse. The Civil War was drastically worse. The Great Depression was drastically worse. But oh yeah sure, the US superpower is about to end any day now.
How many of those occasions did the US refuse to rule out military force with its primary set of allies in order to seize land supposedly to keep it safe from a nation that's now 33% richer than it is? The Civil War was not a time when y'all were a big player on the world stage, it was when Europe was busy carving everything up into colonies.
The US economy is currently to overwhelming extent a bunch of tech companies betting hard on that AI will revolutionize everything. With huge circular economy. Once that bubble bursts, you'll see where you really stand
The problem is deeper than economics. It’s the festering wound of reconstruction turning putrid. It doesn’t have to be the end of the US, but it certainly can be.
Also, I’m not sure the US economy was even great for most of the periods you mentioned. The question of if the US survives to have the same economic standing that it did in the 1800s is not that compelling
What is not fundamental about the end of NATO? What is not fundamental about the US actively working to give up its role as global hegemon? The US may survive but that doesn't mean it's not fundamental.
I swear you yanks playing down every single thing that Trump does, as if history has ended, are insane.
The USA will reap what it is currently sowing and it frankly will deserve it.
One of the best things about this trade war is that we may finally be able to ban toxic yank shit like X full of retarded crap that only Americans are stupid enough to take seriously. Get fucked.
You argued it's good for the US to shrink out export markets so goods will be cheaper at home, and that Trump is doing 4d chess. I guess at least now you are being honest and just doing straight snark like a true Trump sycophant.
What are you talking about. Trumps US-EU trade deal has been halted, and a response to Trumps 1th. feb tariffs is being drawn up right now. EU not doing anything in your head, try following the news.
Sigh... this is real life and I hate it as an American. The Danes had over 50 [1] Danish lives wasted in the NATO mission in Afghanistan and Iraq and this is how we pay the Danes back when they had America's back, paid in blood.
Danes put up a courteous face right now to get through this, but the relationship to the US is permanently harmed. Even the most pro US politicians are saying the relationship will never go back to what it was before this.
Even all of the purely imperialistic stated reasons for taking Greenland make no sense.
National security? We already have the right to station as many troops there as we want! And we have actually removed troops recently.
Mineral rights? America is already richly endowed - its just impossible to access what we have when permitting is almost impossible. If there were actually valuable lodes in Greenland, it would probably be easier to mine now!
The only thing I can think of are the warm fuzzies you may feel as a despot to take land and enrage your allies.
Plus, punishing exactlty those Nato partners who are sending military there to see how to strengthen the defense. That shows you don't want Greenland stronger, militarily. You want it weaker to have less issues when you invade it.
The NYT asked him about this a couple weeks ago. Here's an article with some excerpts from that [1]. Key parts:
> President Donald Trump revealed in a new interview with The New York Times that his quest for full “ownership” of Greenland is "psychologically important” to him.
> During a two-hour sit-down with multiple Times reporters on Jan. 7, Trump was questioned about why he won't just send more American troops to Greenland — which is legal under a Cold War–era agreement — if his goal is to fend off foreign threats. The president replied by saying that he won't feel comfortable unless he owns the island.
> "Why is ownership important here?" Times national security correspondent David E. Sanger asked.
> "Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success," Trump, 79, replied. "I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base."
> White House correspondent Katie Rogers — whom Trump recently called "ugly, both inside and out" for writing a story about his age — chimed in to ask, "Psychologically important to you or to the United States?"
> “Psychologically important for me," Trump answered. "Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything."
Since Trump can't walk away from NATO [1], could the claim on Greenland be a ruse to force the de-facto resolution of NATO?
He probably sees Europe as too meek to do anything more dramatic/substantial. And believes that without NATO, Europe would buy more US weapons that they now get "for free".
No, posting quotas. This place became a dump where 4 responses down you get time-banned for nobody knows how long and the discussion gets nowhere. You get attacked left and right? Well, tough luck, can’t defend and explain yourself. Good luck when multiple people want to discuss anything with you. This used to be a thought provoking place. It’s a dump now.
Despite all the talk about military action, the fact is that Europe is one of the main trading partners of the US and holds a substantial share of US debt. Any invasion would be economic suicide, and I think even Trump realizes this.
Trump barely thinks about first order effects, much less second order. He probably doesn't know it's economic suicide. And when it happens he'll tell us both "nobody knows more than me" and "nobody knew global commerce was this complicated" and then he'll tell us he'll have a plan to fix it in two weeks
A mass selloff of US bonds will mean that the US can’t sell any more - because the market is suddenly flooded with bonds at a ‘discount’. This means that the US can’t take on any more debt (borrow money)
Why would you pay the US $10 when you can get the same thing from France for $8?
Or the US then has to issue bonds with massively inflated returns - i.e. pay a much higher interest rate.
This idea of waging financial war on the US seems very en vogue in Europe right now, but I think it's terribly shortsighted. Here's how I think it would go down:
1. EU countries coordinate a mass selloff of US debt, somehow even coercing private holders into a fire sale.
2. US bond prices consequently fall. EU holders lose tons of money on the sell side. US and Asian buyers rush to buy and get a sweetheart deal and massive risk-free returns, which starts crashing the stock market.
3. The Fed intervenes. They conjure up dollars from nothing and buy the bonds EU holders are selling at some discount, maybe 95 cents on the dollar. Those new dollars go into those countries' and banks' Master accounts at the Fed.
4a. EU countries' and banks' Master accounts are frozen. Maybe some portion of the funds are released every week in order to allow an orderly flow of value without too much market distortion. Or maybe given the act of financial war, those funds remain frozen indefinitely.
4b. Alternatively, their Master accounts are not frozen. Now, presumably EU didn't sell all their bonds just to hold non-yielding dollars. So they'll go to the forex markets and buy up Euros, massively strengthening the Euro and fucking up their export-based economies. Maybe they buy gold, or EU sovereign debt, or ECB steps in with mad QE. EU bond yields crater. EU holders lose more money on the buy side as whatever assets they purchase get more expensive. Inflation ensues.
5. US is furious and retaliates with financial warfare of their own. Or perhaps kinetic warfare. The ringleaders of the fire sale end up blindfolded and earmuffed on a US warship.
6. EU is in a much worse position than before, lost a ton of money on each leg, likely had tons more frozen, has pernicious inflation and/or diminished exports, cut off from the dollar system making currency reserve management and forex difficult and costly. The US is also now furious and looking to impose additional costs on EU however and wherever it can.
On the other hand, China sold off most of theirs and nobody even noticed. I think you're exaggerating both how much EU holds and the potential effects of them selling it.
Sure but we were talking about just debt. Also the "rest of the world" is basically just China. I don't think it's a shocker that China isn't interested in betting on US companies.
The Americans on HN driving tech, science and innovation are enabling Trump to do this. Without you he would be nothing. Where is your integrity? Do you think having no allies makes you more safe?
Is this really the world you want?
Some, by working for companies (big tech) that have given little resistance to trump but rather funded his ball room, etc. Sadly, everyone quitting those companies would not really be a reasonable solution either, though there are more possible actions than that
While Trump having a go at Denmark I'm sure pleases Putin other things are not going great his way. The lines in Ukraine are kind of static in spite of huge Russian losses, their economy is bad, their ally in Venezuela got arrested, their ships are getting boarded, the Iranian government is looking shaky.
Not the parent, but getting US to quit NATO won't help his European ambitions. Russia is weak now, and has solidified the European hostility for years to come.
"European hostility" is not going to matter when there's no EU. No matter how weak, Russia will always be stronger in terms of the number of warm bodies they are ready to throw into the meat grinder than any country in Europe.
UPD: If you don't believe me, look at the European right-wing leaders (including a sitting head of state, Meloni) currently banding up behind Orban, a widely known Putin's shill in Europe.
Dissolution of NATO has been his wet dream for decades.
Next up is dissolution of the EU; the hard-right shift all over Europe (that he gets some credit for by financing right-wing parties and propaganda) will eventually make that dream of his come true, too.
The only way for Europe forward is actual federalization. Unfortunately right wing parties will never let it happen so entire Europe is doomed to become marginalized by China and US.
Indeed, petty national topics that are used to create fake polarization against Brussels, is what is keeping us from realizing the federation we so desperately need. I am so tired of the endless, unbased right-wing arguments from nationalists against the EU, which only exist to distract from their own incompetencies.
You have no idea what it's like to be American right now. The propaganda information war that's being waged in us is overwhelming and it appears to be working. The world needs to start preparing for a reality where the US can no longer be relied on for security or economic stability. For the sake of all of us, I hope that our European allies are taking serious steps to become more independent from US power and security.
I know there is a lot of good and brave people in the US - I lived there for a long time and call many of your compatriots good friends.
We're trying our best over here, but y'all can't give up at home either. I know it sucks and it's hard, but don't give into the temptation to just tune out. If you don't like what is happening with your country, do your best to change it - don't wait for others to do it for you!
We are trying. Please realize that the second largest conflict (based on spending) in the world right now, behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is DJT’s ICE attacks on the US. That is how much he is spending to attack his own country. More than Israel spends to occupy Palestinians.
Sadly, if you look at polling, none of this is remotely unpopular with US Republican voters. Our country’s union is hanging on by tattered threads.
Maybe your country's union was a bad idea? Feels like it's allowed the regressive parts to keep control over the greater whole. Maybe y'all should've just let secession happen - at least the worst parts of America would've been contained.
It's easy to look at the politics of individual states as a means of breaking things up if you ignore the economics. Things get very complicated, very quickly when you set a political threshold for breaking up the country.
The South wasn’t punished enough after the civil war is where a lot of this stems from. There was no cleaning house like what happened with Germany after WW2.
As a Dane, while slightly angry, and gravely concerned for the people of Greenland, I'm still more fearful of the safety and mental well-being of my US friends and colleague than I am for my own.
Our Congress and Supreme Court are beholden to him. State and Individual resistance will be treated as rebellion. The legal pathways have us waiting until elections. The line of succession is GOP 40 levels deeps.
If we successfully revolt the US doesn't survive in any form to stabilize the world built around us and there is no guarantee that the ruling party isn't MAGA-like.
I hope you are right but I don't have any confidence in a Democratic party controlled Congress. I have never seen a meeker group of politicians. They will struggle to get everyone on board and some of them will defect and vote with Republicans like they did recently to end the government shutdown.
Legally speaking, the Republicans have been losing in court over and over. That doesn't mitigate the damage they're doing during the lag, and the consequences for breaking the law have never been as strong as they should be when officers of the law and elected officials are the ones breaking the law.
But it is important to acknowledge the wins. They do have an effect, and that's the only path we seem to have toward slowing down the march to autocracy.
Literally cannot. The asymmetry of technology which we have allowed to grow and flourish makes it infeasible. Flock and other manifestations of this beast sends shivers down spines and prevents any serious resistance.
Would that it were so easy to blame the flyover states. Almost half the people who cast votes voted for this - and at the same time voted for the status quo legislators who opt not to keep him in check.
The blame extends equally to everybody who supported this but due to the way American elections are set up, those people on the margins are “how” this happened.
...among the people who voted. There are a lot of folks who opted out that bear responsibility for the way this country and its power is being dismantled.
He wouldn't win the popular vote today! Why is it that when you call yourself a Republican, you take a very narrow margin of victory and consider it a mandate to only listen to your fanbase? I bet it feels fun at first, and there are a few people who get very wealthy and powerful as a result, but reality always comes crashing back down.
I suppose that if the talk of suspending mid-term elections bears fruit, that changes the equation.
The truth is that on average Republicans have way more guns that Democrats.
Anecdata but… I’ve personally known many Republicans who have massive gun collections and even personal shooting ranges in their basement. I’ve never met a Democrat with any of that.
Only one side of this conflict is meaningfully armed and they are already in power.
Well 40% of the population or so approves of the administration, so it's more like "to save themselves from their government and 40% of the rest of the population". That means resorting to the 2A is, at the very best, a rather weak bet.
There have been multiple instances of exactly what NRA members decry as federal tyranny: Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc. At not a single one did any number of people exercising their second amendment right ever show up to actually do anything, even to peacefully protest.
The idea that the 2nd amendment exists to keep alive a threat of rebellion against a tyrannical gov't is a joke.
“Second Amendment solutions” are only OK to talk about if you’re a Republican (I.e. “Real American”).
I’m being sarcastic, for the record. Back during his first term, Trump talked about “second amendment people” doing something about liberal Supreme Court justices (iirc) and the right wing media treated everyone as crazy for thinking that was wildly inappropriate.
It's really interesting how the same propaganda is applied by fascist governments everywhere. The ones supporting the "nationalist" government are the patriots and the others are enemies
The average Waco wacko can’t possible to fight even a small contingent from the local national guard, let alone a military with trillions of dollars of meteriel
All the assault weapons you can store in your shed are useless when an f35 takes them out from 300 miles away.
Yes, that is exactly how the US "lost" in Vietnam: Not having air power take them out from 300 miles away. I put "lost" in scare quotes because that "loss" is debatable, but that's a debate for another time.
The broader context was that the Indochina War was partially concurrent with, and the bulk of the combat only a little more than a decade after, Chinese intervention in the Korean War. The White House was simply terrified of the Chinese and put all sorts of restrictions on US forces that effectively guaranteed the US could never win an outright military victory.
Hanoi was declared off-limits to US bombers while Soviet and Chinese materiel flooded into the DRV, foreign pilots (including Soviets and North Koreans) were allowed to operate with impunity, airbases just over the Chinese border were used as safe havens for combat missions yet were off-limits to US pilots, over 180k Chinese troops rotated through Vietnam operating AAA batteries and such, etc. etc.
So yes, US unwillingness (arguably, inability) to apply air power where it could actually achieve strategic effects played a very large role in ensuring the US could never win an outright military victory in Vietnam. It's an open question whether the proper application of air power could have enabled such an outright military victory.
Certainly the US could and would apply air power to any serious domestic insurrection. There would be no targeting restrictions for fear of foreign escalation. There would be no influx of foreign aid and materiel. There would be no foreign pilots flying training and combat missions and no foreign troops manning foreign SAMs. There would be no foreign safe havens for rebels.
The conditions that IMO prevented an outright US military victory in Vietnam simply do not exist in a domestic context. Barring the coordinated defection of a significant portion of the US military, any armed insurrection in the US would be quickly crushed.
An "armed insurrection" is not required to deter a state's monopoly on violence - even the mere decentralization of arms across the populace objectively accomplishes this impressive feat.
You can still call your congressman, senator, local political, councilman, or someone else, spend 30 mins watching a demonstration, donate $10 to Amnesty, tell a random dude in fatigues "grateful for your service but please don't invade Greenland". The more people that do these kind of things the harder it gets for the Fascists to brand those that do as left-wing terrorists.
I’ve been tear gassed. I’m out here trying. I just know it’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. The regime is losing its grip and the only way out that fascists know is to escalate the violence.
Invading Greenland is a symptom of us on the ground fighting back. It’s to prove to Americans that we’re now isolated.
The Americans you’re trying to reach are not here. They’re in Facebook and right wing social bubbles with a constant influx of fresh slop propaganda. It’s unprecedented in the fact that it’s affecting people at the family unit level with people tearing off into political parties within families that cut off all contact from each other.
I believe you’re right but at this point it’s a single issue cult for a lot of folks. For instance, I know a very rational, personable guy that seems generally progressive on a variety of social issues but calls for the extermination of trans people with a straight face. There’s no reasoning with these people, even the ones swayed by rational opinion in other parts of their life.
That sounds extreme. Do you mean extermination as in mass murder? Or do you just mean he rejects the underlying ideology and would like to see policy that does the same?
No, not without an amendment allowing a third term, but even if there were an amendment probably still a No because he is too old and his very blunt and impolitic manner is not sustainable long-term in national leadership.
According to the WSJ, thr President has lost about 8% of his voters, so he should make some adjustments.
WSJ POLL: 92% of people who voted for Trump in 2024 are giving him a positive job rating today, including 70% who “strongly approve”
Thanks for being honest. It is truly beyond my comprehension how someone can believe this. I don’t see how right and left can get along peacefully going forward when there is such a fundamental difference of core beliefs.
I don't think anyone's ever assumed left wing consensus here. When's the last time you heard somebody here talk about public ownership of the means of production?
While you're remembering things you shouldn't forget, pay attention to how the Black Panthers are out in Philadelphia, and ICE isn't messing around over here. We chased those Patriot Front clowns out immediately, too.
But yeah, focus on the peaceful citizens making their voices heard, if that makes you feel more secure about how things are going.
As a US citizen resident of Finland, I am proud of my adoptive country. I have been so far relatively neutral-to-
vaguely-supportive of MAGA wrt the culture wars, and I find Trump's posturing on Greenland appalling and disgraceful. Yes, we all know that Trump's MO is to demand something horrendous in order to secure something less horrendous, but there is no path from threatening an ally's sovereignty that leads to anything good for the US. Monstrous.
This isn’t an aberration, it’s a continuation. Trump has repeatedly done things that would have been disqualifying for any normal president: threatening allies, undermining institutions, abusing power, normalizing coercion. The reason this moment feels different to some people isn’t that the behavior changed, it’s that they’re finally among those bearing the downside. That normalization, enabled by years of “it doesn’t affect me” neutrality, is part of how we got here.
That's only part of it. It feels worse now because everything is visible. Information moves instantly. Evidence is public. Financial trails can be followed. Citizens now expect ethical behavior from their leaders as a baseline rather than a bonus. In earlier eras, people slept better largely because they didn’t know what was happening, not because leaders were more virtuous.
For decades now, elite self-dealing, institutional opacity, and captured power steadily eroded public trust. Trump did not arrive as a reformer. He arrived as a punishment mechanism. A stress test. Unfortunately, US elites are drawing the wrong lessons so far.
Watergate, Iran-Contra, Vietnam, and the Pentagon Papers were all exposed through mass media, and they triggered resignations, prosecutions, and electoral consequences. Nixon resigned for conduct far narrower than many of Trump’s actions. Reagan officials went to prison.
Trump didn’t reveal hidden corruption, he openly violated constraints that previous leaders still treated as binding. Calling him a “stress test” misstates causality. Stress tests expose weaknesses, they don’t require millions of people to excuse norm violations because the harm initially falls elsewhere. This wasn’t inevitability or opacity, it was a collective decision to lower standards.
We can hope that enough democrats win to cause gridlock and impede more harm. However, the democrats don't offer much in the way of substantive reform and have never demonstrated the stomach for taking bold stances. Whenever a candidate does come along and propose bold change, the institutional democratic party goes out of their way to sabotage or undercut them (think AOC, Sanders, Mamdani et al).
The democrat establishment doesn't seem interested in change, they are like a softer version of politicians getting bought out by tech. Well-mannered, but ultimately not doing long-term thing in the interest of the wider country.
Good. Countries the size of the US don't need bold change. They need stability with change accomplished by a gentle shift in direction.
What bold change looks like is Trump. An anti-Trump government implementing bold change in the other direction would be bad too. Not as bad because more of their change would at least be toward things that would be good in the long run, but there would still be a lot of harm on the way by taking it too fast.
They aren't going to be able to stop the next generation of candidates. And they aren't signing up to run to maintain the institution. This year and 2028 has the potential to be the Democrat's "tea party" moment (except for decent policies instead of destroying the government policies). And it's long overdue.
I very much hope so. I changed my registration to decline to state. California has open primaries, so I can still vote in them, but I couldn't stomach being associated with stubborn, institutional failure.
I've heard this since I canvased for Obama in 2008, before I could even vote. At this point expecting change through the electoral system seems worse than a waste, its a vacuum thats sucks up the radical energy we need to get real change.
The party is already being taken over by the energy we need -- AOC, Mandami, and more. Trump going full fascist fuck is a catalyst. We can have the left-wing reaponse to the tea party that really changes the country back to decency. Or we can just sit around all defeatist and whining, because that's worked so well in the past.
Framing all of us who voted for and support the President’s actions as ignorant is lazy and inaccurate. There’s plenty of us that objectively analyzed the state of the country, the state of the world, and agree with the vast majority of these actions.
this online discussion format is impossible :-( I can tell you with certainty I did not think at all what you just said.. I cannot even imagine how you get that impression
There is no right party, unfortunately. The Duopoly of Democrats and Republicans rely on this illusory idea of "the other side" to maintain a stranglehold on power for both parties. The sooner we give up that idea that one side is better than the other, the sooner we can hold "both sides" accountable. The Democrats are an absolutely corrupt shit show. As are the Republicans.
Each expansion of executive power is treated as unprecedented until it becomes normalized. Before Bush, indefinite detention without trial was unthinkable. Before Obama, the executive assassination of U.S. citizens without due process was unthinkable. Before Clinton, routine humanitarian war without congressional declaration was unthinkable. Each step is later reclassified as “different,” “necessary,” or “less bad,” each step decried by the "opposition" but excused by partisans.
The danger isn’t that one party does uniquely shocking things. It’s that both parties participate in a ratchet where norms only ever move in one direction supported by the rank and file. What looks like a false equivalence is actually a cumulative one: today’s outrage rests on yesterday’s precedents.
And it’s not even mainly about presidents. Fixating on the occupant of the office misses how much of this is legislative and bureaucratic drift. The real damage is often done through laws that quietly expand state power, normalize surveillance, weaken due process, or lock in perverse incentives. Presidents sign them, but Congress writes them, renews them, and funds them. That’s where the ratchet really lives.
USA PATRIOT Act (2001), Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001), Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994), FISA Amendments Act (2008), National Defense Authorization Acts with detention and secrecy expansions, Telecommunications Act (1996), Controlled Substances Act (1970), Defense of Marriage Act (1996), Welfare Reform Act / Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996). All terrible. All drafted and passed by both parties.
This is why “no one did X before” is the wrong metric. The system advances through laws and precedents that feel technical, temporary, or defensive at the time. Each one lowers the bar for the next. By the time something looks outrageous, the groundwork was laid years earlier by people insisting they were the reasonable alternative.
We can’t. It’s over. Laws don’t mean anything anymore. Even if we had a full democratic congress, they would just be ignored. The Trump administration has already been grooming people to accept congress is useless, beginning with the month long shutdown. And the Supreme Courts will just go along with whatever the president wants now.
The only thing congress can do is impeach and convict trump and his administration, thereby stripping him of his authority. Laws have been passed, judges have ruled, but all those are ignored. however, if he has no authority, then we get to find out who's on the side of the constitution and who is with trump and his allies.
There will be many loyalists who will just side with the Trump administration. And then what?
Turns out, when the law has failed, the only solution is a fight to the death. And after such a fight, we do not return to our normal state and live happily ever after, we remain deeply unstable and untrustworthy for decades to come.
If the Senate convicted, things would change. For one thing, I'm confident the military would not consider an impeached and convicted president as its commander in chief. And the prospect of the consequences of continuing to side with such a one would largely evaporate the availability of the administrative apparatus. Civil war would be a possible result, sure. But I disagree that such a Congress would simply be ignored and that ignoring it could be done while maintaining the means of continuing power.
This is catastrophizing, not analysis. If you genuinely feel this hopeless, that's worth examining as a signal about your own mental state rather than treating it as political insight.
The EU actually has a great track record, it has been a massive unifying force. I think people tend to forget how shit things were even 30 years ago. I really hate this constant shitting on the EU for no concrete reasons.
It is crippled because nation states want to retain control, it is one of the main reasons. People act like 'EU politicians' should solve everything overnight, but the reality is that it is out of their purview in many cases. Only federalization would resolve this issue.
> I think people tend to forget how shit things were even 30 years ago.
About thirty years ago a European family could survive on a single salary and get by decently. Now they can't. So, I'm not sure what are you talking about.
> It is crippled because nation states want to retain control, it is one of the main reasons.
IMO it's crippled by the amount of poor decisions making and complete inability to handle even small-scale crisis somewhat successfully.
> Only federalization would resolve this issue.
On this, I agree. But given the decision making the last 15-20 years, that option is dead on arrival.
I'm sure you consider yourself a clever person, ever consider that the situation was more complex than your one line comment? That maybe it's possible the German banks were so happy to see a country that suddenly had the backup system of the European Central Bank, i.e. a country full of customers they could lend to, that they flooded it with offers of loans? That Greeks, like the sub-prime borrowers of the USA, thought "Well, if everyone is saying the future looks bright, why not borrow money and pay it back with the promised future income?".
That, if I knew my friend was going to be irresponsible with money but their parent was going to bail them out, why shouldn't I lend them money with interest? Is that irresponsible of me? Do I deserve to get all my money back, instead of suffering some of the losses as well? (In this highly simplicized example, I = German banks, my friend = the Greek society, their parents = the ECB. Not saying all of Greek society was irresponsible, but in aggregate, it was a risky "investment")
A lot of the Greek bailout could be summarized as the German government bailing out German banks with EU taxpayers' money...
Here's a long article about what happened when Germany got flooded with money in the 1870s: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/michael-pettis-syriz... . It's longer than your one line, maybe you'd rather hold on to your more succint (and maybe more intelligent) summary...
Part of the reason we’re in this mess is that Americans bristle at getting told which is the “right” party to vote for by internationals, the media, existing politicians, institutions…
You know, if everybody shouts at you to not do a certain thing, maybe, just maybe, they could have your best interests in mind? But instead they are being portrayed as "globalists" or whatever the mouthbreathers in the flyover states spin up today.
That's of course a totally valid reason to destroy your institutions, international reputation, and of course the lives of many poor people in your country. Makes sense /s
Europeans will really do anything except confront Russia and China.
A little history lesson: the US has defacto and dejure been defending Greenland since WWII (they've had a defence pact since Denmark fell to the Nazis). US bases have been on Greenland from then to the current day.
Even after Ukraine, Europe buys Russian gas. Even with all the threats from China towards Taiwan, Europeans are cozying up to them. And Europe still doesn't adequately defend itself, with a few exceptions.
While Trump is erratic in public, all recent US moves point to a confrontation with Russia/China in the near future. And Europe just sits by twiddling their thumbs. Feels like Eastern Europe and the Baltics are the only ones who take it seriously.
Yeah, we've been here before. Empires don't necessarily fall by the hand of their enemies as much as they fall by their own hands and hubris. See: UK, Germany, Russia, historical China and other asian countries, hell even the Romans, and so on and so forth, we've had it all. Trump is nothing new, just another fool in a long line of fools.
It is getting downvoted because it is a well known silly trope. Generally, success reinforces itself. That’s why there have been a bunch of countries that have had multi-generational streaks of repeated success. Eventually, this feedback look can fail, but it isn’t on some predictable four generation pattern.
> Eventually, this feedback look can fail, but it isn’t on some predictable four generation pattern.
Actually, it kind of is.
See The Fourth Turning and any other book based on the Strauss-Howe generational theory.
Is this theory air-tight and inviolable? No. Does it more or less support this “silly trope”? Yes. I think it’s safe to say that it is directionally correct.
If you think that it's just an imagination, the universe will make you physically feel what it really is. Not all at once, but gradually, drop by drop. And then, you'll learn the true meaning of another "meme" word: ignorance.
This is what they want you to believe. You are useful and convenient when you are malleable (to someone's else agenda aka "their choice"). Ideally, you should not practice any discernment at all, raise no questions, silence any suspicions. As if it's all by sheer coincidence and predefined by external forces ("chance").
Personally I find all of the pretense and posturing around these issues both comical and concerning. The Arctic Circle is opening, and Chinese and Russian pressure will increase. At this time, there is no sign that Canada and the European nations will be in a position to even put up a shadow of resistance to it.
Russia can barely hold its own in a war against a neighboring country 30x smaller than them. Do people really still think they are a threat on the global stage anymore? China, yes, but their tactic is economic rather than military. And they are already winning in that front considering how dependent the rest of the world is on their manpower and manufacturing.
It's pretty clear that going forward the only real military threat the rest of the world has to concern itself with is the USA.
There wouldn't have been a problem if the US would've just done a deal go deploy all their stuff on Greenland, hell, even a whole autonomous military zone or something?
But nooooo, they gotta buy the whole thing like it's Alaska or something.
I don't get it. Especially because now Russia/China will actually get real interested in the Arctic, plus that they now have an opportunity to disrupt the alliance and delegitimize NATO etc.
Like Trump, I too am a (albeit, small-time) real estate guy. Ownership gives me tingles that renting could never give me. You rent a place for 30 years, diligently pay rent, and in the end you own nothing? Pshaw.
I get it, but the world doesn't run on hard power, it runs on soft power.
The US could simply invade Greenland if it actually refuses to let them stay there, or if an adversary tries to take it over.
That's why I'm so appalled. There is no such imminent threat which would force such a transaction to take place.
Subtle deals like the one I was talking about won't fly as justifications to take action against the US by Russia/China, nor will it up tensions unlike this drama.
This comment shows why the damage done by Trump will be so hard to reverse, no matter who's in charge next. When Trump talks about taking Greenland, the answer should be "no, moron, it's effectively a part of NATO", and instead you get all this muddying analysis of the strategic signifficance of Greenland, history, and how the EU is weak.
Trump is a symptom. The US cannot be trusted because we will always be one US election away of this bullshit again, because there are a lot of people there that actually agree with this.
The EU should be untangling itself from the US as quickly as possible. Any dependency on it is a major security risk.
I guess from the point of view of Europeans and Canada, the Arctic Circle is opening and Chinese, Russian and US pressure will increase. I hear they found a new powerful enemy recently.
I think the administration's real goal isn't taking over Greenland. I think it's scaring the EU enough about the possibility the US might take over Greenland that the EU pays to fortify it so the US doesn't have to. (Somebody needs to fortify it, because the world is warming and it will become a strategically important trade choke point when a Northwest Passage opens up.)
Just like Trump being hot-and-cold on Ukraine. The administration's real goal isn't the US letting Russia take over Europe or even Ukraine. The goal is to scare the EU enough about the possibility the US might let Russia take over Europe or Ukraine that they start paying the expense of making sure that doesn't happen.
Greenland only has a population of 56k. If the US really wanted to buy Greenland, it should suggest a referendum whether Greenland should be annexed by the US, then pass a law that says the US will give each Greenlander $1 million if the referendum passes. I'm sure it would pass in a landslide and it would only cost $56 billion, which seems much lower than the price of trying to capture it militarily.
I don't know if I understand, grasp or agree with the geopolitics in your comment, but the weather in the north has indeed been getting nicer as of late; last summer I spent quite some time swimming in the beach without wearing thermal suits or anything at all really. So if anybody thinks that living in US is a tough bite to swallow lately, emigrating to Scandinavia or Iceland is not such a bad thing. Greenland though is still a little too tree-less and bare for my taste, and there my wild speculation[^1] is that the current US administration is looking for some harsh hell to set up forced labor camps to send anybody they don't like.
[^1] With NATO, the security reason given by US makes no sense. And as for natural resources, I'm sure there are perfectly legal and inexpensive mechanisms that US companies can use to set up mining operations in Greenland.
That would be a horrible deal for the Greenlanders, and they know it - there were polls recently and Vance was pretty much told that when he visited there.
The US is allowed for decades to have a military presence on Greenland, but the US Army has been diminishing it's presence as the time went by.
Up it to $5 million per Greenlander then. The US can afford to pull the trigger on a $250-$280 billion acquisition. The EU can't afford to counter it. To put that sum into perspective for the US economy: that's merely 2.x years of operating income for Google. There's no scenario where the people of Greenland reject that $250b offer in a free vote.
Where is that money coming from? The defense budget is 800B - this is a major budget item just throwing money in the trash along with most of your alliances
>US might take over Greenland that the EU pays to fortify it so the US doesn't have to
Does not make sense. Denmark had already budgeted with a huge increase of military capabilities on Greenland. If US wanted more they could talk with their allied.
And the 'lol just pay them' argument is tone deaf and insulting to the Greenlanders. If you followed along you would know that they have already stated that they would not take money. To say nothing about the laws that governs the Kingdom and the process of leaving the it. Which can not be deferred by paying anyone. But I guess americans have a really hard time understanding the rule of law now.
The goal in Ukraine for the US is to bleed Russia. While Russia is busy in Ukraine, it's losing its influence and positions, from Syria to Iran.
The ideal for the US superpower right now, is to collapse Iran's regime while Russia is kept busy in Ukraine. It's unable to lend support to prop up its allies. The peace efforts are fake, meant to maintain a constant back and forth that never really goes anywhere. The US system has been focused on trying to strip Russia out of that region for decades, since before 9/11. Iraq was about Russia. Syria was about Russia. The first Gulf War was about decimating the Soviet supplied Iraqi army with the latest generation of US weapons, to put them to the test.
Most of the agenda exists from one administration to the next. The Pentagon works on its strategic aims across decades (see Bush & Obama & Trump and pivoting against China).
The US superpower is interested in the great power conflicts, it's not interested in Iraq because of oil, or Venezuela because of oil. It's about Russia and China, the other components (oil, chips, weapons, etc) are mere strategic calculations on the board.
This isn’t really about Greenland’s strategic value; it’s about the category error. You can trade goods, sign treaties, and negotiate basing rights. You can’t “buy” a people or their sovereignty especially when they don’t consent. That’s why Europe responds with process and principle: normalize coercion-as-bargaining among allies and you’re reviving a pre-1945 model of politics Europe built institutions to prevent.
It’s also lose-lose for the US. There isn’t a positive outcome. If it’s dropped, the damage is “just” reputational and partly repairable. If it’s pursued: tariffs, threats, coercion. It burns trust inside NATO, accelerates European strategic decoupling, and hands a propaganda gift to every US adversary. A forced takeover would be a catastrophic own-goal: legitimacy crisis, sanctions/retaliation, and a long-term security headache the US doesn’t need.
And the deeper issue is credibility. The dollar’s reserve status and US financial leverage rest on the assumption that the US is broadly predictable and rule-bound. When you start treating allies like extractive targets, you’re not “winning” you’re encouraging everyone to build workarounds. Part of the postwar setup was that Europe outsourced a lot of hard security while the US underwrote the system; if the US turns that security guarantee into leverage against allies, you should expect Europe to reprice the relationship and invest accordingly.
The least-bad outcome is a face-saving off-ramp and dropping the whole line of inquiry. Nothing good comes from keeping it on the table.
> It’s also lose-lose for the US.
Yes. Ian Bremmer keeps pointing out that if the "law of the jungle" becomes the norm for relations between countries, the USA will not benefit as much as autocracies like China and Russia.
See https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TLhz6ZbrMuI for a more full-throated explanation from Ian.
Yes. US is burning a lot of goodwill and soft power in the last year.
For a lot of countries China doesn't seem so bad now. Specially when the the difference between human rights in US and China are becoming smaller
> Specially when the the difference between human rights in US and China are becoming smaller
Really? Seems to me that whatever you think that is happening that’s bad in the US right now it kind of still pales in comparison to the cultural and religious prosecutions of folks like the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong, Chinese Christians, and just about anyone who speaks against the CCP.
Right, because an agency supposedly meant for "immigration enforcement" being sent to cities of the President's opponents so they can crackdown on protests and harass citizens is different... how? Is being persecuted for your religion worse than being persecuted for your political beliefs?
There is a secret police force actively patrolling the streets, going door-to-door asking for papers, shooting American citizens and your response is "it's not that bad"?
No, ICE is sent elsewhere as well, but because those places aren’t sanctuary cities you get local law enforcement cooperation with immigration enforcement and the enforcement doesn’t make the big headline. The enforcement is not as confrontational because ICE just scoops the folks up at the jail after a phone call when the immigration status of an arrested individual appears to be problematic.
It just so happens that the sanctuary cities are in very blue areas which are within Trump political opponents and prevent federal immigration enforcement cooperation from their local government agencies.
If you don’t want the door to door enforcement, have your local officials become cooperative in enforcing the immigration laws. If you don’t want immigration enforcement at all, call your congressperson to change the law. The law being enforced is one that had wide bipartisan support until relatively recently. If your congresspeople not actively working to change the law (not just bitching about it, but doing something about it), hold them responsible.
So no, I am not going to downplay and dishonor the victims of the the human rights violations of China by comparing it to what is happening here.
Police in China would at least identify themselves, and never wear a mask.
"difference between … becoming smaller" happens well before the rank-ordering flips, even when running at full speed.
People speaking out against Trump and ICE are getting shot in the head. So I really see no difference.
ICE is sending brown people and people with accents to concentration/death camps. Say what you will about the Uyghurs, but China provided them with their own rooms and toilet facilities. ICE has been forcing detainees to drink toilet water and eat moldy bread [1]. All while hiring rapists and violent criminals for their enforcement.
Really, the US is actually worse than what China was at this point and China was bad.
[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/12/estados-unido...
Not the case if the US joins the autocracies.
Warren Buffett once said: "You can't make a good deal with a bad person"
Which is exactly the case as long as Trump is POTUS. There's no good deal to be made for Denmark, Greenland, or Europe in general. Trump is a bad person, and can not be trusted.
Any deal that is made will either be altered or voided. And he'll continue to move the goalposts.
There are two outcomes with Trump:
1) He tries to bully someone into submission, and keeps coming back for more if successful.
2) He is slapped so hard that he gives up entirely.
Unfortunately (2) is a bit shaky these days, as he views the US military as his personal muscle.
Regarding option (2), isn’t SCOTUS supposed to rule on the legality of Trump’s tariffs soon?
That's what people have thought, but it's being dragged out for whatever reason. The latest it will come is July.
A dissenting opinion from obstinate judges can drag this thing out until the end of the session.
Are people expecting to SCOTUS rebuff Trump? So far it seems that they're good to go on any Trumpian designs.
Yes, people expect SCOTUS to rebuff Trump on the tariffs. [0]
Lately SCOTUS has been providing stricter textual interpretations of Constitutional questions. Many of these have aligned with Trump administration arguments based on the power of the executive as outlined in Article II. The text says, "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America," and, "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." One of the key arguments is that Congress can't take that power away from him. For example, Congress can't tell him that he can't fire executive-branch staff, because the executive power rests with him, not with Congress.
One thing the Constitution is very clear on, though, is that only Congress can impose tariffs ("The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises"). Furthermore, recent rulings of this Court have established the major questions doctrine, which says that even if Congress delegates the specifics of implementing its powers to the Executive branch, that delegation cannot be interpreted broadly. It can't be used to create new broad policies that Congress didn't authorize.
Therefore, because the text of the Constitution explicitly grants the right to impose tariffs to Congress /and/ Trump's imposition of tariffs is both very broad and very substantial, many people believe that SCOTUS will deny Trump's tariffs.
The case as argued is about Trump's right to issue tariffs under the IEEPA (a law Congress passed to give the President some ability to take economic actions due to international emergencies, which do not explicitly include tariffs), and there is some debate about what a negative ruling would mean for the return of tariffs to merchants who have paid them. Both of those points require careful consideration in the decision. Will the ruling limit itself to just tariffs issued under the IEEPA or to the President's ability to establish tariffs under other laws? If the Court rules against the tariffs, will the government be required to pay people back, and if so, to what extent? It's not surprising that the decision is taking some time to be released. There's a lot of considerations, and every one is a possible point for disagreement by the justices.
[0] https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/prediction-market-trade...
The US has some grace here as most of the negative feelings towards it dies with it's government.
You're going to pick better next time, right?
Picking better next time won't be enough unless a lot of work is done to put in place safeguards to make it impossible for a future government to act the same way.
That or decades of picking better.
Regardless, we are looking at a long time before the world doesn't look at our government in disgust (rightfully).
Indeed, but it might be many decades - once this lesson is first learned, it will take a long time to unlearn because it tends to become self-reinforcing.
To give an illustration of how long institutional memory over things like this can be:
As of when I went to primary school in Norway in the 1980's, we were still taught at length about the British blockade of Norway during the Napoleonic wars due to Denmark-Norway's entry into the war on Napoleons side and its impact on Norway (an enduring memory for many Norwegian school-children is having to learn the Norwegian epic poem "Terje Vigen" about a man evading the blockade).
Norwegian agricultural policy to this day has had a costly cross-party support for subsidies intended to provide at least a minimum of food idependence as a consequence of learning the hard way first during the Napoleonic wars with a reinforcement (though less serious) during WW2 of how important it can be.
A large part of the Norwegian negotiations for EEA entry, and Norways rejection of EU membership was centered around agricultural policy in part because of this history.
The importance of regional development and keeping agriculture alive even in regions that are really not suited to it is "baked in" to Norwegian politics in part because the subsidies means that on top of those who are about the food idependence a lot of people are financially benefiting from the continuation of those policies, or have lived shaped by it (e.g. local communities that would likely not exist if the farms had not been financially viable thanks to subsidies), so structures have been created around it that have a life of their own.
Conversely, a lot of support for the US in Europe rests on institutional memory of the Marshall Plan, with most of the generations with first hand experience of the impact now dead.
Create a replacement memory of the US becoming a hostile force, and that can easily embed itself for the same 3+ generations after the situation itself has been resolved.
Most people do not understand this.
Even if the US does that, trust arrives on foot, but leaves on horseback, so it will take years to get back to the old state of affairs.
Decades, more likely.
Not American. Also: reputational damage isn’t a skin that sheds when a government changes; allies and markets adapt structurally.
You have to be incredibly naive to give that much credibility to the US system. A lot more than just a switch of parties would be needed.
Personally I highly doubt a possible democratic would return a conquered Greenland. And even if it did, it would have to ensure that kind of derailment doesn't happen again. The opposition so far seems to be about as ineffectual as centrist parties across Europe at dealing with the far right.
Sort of. Those of us outside the US are aware his support hasn’t cratered. There’s going to be the concern the US will just swap him out for someone similar.
Except that everyone can see that the US is capable of putting this kind of government into power, and could do so again and again.
True after the first Trump administration. But now? I doubt it.
Trump's passing and his admin getting tossed won't erase the memory that a good third of America was always happy with him and wanted what he actually did. America is now branded with MAGA in a way that will take generations to fade.
At this point, I'd say terms rather than generations.
I mean, I'm old enough to remember people saying "Never Forget" about 9/11, but it's barely in any discourse at this point, and that was a single generation ago and had two major wars a bunch of PoW scandals, war crime scandals that led to Manning, and domestic surveillance that led to Snowden. And yet, despite all that, I've only heard 9/11 mentioned exactly once since visiting NYC in 2017, and that was Steve Bannon and Giuliani refusing to believe that Mamdani was legitimate.
So, yeah, if Trump fades away this could be forgotten in 8 years or so; if this escalates to a war (I'm not confident, but if I had to guess I'd say 10% or so?), then I see it rising to the level of generations.
You are talking about the US, the others do not.
I'm saying "never forget" fades. That's a human condition we all share.
I mean, I live in Germany these days, and this country absolutely got the multi-generational thing, and I'm from the UK whose empire ditto, but… the UK doesn't spend much time thinking about the Falklands War and even less about the Cod Wars.
But it's not US who is in charge of US, unfortunately. It's Project 2025 who is in charge of US, and it has a vastly different win and lose criteria. For Project 2025 dissolving NATO, UN, WTO and whatever is a win. For Project 2025 weakening dollar is a win. For Project 2025 isolation in the Americas is win. And US is no longer in charge. Congress has voluntarily surrendered its power and others are following the lead. Project 2025 may or may not become future US, we'll see how it goes this year.
Sure you can buy territory, like the Danish West Indies
its bad optics for both US and Europe that neither side insists on holding a referendum, how can I know what the local population wants for themselves?
Its damning when neither Europe nor US insists on a referendum, and the population in Greenland is the new soccer ball...
Greenland already has the right to independence from Denmark, via chapter 8 of the law for the self-governing of Greenland, that was enacted in 2009 [1]:
> The decision on Greenland's independence is made by the Greenlandic people.
Technically, the Danish government has to OK the decision, but this is largely viewed as a formality by Danish politicians, should Greenland choose to move forward with independence.
[1] https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2009/473
“Optics” is the wrong frame: this is about legitimacy and consent. A referendum demanded by outsiders under pressure is just coercion with a procedural costume. Imagine Cuba proposing a referendum on Puerto Rico joining Cuba and calling it “bad optics” if people won’t play along, the absurdity is the premise, not the lack of voting.
Maybe that's the answer - the USA needs to hold a referendum on becoming a British colony again. It's 250 years since they declared independence, maybe they've changed their mind on having a king? (/s)
I fail to see what is damning here. What would you even hold a referendum on? Independence? Replacing the arrangement with Denmark with whatever unclear arrangement the US is proposing?
If you trust independent polls, you can get a pretty clear picture of where Greenlanders stood as of Feb. 2025:
[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/34174/greenlanders-who-would-... [1] https://www.veriangroup.com/news-and-insights/opinion-poll-g...
Danish citizenship or independence are overwhelmingly favored over US citizenship in these polls. And for independence, only really if it does not affect living standard too bad. And there, it's hard to imagine the US being able to match Denmark's social security system...
They'll loot and destroy safety nets and then deport anyone that dissents about the situation.
I believe you write in good faith, and that you sincerely and non-agressively hold your opinion, and that you believe you don't lack a well known piece of information.
But first let me quote a short piece of text, and later in the comment I will reveal where it comes from.
"After World War II, colonial power was increasingly frowned upon on the international stage. To ease pressure from the United Nations, Denmark decided to reclassify Greenland, not as a colony, but as a region. A new Status that required Denmark to guarantee EQUAL LIVING STANDARDS for both Greenlanders and Danes."
Hold on to this "EQUAL LIVING STANDARDS".
So now on towards the poll.
Back when I was studying physics, one of the courses was statistics. Now statistics in physics or mathematical courses is very different from "statistics" in applied / social / political sciences where students are merely required to execute a procedure, like linear regression to fit a line, or the steps to calculate average and variance, ... Those are fixed formulas without rearranging terms and applying mathematical deduction to statistical statements. One can't fully grok statistics in this light form, it needs more rigorous foundations, only then can students learn to derive their own original conclusions in a correct manner and be able to see through the honest mistakes or manipulations of statistical results by others. The professor recommended a booklet called "How to Lie with Statistics". Of course the goal of the book is NOT to breed dishonest statisticians, but to show the myriad of ways statistical results are depicted and phrased to convey intentionally convey an incorrect impression or conclusion, so that we can detect and see through it.
One of the classic things is for example the distribution of top classes: consider mortality rates for different afflictions, lets pretend we buy into the mono-causal paradigm, so tree like, not DAG like. Then if some entity is embarrassed about the top entry, you can just split it up in similarily balanced subcases (instead of a category cancer, splitting it up into all the different kinds of cancer might result in say cardiovascular diseases becoming the top category, simply by splitting up the top class. (My example is arbitrary, I care naught about top mortality, personally).
A false dilemma (false trilemma etc.) is when all the options combined don't form the universe of possibilities, like "would you prefer pestilence or cholera"?
Please take a careful look at the actual poll options [0]:
1. I want independence unconditionally, regardless of the impact on the standard of living
2. I want independence, even if it would have a major negative impact on the standard of living
3. I want independence, even if it would have a small negative impact on my standard of living
4. I only want independence if it doesn't have a negative impact on my standard of living
5. I don't want independence
6. Don't know
It's almost like some Dane made up the vote-able categories and decided to troll the Greenlanders with a reference to the broken promise: LIVING STANDARDS ?!? Some Good Old forced contraception foisted of as the required EQUAL LIVING STANDARDS between Danes and Greenlanders ?!!
So we can classify already: Don't Know (option 6: 9%) vs Know (presumably options 1 through 5: 91% claim to know what they want), so far so good since we have mutually exclusive but exhaustive split.
Now consider the universe of possibilities for those who Know:
Those who know they want independence (from Denmark; options 1 through 4: 84% of all respondents) and those who know they don't want independence (from Denmark; option 5: 9% of all respondents)
So far so good.
Those who want independence (from Denmark) unconditionally (option 1: 18% of all respondents) and those who want independence (from Denmark) conditionally (option 2 through 4: 66%)
Here it gets vague because the boundaries one is asked to get classified in (divide and conquer style) are subjective: on condition there is no "major", "small" or "negative" impact on standard of living.
Is "negative impact" more or less negative than "small negative impact"? I want to see HN commenters discuss if "negative impact" is better or worse than "small negative impact".
This is just non-quantitative gerrymandering.
But let's ignore the gerrymandering: the phrasing is not neutral, as if it is a given there will be negative impact on standards of living!
Imagine the poll stated not the above but:
1. "I want independence unconditionally, regardless if the Danes perform a new round of population control as a goodbye present for old times sake"
2. "I want independence conditionally, regardless if the Danes perform a new major round of population control as a goodbye present for old times sake"
3. "I want independence unconditionally, regardless if the Danes perform a new small round of population control as a goodbye present for old times sake"
4. "I want independence unconditionally, regardless if the Danes perform a new round of population control as a goodbye present for old times sake"
It would be the exact same logical fallacy, but probably with different results, thousands of women (and men) would keelhaul their nearest Danish officials under the nearest ice shelf.
It's just insulting for an (unverifiable) poll to pull these tricks, especially if the poll was co-organized by a Danish newspaper.
> The poll, which was carried out by Verian on behalf of Danish newspaper Berlingske ...
Something else that is insulting: I saw pictures of immense crowds protesting Trump's comments, and read the number of protesters involved: practically the population count of whole Greenland... until I saw the fine print: the numbers were for a protest in Denmark, not Greenland!
Let people speak for themselves, and don't gerrymander polls, its just doubly insulting, and shows that the colonial mentality is still present, sigh!
that power goes both ways, what happens if the Greenland population demands the full list of doctors involved, what type of doctors: military or civilian?, their extradition for legal proceedings on Greenland soil, the confiscation of their pension funds, ... the whole shebang, or else --- who knows they might become a state joining a Union of States, perhaps EU perhaps US. The US has a similar history, from a similar time frame, but the Danish government took a remarkably longer time to even acknowledge what happened.
source:
[0] https://www.euractiv.com/news/virtually-no-greenlander-wants...
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/denmark-apologizes-for-abuse-of-greenl...
Check this documentary (about 30 minutes), horrendous crimes. And then "apologizing", apologizing is when all forms of help have been exhausted, instead of apologizing reveal the lists of doctors, so the Greenlanders can question them, who they got commands from, and were those people got their instructions from, extraditions, confiscation of their pension funds (think about it: having been raped by the doctor, or sedated (another crime if for non medical reasons). The normal order is acknowledge, then help, help, help, and only when all forms of help have been exhausted, apologize.
And Europe is angry how Trump plays the realpolitik game, but by not insisting a Greenland run referendum, but instead backing Denmark, they are playing the realpolitik game just as well, you know "maintaining good relations"
Recommended viewing (30 minutes), its where the quote comes from:
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePyFFecA0lA
It seems there is a path to a referendum? https://www.voanews.com/a/greenland-unveils-draft-constituti...
Here's more on that constitution: https://www.naadsn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/26jan-2023-...
It doesn't seem to discuss Trump's "offer". Voting independence from Denmark is different from being given the option to join the United States.
As Chomsky would say "whenever there are multiple pictures, the darkest one tends to be closer to the truth". What if natural resources would be more expensive (for both US and EU) to buy if Greenland were independent, than if it were still half-colony of Denmark. Then EU and US would have a common interest in manipulating in the same direction the referendum you referenced (for independence). Both US and EU might have cheaper access to natural resources if the population votes no for independence. Good Cop Bad Cop stuff, to scare the population to stay subjugated (and enjoy imaginary protection from EU against imaginary threat from US).
unsurprising that Chomsky has a reverse Occam's Razor that assumes the worst in any (western) action
his comment was not specific to Western nations, it would apply equally well to asian, african, south american, russian,northern, southern, ... nations, but you are right, he wouldn't treat Western nations with an exception, and that always makes the relevant population feel addressed, and this subjectively feels different, or being picked on with precision, but its just when a population feels addressed.
The referendum is on independence. Which they might want if they weren't under the threat of annexation. When given a choice between the US and Denmark, they chose Denmark, and might choose to go all in rejoin EU.
To people here just a week ago saying it was just insane joking and even MAGA didn't support it, something I pointed out didn't matter, we have moved from 'it's meme'ing' to 'here's why it's good' 'here's why it's needed' 'it's 4d chess' in less than a week. Please NEVER give an inch to this trash that will justify anything. Don't accept 'meme'ing' from an American President by saying 'it's Trump being Trump'. Push back on everything, everytime.
As the nazi's were happening, everyone was waiting for the 'one big thing' that was too big of a line cross. We have waited until the point the US is using it's power to take land. And everyone is still waiting for that 'big thing' or some line (even though we've passed countless lines already). MAGA freaked out over Epstein for what a decade? And suddenly when it's almost released they stopped caring. If MAGA dropped that almost instantly, MAGA is NEVER going to care about anything.
As a side note. Beware when exporting to the USA using UPS. Especially when having the receiver pay for imports and taxes. UPS does not enforce payment. They will hand out the package before receiving the taxes and tolls. Then, they force you, the exporter, to pay, since you’ve agreed to it by accepting their terms and conditions. I’ve learnt this the hard way.
Also been hit with this using DHL. Doing trade with the USA is such a gamble now with so much uncertainty.
Yup. Now people outside the US pay tariffs going both ways. Sending a package to the US? Pay the US tariffs for the receiver in advance. Getting a package from the US? Pay any tariffs/duties/taxes as per normal.
That explains why they gave me the package and then sent me a bill for import duties a month later.
They typically do this because they don't have enough warehouse space to keep the packages temporarily, and also because it wouldn't be very Express if it adds another day or two.
But if the value is high or you've landed on their naughty list, they'll have you pay before receiving the package.
I wonder how the current events in Greenland will impact the safety and sovereignty of Taiwan.
The US is Taiwan’s most important military ally, even if that relationship remains unofficial. It is also the most critical power in the First Island Chain. If the US stopped being a global superpower, countries like Japan and South Korea might not be willing to aid in defending Taiwan on their own.
I wonder how the current events in Greenland will impact the safety and sovereignty of Taiwan.
That was my thought as well. It's a dangerous rhetoric being displayed by USA. "We need this land for our security". Turns out, what if other powers start using the same rhetoric? Russia did it already for Ukraine, China might say "We need Taiwan for our security".. where does it stop and ultimately it leads absolutely nowhere good.
Diplomatic relationships are rarely about justice, because they are almost always about power and influence.
In fact, the US and its allies have been the only major powers advocating for a "rules-based international order." On the other side, you have Russia annexing Crimea in 2014, and China building artificial islands in the South China Sea to forcefully claim territory that isn't theirs under international law. Not to mention that all authoritarian states, by their very nature, are a clear violation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which defines democracy and freedom of speech as basic human rights.
But at the same time, the US doesn't need a moral justification to sanction China over AI hardware. It is, as always, about power and influence.
The worrying part is that the US is losing its global influence by threatening an ally over Greenland. If they ever resort to military measures, they would lose all influence over the EU, and that would leave Taiwan in a very dangerous spot.
China already claims Taiwan, and has for decades; the only thing keeping it practically separate is uncertainty over the outcome in various dimensions if China tries to take it militarily. I don't think there's any doubt that if they were sure they could take it relatively bloodlessly and without significant repercussion, they would do so immediately.
The US recognizes Taiwan as part of China since the 70’s though its position is quite ambiguous! I found this document by the US congress that explains the history behind the rather bizarre situation Taiwan finds itself today: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12503
Nope. The US One China Policy (not to be confused with China's One China Principle) only "acknowledges" China's claim over Taiwan. The wording is intended to be vague so that each side can interpret the meaning according to their own interests (like China claiming "acknowledge" actually means "recognize").
You're right, of course. What I'm saying is what happens if anyone with any lethal force proclaims they need territory which isn't theirs for their own security. Dangerous rhetoric and extremely dangerous precedent if this plays out.
Consider the following - Trump has tried again and again to make a business deal with dictators, regardless of the previous outcomes. And since he is in a steep mental decline he is not likely to change his ways fundamentally. He also repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction of having to protect "others" with USA army, at least for free as he sees it. He repeatedly tried to break NATO and break Ukrainian support.
I think it is likely that he wants to stop protecting Taiwan, give it up to China and then expect to make a deal with China to buy stuff manufactured on the island with money, afterwards. It would be totally in character for him and match his actual actions across the world.
True. Taiwan is an important ally, unofficially. The folks the US is feuding with right now are also allies, but officially. As are Japan and South Korea. It can't be encouraging.
The situation with Taiwan will explode because putinism is being normalized. Welcome to the dark era.
How do current events affect the US being a global superpower?
IMO, China will get back Taiwan without firing a single shot, the US is slowly de-risking itself from it and will eventually make Taiwan redundant. After seeing how the US is "helping" Ukraine, will the Taiwanese think fighting an all-out war with allies like this is worth it? China doesn't have the same genocidal intentions russia has towards Ukraine, so less reasons for people to fight it out
Edt: would love some arguments instead of downvotes
The problem with Taiwanese (I am one) is ideological, they see themselves as too socially different than mainland China. Reliance on US support, or TSMC as another popular absurd copium, for security guarantee, is not realistic, and any Taiwanese can see this now. Absent other ways to secure its self determination, Taiwan is stuck playing a thin-line game between a crazy eagle and a very possessive panda.
Maybe if Xi dies and the next guy is more reasonable. A lot of the animosity towards China is a result of Xi's authoritarian turn a decade or so ago...
That's true, we'll see if China is able to play the long game
I think Mexico should take back California. They need it, and I’m sure they appreciate it more.
There is a difference, since Greenland was never part of the USA…
And give Alaska back to Russia, while we're at it. Or maybe Canada has a better use for it.
One thing I never heard a talk about. What would happen to all the US bases in the NATO countrys? I can't imagine the US could fly from NATOs countrys bases and attack Greenland and partner. Would for ex. germany attack Ramstein?
There's talk of removing base access:
"Why should the U.S. continue to have access to these bases, or receive support from allies’ naval assets, air forces, or even intelligence services, if it tries to take sovereign territory from a NATO member like Denmark? "
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-europe-greenlan...
AFAIK, US bases / equipment / etc. are negotiated with the host countries, and in that sense not directly controlled by NATO.
So if the US decides to resign from NATO, they would likely face challenges directly with Germany regarding their existing agreement.
At some point Germany and others will feel the US presence on their soil being occupation forces and not joint NATO forces.
>being occupation forces
That's literally what they are. American forces appeared in Germany in 1945.
They’re not occupying forces. There is a status of forces agreement between the two countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_of_forces_agreement
So the occupier and country occupied signed an legal agreement making the occupation officially legal?
De facto and de jure are two very, very different things...
(not saying the US forces are occupying Germany, just commenting on op's logic)
You are right. But it's a matter of perspective. In the mainstream perspective those bases are based on contracts and a method of mutual security. But there is indeed also the perspective in Germany that those bases are factually occupying forces and given their history the option of having those bases removed have been limited.
And there is a kernel of truth in it. The USA likely wouldn't give up Ramstein under any circumstances safe the German military mobilizing against them, the base is (was?) too important for the US. When Trump invades Greenland we will see this play out (how the base stays active and Germany is powerless to stop that).
Yes, in case of an actual war the US soldiers on those bases would quickly become prisoners of war.
Quickly? Hilarious.
US voters, please be aware that this bill has been introduced in the House. Maybe call you reps to voice support? Democracy is not dead yet.
> Bipartisan Legislation Prohibiting a U.S. Invasion of a NATO State Introduced
https://hoyer.house.gov/media/press-releases/bipartisan-legi...
The vast majority of folks this message will reach are in tech heavy cities… almost all of which have Democratic Party representatives.
It’s honestly just very difficult to communicate with Republican parts of the country on open, reddit-like social media.
Can't Denmark just stop selling ozempic or so to the US? Would be an uproar in no time.
Eli Lilly has GLP-1 injectables and will have an oral pill this year. Novo Nordisk has already dropped that ball.
Hence Eli Lilly +40% in the last year and Novo -23%. Or on a longer timescale you can see the problem:
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/NVO:NYSE?sa=X&sqi=2&ved...
What should they have done differently to prevent a competitor from entering a valuable market?
"Pricing power fell when someone else entered the market" isn't dropping a ball is why I ask.
I think they meant dropped the ball on oral intake.
Most people probably prefer a pill vs injections with needles.
Novo nordisk's biggest mistake was refusing to create a direct to consumer business. Eli Lilly sells most of their product through their website at large discounts, this superior distribution method is largely how they were able to gain such a large market share. Their product is also better than ozempic, so that definitely helped too. But its not like Novo Nordisk was stuck with ozempic, they couldve developed new advancements as well.
Sure, it could blow up its economy and have the U.S. just switch to the existing domestic alternative, which also appears to be superior (tirzepatide).
Doesn't Ozempic already have competition on the market?
Not really, probably a majority of Americans look down on people using Ozempic
In the hypothetical amused scenario: no, that won't work, there are several alternatives now.
If the US can extract Maduro, it can extract the leadership of Novo Nordisk, their lead scientists and all of their intellectual property.
/amused scenario
Why is this not on the front page anymore??
It has more upvotes and comments than anything else posted since it’s been posted 2 hours ago, and has been on the front page for an hour before disappearing
Also go EU!
> Why is this not on the front page anymore??
Most things fall off the front page really fast, I know because I am now spending rather too much time on this site…
I would like to live in less historical times.
I'm a Finn.
Same, American.
I don’t know why we got to be assholes. I prefer speaking softly and carrying a big stick.
Annexing territory was actually way more common back then. US bought the US Virgin Islands from Denmark at around that time.
I think that was much more a cooperative agreement type situation than childish threats like we have now.
I'm not opposed to changes in territory in principle... but there's no principles involved in the current US administration acting out like a fragile child.
Threats are always a part of negotiations. There was also a proposal to trade Greenland for 1/3 of the Philippines (which the US got from Spain just for showing up to a war that nobody wanted).
True. But if the shit gets real, you guys are the best in the world to deal with it. Plenty of Russians at the bottom of the lakes to attest that.
If the EU is good at one thing, its definitely putting out statements.
The real message would be to pull out of the world cup.
Even if that happened I don’t think the USA would have a shot at the trophy.
I don't think anyone would care about these games if the European and Latin American teams decided not to come.
> I don’t think the USA would have a shot at the trophy
With Trump in power they can grab it
World cup of what sport? If the message is to Trump, I assume golf?
The sport who's leader shoved his head so far up Trump's ass he was able to taste his orange make-up. All for the sake of giving him a farce of a "peace" prize.
(I'm talking about FIFA in case you are not aware)
It would be extremely funny if they were to end one of these statements with "thank you for your attention to this matter"
Except that’s just normalizing his behaviors.
"tHAnK yOu fOR yOuR ATteNTiOn to tHIs mATtER" then
It’s not. It’s mocking.
I like my politicians to be professional.
This "EU is weak" rhetoric straight from right-wing Twitter is exactly what's fueling Trump and Miller. China already called Trump's bluff, EU will too. We'll see how long the US economy is going to last when it can't even fund its own government.
Don't worry, we've not funded our government for a while now. National debt out front should have told ya
You are reliant on the kindness of strangers to fund your government spending.
It's not kindness, it's interest. Those rates are about to go up up up.
That's true for all governments who issue treasuries. For the US it's the kindness of the Japanese, the Chinese and the British. But mostly their own kindness.
Don't worry, you're either arguing with useful idiots or pathetic SOBs working in a propaganda unit in russia.
The problem is that if no one responds to such idiots, even more idiots might be swayed into their direction.
They are either being paid, or they are so lost in propaganda that they're willing to do it >for free. They have more time that they are willing to waste on propaganda than you, unless you decide to dedicate every waking moment to a rebuttable you are behind the eight ball. Even then, they're probably in dozens of communities and threads at the same time, repeating the same garbage.
The only way this sort of rhetoric can be fought is at the level of moderation. This site has user-driven moderation, which in theory means that you can fight the tide this way, but in practice the authoritarians and fascists have access to these tools as well, and bad faith use is rarely punished, so these tools are less of a panacea and more of a race to who can down-vote who first.
The only other alternative is for the paid moderation of this site to put their foot down and say "We are not okay with fascists and authoritarian apologists on our site" and ban them. The admins of Hacker News are another on a very long list of social media site hosts who have decided to wash their hands of the responsibility. They don't care.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. If you decide you still want to engage, I recommend viewing the interaction through the lens of an attention economy; spend less time on a rebuttle than they did on their post, and only in places where you think it will actually be seen.
Correct, it's literally their main job to spew propaganda. As demonstrated repeatedly by power outages in st. petersburg, moscow and most recently iran.
Unless one verifies every single user by ID, there needs to be at least a platform-level detection of user jurisdiction and the application of appropriate penalties and limits to their activity.
You don't have to go that far, there's a lot easier solution - prefer socializing in spaces that actually vet their users to some degree and have humans who have an active hand in moderation.
It's the old way that social spaces on the internet used to work, and you don't need ID verification for that, you just need spaces that are conducive to that style of community-building. Think Discord, not Instagram. Think (invite-only) Mastodon, not Twitter. Think lobsters, not HN. Think Tildes, not Reddit.
"We'll see how long the US economy is going to last when it can't even fund its own government."
This is fantasy thinking, projection of a subjective wish.
The dollar is the global reserve currency and is under no serious threat to be displaced (and no, the dollar dropping back to where it was a couple of years ago vs the Euro, is not a meaningful event).
The US economy is by far the world's largest and now dwarfs the Eurozone.
To answer your question: the US economy is going to last a very long time yet. So far it has lasted hundreds of years. Please provide a comparison to any other economy that has lasted so long and done so well. You'll be able to name two or three examples maximum.
In the moment people tend to get hyper emotional, hyperbolic. They think something fundamental is changing. That's almost always nothing more than personal subjective projection of what they want to have happen, rather than an objective assessment of reality. Back in reality the US has survived and thrived through drastically worse than anything going on in the present. The Vietnam era was far worse both socially/culturally and economically. WW2 was drastically worse. The Civil War was drastically worse. The Great Depression was drastically worse. But oh yeah sure, the US superpower is about to end any day now.
Europe survived 2 devastating home wars in the last 100 years, a lot of it was under Soviet occupation, and has smaller natural deposits. The US economy is being propped-up by cheap credit and blitzscaling of tech, and the money is running out. Those companies have to start making money, and the european market is critical to that. The rest of the US market is stagnant at best. The US consumer market is being held up by the top 10% of spenders. The real US economy is disconnected from the stock market and GDP. The average US consumer is weak, and the US is not going to last a trade war with EU and China. Meanwhile the EU signing trade deals.
Sorry to tell you it's already 2026 which means WW1 ended 108 years ago.
"survived" - millions and millions were killed.
The geographical land mass of Europe will of course survive anything bar a collision with another planet, if this is what you're referring to.
Don't forget, wars really end much much later. The civil war endet in 31. March 2020
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Triplett
> To answer your question: the US economy is going to last a very long time yet. So far it has lasted hundreds of years.
How old is the US?
> The dollar is the global reserve currency and is under no serious threat to be displaced
Everybody leavs the dollar since a while.
> The US economy is by far the world's largest and now dwarfs the Eurozone.
Nominal, Eurozone, yes.
But, being the reserve currency boosts the exchange rate all by itself. I'd argue that this acts as hysteresis, that it adds strength that keeps it a reserve currency longer than it would if there was no memory in the system. Therefore, if anything does induce a shock, the PPP rate is more relevant when considering who might displace it; this other currency (or currencies) would then also get the same hysteresis benefit.
The EU, PPP, is about the same as the US (30 T), and I'd argue that "the EU" is important measure for near-future stuff rather than the current Eurozone, because the EU has the no-specific-time-constraint preference to become all Eurozone… except for the bits that opted out. But also some more neighbours who opted in without being in the EU. It's weird.
China, PPP, it is bigger than the US, 40 T by PPP. Not quite as big as the gap between the US and India, but close enough I had to get the calculator out I can't eyeball the ratio on a linear graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/jfgbd60rb...
> To answer your question: the US economy is going to last a very long time yet. So far it has lasted hundreds of years. Please provide a comparison to any other economy that has lasted so long and done so well. You'll be able to name two or three examples maximum.
You didn't do well for all of those hundreds of years, if you squint hard enough to ignore the great depression you get to about 150 years, which basically means about the same as every other industrial economy that didn't have a war in the middle split it apart. If you don't do that (because the great depression really sucked), the half of Europe whose national boundaries explosively reorganised, and also the Soviet Union, wave hello.
The USSR is an important reference, because basically nobody saw the collapse coming until a year or two before it happened. It was unthinkable.
> In the moment people tend to get hyper emotional, hyperbolic. They think something fundamental is changing. That's almost always nothing more than personal subjective projection of what they want to have happen, rather than an objective assessment of reality.
All true.
> Back in reality the US has survived and thrived through drastically worse than anything going on in the present. The Vietnam era was far worse both socially/culturally and economically. WW2 was drastically worse. The Civil War was drastically worse. The Great Depression was drastically worse. But oh yeah sure, the US superpower is about to end any day now.
How many of those occasions did the US refuse to rule out military force with its primary set of allies in order to seize land supposedly to keep it safe from a nation that's now 33% richer than it is? The Civil War was not a time when y'all were a big player on the world stage, it was when Europe was busy carving everything up into colonies.
The US economy is currently to overwhelming extent a bunch of tech companies betting hard on that AI will revolutionize everything. With huge circular economy. Once that bubble bursts, you'll see where you really stand
The problem is deeper than economics. It’s the festering wound of reconstruction turning putrid. It doesn’t have to be the end of the US, but it certainly can be.
Also, I’m not sure the US economy was even great for most of the periods you mentioned. The question of if the US survives to have the same economic standing that it did in the 1800s is not that compelling
> They think something fundamental is changing
What is not fundamental about the end of NATO? What is not fundamental about the US actively working to give up its role as global hegemon? The US may survive but that doesn't mean it's not fundamental.
I swear you yanks playing down every single thing that Trump does, as if history has ended, are insane.
The USA will reap what it is currently sowing and it frankly will deserve it.
Perhaps the EU shouldn’t be posting this stuff if they don’t want to be perceived that way.
https://x.com/Glenn_Diesen/status/2012472380786925947?s=20
1 glance at the timeline shows this is a pro-Russian Twitter account.
Russia didn’t create that clip.
One of the best things about this trade war is that we may finally be able to ban toxic yank shit like X full of retarded crap that only Americans are stupid enough to take seriously. Get fucked.
You argued it's good for the US to shrink out export markets so goods will be cheaper at home, and that Trump is doing 4d chess. I guess at least now you are being honest and just doing straight snark like a true Trump sycophant.
What are you talking about. Trumps US-EU trade deal has been halted, and a response to Trumps 1th. feb tariffs is being drawn up right now. EU not doing anything in your head, try following the news.
And slow Bureaucracy :)
Why don't you go charge your iPhone with your USB-C charger, that 3rd party app store is draining it's battery.
Still the funniest thing when Americans hate our democratic freedom to decide how companies that sell products here have to behave. Go EU!
Sigh... this is real life and I hate it as an American. The Danes had over 50 [1] Danish lives wasted in the NATO mission in Afghanistan and Iraq and this is how we pay the Danes back when they had America's back, paid in blood.
Its so disappointing and tragic.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmjewpkje9o
Trump has no respect for anything. He even derided US veterans. I have no idea how any patriotic person can support him.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-a...
This was 2020 and still some people who allgedely want to make America great again voted for him.
Danes put up a courteous face right now to get through this, but the relationship to the US is permanently harmed. Even the most pro US politicians are saying the relationship will never go back to what it was before this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMPe_e-WRMk&t=1s clear statement from Greenland's own too
Even all of the purely imperialistic stated reasons for taking Greenland make no sense.
National security? We already have the right to station as many troops there as we want! And we have actually removed troops recently.
Mineral rights? America is already richly endowed - its just impossible to access what we have when permitting is almost impossible. If there were actually valuable lodes in Greenland, it would probably be easier to mine now!
The only thing I can think of are the warm fuzzies you may feel as a despot to take land and enrage your allies.
> We already have the right to station as many troops there as we want!
Only at Thule. The 2004 re-agreement rescinded the unrestricted establishment of bases:
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/04-806-Denm...
It significantly emasculated the 1951 agreement:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/den001.asp#art2para...
> National security?
Plus, punishing exactlty those Nato partners who are sending military there to see how to strengthen the defense. That shows you don't want Greenland stronger, militarily. You want it weaker to have less issues when you invade it.
The NYT asked him about this a couple weeks ago. Here's an article with some excerpts from that [1]. Key parts:
> President Donald Trump revealed in a new interview with The New York Times that his quest for full “ownership” of Greenland is "psychologically important” to him.
> During a two-hour sit-down with multiple Times reporters on Jan. 7, Trump was questioned about why he won't just send more American troops to Greenland — which is legal under a Cold War–era agreement — if his goal is to fend off foreign threats. The president replied by saying that he won't feel comfortable unless he owns the island.
> "Why is ownership important here?" Times national security correspondent David E. Sanger asked.
> "Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success," Trump, 79, replied. "I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base."
> White House correspondent Katie Rogers — whom Trump recently called "ugly, both inside and out" for writing a story about his age — chimed in to ask, "Psychologically important to you or to the United States?"
> “Psychologically important for me," Trump answered. "Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything."
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/donald-trump-says-wants-...
It is dividing EU military resources, which potentially weakens the security of EU states against a potential invasion.
I think it's as simple as USA plus Canada plus Greenland equals bigliest country in the world
One motivation is surely to humilate the European leaders which they despise.
Destroying NATO is surely the goal.
There is a conspiracy theory Trump is under active control by blackmail by the Russian government. Moments like this make you wonder.
Since Trump can't walk away from NATO [1], could the claim on Greenland be a ruse to force the de-facto resolution of NATO?
He probably sees Europe as too meek to do anything more dramatic/substantial. And believes that without NATO, Europe would buy more US weapons that they now get "for free".
[1] https://www.dirittoue.info/u-s-legislation-restricts-preside...
Goodness look at all the dead threads in here. Am I smelling bot activity?
No, posting quotas. This place became a dump where 4 responses down you get time-banned for nobody knows how long and the discussion gets nowhere. You get attacked left and right? Well, tough luck, can’t defend and explain yourself. Good luck when multiple people want to discuss anything with you. This used to be a thought provoking place. It’s a dump now.
Despite all the talk about military action, the fact is that Europe is one of the main trading partners of the US and holds a substantial share of US debt. Any invasion would be economic suicide, and I think even Trump realizes this.
I'm not convinced trump cares about economic suicide at all
Trump barely thinks about first order effects, much less second order. He probably doesn't know it's economic suicide. And when it happens he'll tell us both "nobody knows more than me" and "nobody knew global commerce was this complicated" and then he'll tell us he'll have a plan to fix it in two weeks
> Any invasion would be economic suicide, and I think even Trump realizes this.
Your mistaking is in using rationality and logic.
>holds a substantial share of US deb
That's the EU's problem, not Trump's)
A mass selloff of US bonds will mean that the US can’t sell any more - because the market is suddenly flooded with bonds at a ‘discount’. This means that the US can’t take on any more debt (borrow money)
Why would you pay the US $10 when you can get the same thing from France for $8?
Or the US then has to issue bonds with massively inflated returns - i.e. pay a much higher interest rate.
This idea of waging financial war on the US seems very en vogue in Europe right now, but I think it's terribly shortsighted. Here's how I think it would go down:
1. EU countries coordinate a mass selloff of US debt, somehow even coercing private holders into a fire sale.
2. US bond prices consequently fall. EU holders lose tons of money on the sell side. US and Asian buyers rush to buy and get a sweetheart deal and massive risk-free returns, which starts crashing the stock market.
3. The Fed intervenes. They conjure up dollars from nothing and buy the bonds EU holders are selling at some discount, maybe 95 cents on the dollar. Those new dollars go into those countries' and banks' Master accounts at the Fed.
4a. EU countries' and banks' Master accounts are frozen. Maybe some portion of the funds are released every week in order to allow an orderly flow of value without too much market distortion. Or maybe given the act of financial war, those funds remain frozen indefinitely.
4b. Alternatively, their Master accounts are not frozen. Now, presumably EU didn't sell all their bonds just to hold non-yielding dollars. So they'll go to the forex markets and buy up Euros, massively strengthening the Euro and fucking up their export-based economies. Maybe they buy gold, or EU sovereign debt, or ECB steps in with mad QE. EU bond yields crater. EU holders lose more money on the buy side as whatever assets they purchase get more expensive. Inflation ensues.
5. US is furious and retaliates with financial warfare of their own. Or perhaps kinetic warfare. The ringleaders of the fire sale end up blindfolded and earmuffed on a US warship.
6. EU is in a much worse position than before, lost a ton of money on each leg, likely had tons more frozen, has pernicious inflation and/or diminished exports, cut off from the dollar system making currency reserve management and forex difficult and costly. The US is also now furious and looking to impose additional costs on EU however and wherever it can.
EU has a much better tool ready, the anti coercion instrument. Party leaders in EU have been talking over the weekend about deploying it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Coercion_Instrument
On the other hand, China sold off most of theirs and nobody even noticed. I think you're exaggerating both how much EU holds and the potential effects of them selling it.
Deutsche Bank made a statement recently that Europe holds about double what the rest of the world does combined in US bonds and equity.
Sure but we were talking about just debt. Also the "rest of the world" is basically just China. I don't think it's a shocker that China isn't interested in betting on US companies.
>This means that the US can’t take on any more debt (borrow money)
They can literally print them
No, that's the member states' problem, not of the EU. The debt is not shared.
When Trump said NATO allies needed to increase defense spending, did he mean it to protect against US?
The Americans on HN driving tech, science and innovation are enabling Trump to do this. Without you he would be nothing. Where is your integrity? Do you think having no allies makes you more safe? Is this really the world you want?
How are US tech folks more enabling Trump than anybody else who pays tax there?
Some, by working for companies (big tech) that have given little resistance to trump but rather funded his ball room, etc. Sadly, everyone quitting those companies would not really be a reasonable solution either, though there are more possible actions than that
"Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, spent more than $290 million supporting Donald Trump and his MAGA allies on the campaign trail last year." [1]
"Exclusive: How Palantir's Alex Karp went full MAGA" [2]
Look at All In Podcast - tech VCs - they are all in support of this administration.
[1] https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
[2] https://www.axios.com/2025/10/23/trump-alex-karp-palantir-ma...
Context was "The Americans on HN driving tech, ...". I'm not sure that includes Elon.
Looks like Chamberlain is refusing the Sudetenland annexation. At least for the moment.
Why even make a deal with the US now if Trump just changes his mind like some senile old man?
Trump's domestic policy is a failure and taking drastic abroad (as many past administrations have done as a distraction) is also failing.
Putin is laughing his head off. Everything he could have ever dreamed of is playing out right now.
While Trump having a go at Denmark I'm sure pleases Putin other things are not going great his way. The lines in Ukraine are kind of static in spite of huge Russian losses, their economy is bad, their ally in Venezuela got arrested, their ships are getting boarded, the Iranian government is looking shaky.
And he's still no better off.
In what context? Personally? In rebuilding the Soviet Union? Or in the war?
Not the parent, but getting US to quit NATO won't help his European ambitions. Russia is weak now, and has solidified the European hostility for years to come.
"European hostility" is not going to matter when there's no EU. No matter how weak, Russia will always be stronger in terms of the number of warm bodies they are ready to throw into the meat grinder than any country in Europe.
UPD: If you don't believe me, look at the European right-wing leaders (including a sitting head of state, Meloni) currently banding up behind Orban, a widely known Putin's shill in Europe.
Dissolution of NATO has been his wet dream for decades. Next up is dissolution of the EU; the hard-right shift all over Europe (that he gets some credit for by financing right-wing parties and propaganda) will eventually make that dream of his come true, too.
Sorry Europe. Our clown in chief will do everything to cover the Epstein files.
Trump is gonna end up destroying EU right wing parties which have been very pro-Trump exactly like he did to Pollievre.
I wonder whether UK media decide to hammer Farage over his Trump connections to screw Reform super hard.
Farage has weaseled a distance from Trump, especially after Diego Garcia, which he is still pissed off about.
Danish right wingers that rubbed shoulders with MAGA are trying to bury their pro trump stuff hard right now.
The only way for Europe forward is actual federalization. Unfortunately right wing parties will never let it happen so entire Europe is doomed to become marginalized by China and US.
Indeed, petty national topics that are used to create fake polarization against Brussels, is what is keeping us from realizing the federation we so desperately need. I am so tired of the endless, unbased right-wing arguments from nationalists against the EU, which only exist to distract from their own incompetencies.
Americans, your Mad King is putting us all in grave danger. Would you please do something about it?
You have no idea what it's like to be American right now. The propaganda information war that's being waged in us is overwhelming and it appears to be working. The world needs to start preparing for a reality where the US can no longer be relied on for security or economic stability. For the sake of all of us, I hope that our European allies are taking serious steps to become more independent from US power and security.
I know there is a lot of good and brave people in the US - I lived there for a long time and call many of your compatriots good friends.
We're trying our best over here, but y'all can't give up at home either. I know it sucks and it's hard, but don't give into the temptation to just tune out. If you don't like what is happening with your country, do your best to change it - don't wait for others to do it for you!
We are trying. Please realize that the second largest conflict (based on spending) in the world right now, behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is DJT’s ICE attacks on the US. That is how much he is spending to attack his own country. More than Israel spends to occupy Palestinians.
Sadly, if you look at polling, none of this is remotely unpopular with US Republican voters. Our country’s union is hanging on by tattered threads.
ICE are just enforcing the law
They’re violating the U.S. constitution and committing crimes daily.
As was the Gestapo :-)
Maybe your country's union was a bad idea? Feels like it's allowed the regressive parts to keep control over the greater whole. Maybe y'all should've just let secession happen - at least the worst parts of America would've been contained.
It's easy to look at the politics of individual states as a means of breaking things up if you ignore the economics. Things get very complicated, very quickly when you set a political threshold for breaking up the country.
I encourage you to watch or read the Handmaid’s Tale if you want to see what that could look like.
The South wasn’t punished enough after the civil war is where a lot of this stems from. There was no cleaning house like what happened with Germany after WW2.
As a Dane, while slightly angry, and gravely concerned for the people of Greenland, I'm still more fearful of the safety and mental well-being of my US friends and colleague than I am for my own.
A Dane not in Greenland I suppose.
Yes, living and working in Greenland would most likely make me concerned for my future.
Our Congress and Supreme Court are beholden to him. State and Individual resistance will be treated as rebellion. The legal pathways have us waiting until elections. The line of succession is GOP 40 levels deeps.
If we successfully revolt the US doesn't survive in any form to stabilize the world built around us and there is no guarantee that the ruling party isn't MAGA-like.
The rubicon was crossed. This is the new normal.
I hope you are right but I don't have any confidence in a Democratic party controlled Congress. I have never seen a meeker group of politicians. They will struggle to get everyone on board and some of them will defect and vote with Republicans like they did recently to end the government shutdown.
Blame all the HNers who voted for this admin because they "didn't want any woke business regulations" or whatever.
Republicans love this, legally speaking we can do nothing.
Legally speaking, the Republicans have been losing in court over and over. That doesn't mitigate the damage they're doing during the lag, and the consequences for breaking the law have never been as strong as they should be when officers of the law and elected officials are the ones breaking the law.
But it is important to acknowledge the wins. They do have an effect, and that's the only path we seem to have toward slowing down the march to autocracy.
Literally cannot. The asymmetry of technology which we have allowed to grow and flourish makes it infeasible. Flock and other manifestations of this beast sends shivers down spines and prevents any serious resistance.
You can protest or go on strike, for example.
Refuse to buy from any company that supports the current administration (like Microsoft). End contracts where they exist.
Trump wants civil unrest, it allows him to justify his use of military force against the populace.
You can also put a bumper sticker on your car decrying world events and this would have about as much effect as your suggestions.
striking is extremely tangible compared to protesting
This thread is about effectiveness, not tangibility (which ironically proves my point).
Unfortunately our federal government is more than powerful enough to take Greenland and mow us all down.
I am genuinely sorry that Atlanticism came down to a few hundred thousand of the dumbest Midwesterners we could find.
Would that it were so easy to blame the flyover states. Almost half the people who cast votes voted for this - and at the same time voted for the status quo legislators who opt not to keep him in check.
The blame extends equally to everybody who supported this but due to the way American elections are set up, those people on the margins are “how” this happened.
It’s easier to blame the heartland than it is to think about why it happened that way, isn’t it?
I’ve long since stopped giving a fuck about why these people are the way they are.
He won the popular vote.
...among the people who voted. There are a lot of folks who opted out that bear responsibility for the way this country and its power is being dismantled.
He wouldn't win the popular vote today! Why is it that when you call yourself a Republican, you take a very narrow margin of victory and consider it a mandate to only listen to your fanbase? I bet it feels fun at first, and there are a few people who get very wealthy and powerful as a result, but reality always comes crashing back down.
I suppose that if the talk of suspending mid-term elections bears fruit, that changes the equation.
The people who opted out do bear responsibility.
Would he win the popular vote today? Hard to know. Only the kind of people who are willing to talk to pollsters end up in polls.
Both parties tend to claim a high moral position and definitive mandate from a narrow margin of victory.
Talk of suspending mandates, third terms, and invading Greenland are exactly how he keeps winning- talk past your goal, and retreat to victory.
...with a plurality, not a majority.
Don't the Americans have the second amendment to save themselves from their government?
The truth is that on average Republicans have way more guns that Democrats.
Anecdata but… I’ve personally known many Republicans who have massive gun collections and even personal shooting ranges in their basement. I’ve never met a Democrat with any of that.
Only one side of this conflict is meaningfully armed and they are already in power.
Well 40% of the population or so approves of the administration, so it's more like "to save themselves from their government and 40% of the rest of the population". That means resorting to the 2A is, at the very best, a rather weak bet.
There have been multiple instances of exactly what NRA members decry as federal tyranny: Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc. At not a single one did any number of people exercising their second amendment right ever show up to actually do anything, even to peacefully protest.
The idea that the 2nd amendment exists to keep alive a threat of rebellion against a tyrannical gov't is a joke.
The second amendment almost ended the current government.
“Second Amendment solutions” are only OK to talk about if you’re a Republican (I.e. “Real American”).
I’m being sarcastic, for the record. Back during his first term, Trump talked about “second amendment people” doing something about liberal Supreme Court justices (iirc) and the right wing media treated everyone as crazy for thinking that was wildly inappropriate.
It's really interesting how the same propaganda is applied by fascist governments everywhere. The ones supporting the "nationalist" government are the patriots and the others are enemies
It was effectively neutered in almost all juristictions, mostly with "assault" weapon bans.
The average Waco wacko can’t possible to fight even a small contingent from the local national guard, let alone a military with trillions of dollars of meteriel
All the assault weapons you can store in your shed are useless when an f35 takes them out from 300 miles away.
> an f35 takes them out from 300 miles away.
Ah yes, and if I recall, that is how the US won in Vietnam ... oh wait. Your comment is a perfect example of the very problem I described.
Yes, that is exactly how the US "lost" in Vietnam: Not having air power take them out from 300 miles away. I put "lost" in scare quotes because that "loss" is debatable, but that's a debate for another time.
The broader context was that the Indochina War was partially concurrent with, and the bulk of the combat only a little more than a decade after, Chinese intervention in the Korean War. The White House was simply terrified of the Chinese and put all sorts of restrictions on US forces that effectively guaranteed the US could never win an outright military victory.
Hanoi was declared off-limits to US bombers while Soviet and Chinese materiel flooded into the DRV, foreign pilots (including Soviets and North Koreans) were allowed to operate with impunity, airbases just over the Chinese border were used as safe havens for combat missions yet were off-limits to US pilots, over 180k Chinese troops rotated through Vietnam operating AAA batteries and such, etc. etc.
So yes, US unwillingness (arguably, inability) to apply air power where it could actually achieve strategic effects played a very large role in ensuring the US could never win an outright military victory in Vietnam. It's an open question whether the proper application of air power could have enabled such an outright military victory.
Certainly the US could and would apply air power to any serious domestic insurrection. There would be no targeting restrictions for fear of foreign escalation. There would be no influx of foreign aid and materiel. There would be no foreign pilots flying training and combat missions and no foreign troops manning foreign SAMs. There would be no foreign safe havens for rebels.
The conditions that IMO prevented an outright US military victory in Vietnam simply do not exist in a domestic context. Barring the coordinated defection of a significant portion of the US military, any armed insurrection in the US would be quickly crushed.
An "armed insurrection" is not required to deter a state's monopoly on violence - even the mere decentralization of arms across the populace objectively accomplishes this impressive feat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
You can still call your congressman, senator, local political, councilman, or someone else, spend 30 mins watching a demonstration, donate $10 to Amnesty, tell a random dude in fatigues "grateful for your service but please don't invade Greenland". The more people that do these kind of things the harder it gets for the Fascists to brand those that do as left-wing terrorists.
I’ve been tear gassed. I’m out here trying. I just know it’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. The regime is losing its grip and the only way out that fascists know is to escalate the violence.
Invading Greenland is a symptom of us on the ground fighting back. It’s to prove to Americans that we’re now isolated.
The Americans you’re trying to reach are not here. They’re in Facebook and right wing social bubbles with a constant influx of fresh slop propaganda. It’s unprecedented in the fact that it’s affecting people at the family unit level with people tearing off into political parties within families that cut off all contact from each other.
You'd be surprised how many people on HN voted for this. A lot of people seem to only care about their stock portfolio, and Trump makes number go up.
I believe you’re right but at this point it’s a single issue cult for a lot of folks. For instance, I know a very rational, personable guy that seems generally progressive on a variety of social issues but calls for the extermination of trans people with a straight face. There’s no reasoning with these people, even the ones swayed by rational opinion in other parts of their life.
That sounds extreme. Do you mean extermination as in mass murder? Or do you just mean he rejects the underlying ideology and would like to see policy that does the same?
Lined up against the wall
Has nothing to do with my stock portfolio but I do appreciate you acknowledging that plenty of Hacker News readers like me are conservative.
The assumption of left wing political consensus on this platform is astonishing at times.
"Conservatism" used to mean something that is incompatible with voting for what's become of the Republican party.
Well, whatever your reasons. I hope it was worth it.
Did you vote for Trump?
Do you approve of the immigration enforcement?
Do you approve of the tariff antics?
Do you approve of Trump torching American reputation with her allies?
Was Jan 6 an attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power?
Would you vote for Trump again?
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes, but they were morons
No, not without an amendment allowing a third term, but even if there were an amendment probably still a No because he is too old and his very blunt and impolitic manner is not sustainable long-term in national leadership.
According to the WSJ, thr President has lost about 8% of his voters, so he should make some adjustments.
WSJ POLL: 92% of people who voted for Trump in 2024 are giving him a positive job rating today, including 70% who “strongly approve”
Thanks for being honest. It is truly beyond my comprehension how someone can believe this. I don’t see how right and left can get along peacefully going forward when there is such a fundamental difference of core beliefs.
TFG is collective punishment for the adults in the room voting in Obama twice.
[flagged]
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that with.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don't think anyone's ever assumed left wing consensus here. When's the last time you heard somebody here talk about public ownership of the means of production?
Well I'm here but my comments get down voted and flagged. Hn is its own bubble. AMA. Or just keep downvoting me.
Apparently the right to port arms doesn't apply to take down dictorships.
We all know they fall down by showing painted signs at street demos. /s
don't forget the pink hats and furry costumes
While you're remembering things you shouldn't forget, pay attention to how the Black Panthers are out in Philadelphia, and ICE isn't messing around over here. We chased those Patriot Front clowns out immediately, too.
But yeah, focus on the peaceful citizens making their voices heard, if that makes you feel more secure about how things are going.
"I'm in the Empire Business"
Trump wants to normalize Putinism. It's beyond disgusting. He should end up in prison for it.
He should already be in prison NOW. He’s a convicted felon.
He might end up there next year.
Too much credit. Thigs like this were done way before Putin came to power.
The prior art was that Austrian guy who just wanted to become a painter but was rejected from joining a school.
It was done, but it wasn't normalized. These crooks want to present it as normal. There should be a very strong push against this garbage.
It was normalized. It is just the first time in modern history when it happens to "wrong people"
As a US citizen resident of Finland, I am proud of my adoptive country. I have been so far relatively neutral-to- vaguely-supportive of MAGA wrt the culture wars, and I find Trump's posturing on Greenland appalling and disgraceful. Yes, we all know that Trump's MO is to demand something horrendous in order to secure something less horrendous, but there is no path from threatening an ally's sovereignty that leads to anything good for the US. Monstrous.
This isn’t an aberration, it’s a continuation. Trump has repeatedly done things that would have been disqualifying for any normal president: threatening allies, undermining institutions, abusing power, normalizing coercion. The reason this moment feels different to some people isn’t that the behavior changed, it’s that they’re finally among those bearing the downside. That normalization, enabled by years of “it doesn’t affect me” neutrality, is part of how we got here.
That's only part of it. It feels worse now because everything is visible. Information moves instantly. Evidence is public. Financial trails can be followed. Citizens now expect ethical behavior from their leaders as a baseline rather than a bonus. In earlier eras, people slept better largely because they didn’t know what was happening, not because leaders were more virtuous.
For decades now, elite self-dealing, institutional opacity, and captured power steadily eroded public trust. Trump did not arrive as a reformer. He arrived as a punishment mechanism. A stress test. Unfortunately, US elites are drawing the wrong lessons so far.
> Citizens now expect ethical behavior from their leaders as a baseline rather than a bonus.
Amongst the MAGA voters I know, ethical behavior is very much a “hope for” bonus than an expectation.
There is a lot of ends-justify-the-means rhetoric in that voter pool that I talk to.
Watergate, Iran-Contra, Vietnam, and the Pentagon Papers were all exposed through mass media, and they triggered resignations, prosecutions, and electoral consequences. Nixon resigned for conduct far narrower than many of Trump’s actions. Reagan officials went to prison.
Trump didn’t reveal hidden corruption, he openly violated constraints that previous leaders still treated as binding. Calling him a “stress test” misstates causality. Stress tests expose weaknesses, they don’t require millions of people to excuse norm violations because the harm initially falls elsewhere. This wasn’t inevitability or opacity, it was a collective decision to lower standards.
It stopped people asking about the Epstein files.
... I don't think it stopped people from talking about it, though. That gambit has failed.
Let's hope you Americans will vote for the right party in the upcoming midterms. And let's hope you will even get the chance to do so.
We can hope that enough democrats win to cause gridlock and impede more harm. However, the democrats don't offer much in the way of substantive reform and have never demonstrated the stomach for taking bold stances. Whenever a candidate does come along and propose bold change, the institutional democratic party goes out of their way to sabotage or undercut them (think AOC, Sanders, Mamdani et al).
The democrat establishment doesn't seem interested in change, they are like a softer version of politicians getting bought out by tech. Well-mannered, but ultimately not doing long-term thing in the interest of the wider country.
Good. Countries the size of the US don't need bold change. They need stability with change accomplished by a gentle shift in direction.
What bold change looks like is Trump. An anti-Trump government implementing bold change in the other direction would be bad too. Not as bad because more of their change would at least be toward things that would be good in the long run, but there would still be a lot of harm on the way by taking it too fast.
They aren't going to be able to stop the next generation of candidates. And they aren't signing up to run to maintain the institution. This year and 2028 has the potential to be the Democrat's "tea party" moment (except for decent policies instead of destroying the government policies). And it's long overdue.
I very much hope so. I changed my registration to decline to state. California has open primaries, so I can still vote in them, but I couldn't stomach being associated with stubborn, institutional failure.
I've heard this since I canvased for Obama in 2008, before I could even vote. At this point expecting change through the electoral system seems worse than a waste, its a vacuum thats sucks up the radical energy we need to get real change.
The party is already being taken over by the energy we need -- AOC, Mandami, and more. Trump going full fascist fuck is a catalyst. We can have the left-wing reaponse to the tea party that really changes the country back to decency. Or we can just sit around all defeatist and whining, because that's worked so well in the past.
self-parody -- the levels of political ignorance among American voters is constantly displayed
Framing all of us who voted for and support the President’s actions as ignorant is lazy and inaccurate. There’s plenty of us that objectively analyzed the state of the country, the state of the world, and agree with the vast majority of these actions.
this online discussion format is impossible :-( I can tell you with certainty I did not think at all what you just said.. I cannot even imagine how you get that impression
There is no right party, unfortunately. The Duopoly of Democrats and Republicans rely on this illusory idea of "the other side" to maintain a stranglehold on power for both parties. The sooner we give up that idea that one side is better than the other, the sooner we can hold "both sides" accountable. The Democrats are an absolutely corrupt shit show. As are the Republicans.
Each expansion of executive power is treated as unprecedented until it becomes normalized. Before Bush, indefinite detention without trial was unthinkable. Before Obama, the executive assassination of U.S. citizens without due process was unthinkable. Before Clinton, routine humanitarian war without congressional declaration was unthinkable. Each step is later reclassified as “different,” “necessary,” or “less bad,” each step decried by the "opposition" but excused by partisans. The danger isn’t that one party does uniquely shocking things. It’s that both parties participate in a ratchet where norms only ever move in one direction supported by the rank and file. What looks like a false equivalence is actually a cumulative one: today’s outrage rests on yesterday’s precedents.
And it’s not even mainly about presidents. Fixating on the occupant of the office misses how much of this is legislative and bureaucratic drift. The real damage is often done through laws that quietly expand state power, normalize surveillance, weaken due process, or lock in perverse incentives. Presidents sign them, but Congress writes them, renews them, and funds them. That’s where the ratchet really lives.
USA PATRIOT Act (2001), Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001), Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994), FISA Amendments Act (2008), National Defense Authorization Acts with detention and secrecy expansions, Telecommunications Act (1996), Controlled Substances Act (1970), Defense of Marriage Act (1996), Welfare Reform Act / Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996). All terrible. All drafted and passed by both parties.
This is why “no one did X before” is the wrong metric. The system advances through laws and precedents that feel technical, temporary, or defensive at the time. Each one lowers the bar for the next. By the time something looks outrageous, the groundwork was laid years earlier by people insisting they were the reasonable alternative.
I think that's a false equivalent.
No Democrat president threatened to take over Greenland or took another head of state hostage without precedent.
Yes, they are corrupt and warmongers, but not nearly as harmful as the current Republican party.
We can’t. It’s over. Laws don’t mean anything anymore. Even if we had a full democratic congress, they would just be ignored. The Trump administration has already been grooming people to accept congress is useless, beginning with the month long shutdown. And the Supreme Courts will just go along with whatever the president wants now.
Start preparing for the post-American world.
This is self-destructive defeatism. It is also flat wrong on its substantive points.
The only thing congress can do is impeach and convict trump and his administration, thereby stripping him of his authority. Laws have been passed, judges have ruled, but all those are ignored. however, if he has no authority, then we get to find out who's on the side of the constitution and who is with trump and his allies.
There will be many loyalists who will just side with the Trump administration. And then what?
Turns out, when the law has failed, the only solution is a fight to the death. And after such a fight, we do not return to our normal state and live happily ever after, we remain deeply unstable and untrustworthy for decades to come.
If the Senate convicted, things would change. For one thing, I'm confident the military would not consider an impeached and convicted president as its commander in chief. And the prospect of the consequences of continuing to side with such a one would largely evaporate the availability of the administrative apparatus. Civil war would be a possible result, sure. But I disagree that such a Congress would simply be ignored and that ignoring it could be done while maintaining the means of continuing power.
> I'm confident the military would not consider an impeached and convicted president as its commander in chief.
The same ones currently blowing up shipwrecked survivors in the water in the Caribbean? A literal textbook example of a war crime? I’m not.
This is catastrophizing, not analysis. If you genuinely feel this hopeless, that's worth examining as a signal about your own mental state rather than treating it as political insight.
Yes because EU politicians - especially this lot - have such a great track record…
The EU actually has a great track record, it has been a massive unifying force. I think people tend to forget how shit things were even 30 years ago. I really hate this constant shitting on the EU for no concrete reasons.
It is crippled because nation states want to retain control, it is one of the main reasons. People act like 'EU politicians' should solve everything overnight, but the reality is that it is out of their purview in many cases. Only federalization would resolve this issue.
30 years ago life was more prosperous in western and southern Europe. I don't know about eastern Europe.
> I think people tend to forget how shit things were even 30 years ago.
About thirty years ago a European family could survive on a single salary and get by decently. Now they can't. So, I'm not sure what are you talking about.
> It is crippled because nation states want to retain control, it is one of the main reasons.
IMO it's crippled by the amount of poor decisions making and complete inability to handle even small-scale crisis somewhat successfully.
> Only federalization would resolve this issue.
On this, I agree. But given the decision making the last 15-20 years, that option is dead on arrival.
Still pissed over the fact the EU made Greece pay their debts when they thought they never had to repay their debts and could just get free money?
I'm sure you consider yourself a clever person, ever consider that the situation was more complex than your one line comment? That maybe it's possible the German banks were so happy to see a country that suddenly had the backup system of the European Central Bank, i.e. a country full of customers they could lend to, that they flooded it with offers of loans? That Greeks, like the sub-prime borrowers of the USA, thought "Well, if everyone is saying the future looks bright, why not borrow money and pay it back with the promised future income?".
That, if I knew my friend was going to be irresponsible with money but their parent was going to bail them out, why shouldn't I lend them money with interest? Is that irresponsible of me? Do I deserve to get all my money back, instead of suffering some of the losses as well? (In this highly simplicized example, I = German banks, my friend = the Greek society, their parents = the ECB. Not saying all of Greek society was irresponsible, but in aggregate, it was a risky "investment")
A lot of the Greek bailout could be summarized as the German government bailing out German banks with EU taxpayers' money...
Here's a long article about what happened when Germany got flooded with money in the 1870s: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/michael-pettis-syriz... . It's longer than your one line, maybe you'd rather hold on to your more succint (and maybe more intelligent) summary...
Part of the reason we’re in this mess is that Americans bristle at getting told which is the “right” party to vote for by internationals, the media, existing politicians, institutions…
You know, if everybody shouts at you to not do a certain thing, maybe, just maybe, they could have your best interests in mind? But instead they are being portrayed as "globalists" or whatever the mouthbreathers in the flyover states spin up today.
I really hope the US heals, quickly.
That's of course a totally valid reason to destroy your institutions, international reputation, and of course the lives of many poor people in your country. Makes sense /s
Europeans will really do anything except confront Russia and China.
A little history lesson: the US has defacto and dejure been defending Greenland since WWII (they've had a defence pact since Denmark fell to the Nazis). US bases have been on Greenland from then to the current day.
Even after Ukraine, Europe buys Russian gas. Even with all the threats from China towards Taiwan, Europeans are cozying up to them. And Europe still doesn't adequately defend itself, with a few exceptions.
While Trump is erratic in public, all recent US moves point to a confrontation with Russia/China in the near future. And Europe just sits by twiddling their thumbs. Feels like Eastern Europe and the Baltics are the only ones who take it seriously.
If only there had been a similar showing when it was Venezuela being threatened.
There was: https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/venezuela-statement-high-rep...
I wonder how Americans will feel if they get treated like how Muslims were treated after 9/11
How were Muslims treated? I don't remember anything other than isolated incidents.
Oh geez I didn't mean in that way. More the social stigma that permeated in that time.
"Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times."
Yeah, we've been here before. Empires don't necessarily fall by the hand of their enemies as much as they fall by their own hands and hubris. See: UK, Germany, Russia, historical China and other asian countries, hell even the Romans, and so on and so forth, we've had it all. Trump is nothing new, just another fool in a long line of fools.
You are getting downvoted because people see their own reflection in that statement. And they don't like what they are seeing.
It's most likely because people just assume it's a misogynist quote.
It is getting downvoted because it is a well known silly trope. Generally, success reinforces itself. That’s why there have been a bunch of countries that have had multi-generational streaks of repeated success. Eventually, this feedback look can fail, but it isn’t on some predictable four generation pattern.
> Eventually, this feedback look can fail, but it isn’t on some predictable four generation pattern.
Actually, it kind of is.
See The Fourth Turning and any other book based on the Strauss-Howe generational theory.
Is this theory air-tight and inviolable? No. Does it more or less support this “silly trope”? Yes. I think it’s safe to say that it is directionally correct.
I don’t think that book was well regarded by historians. It’s more of a pop-sociology thing, right?
Thinking in memes isn’t going to lead us to a better world.
Least we can do is downvote it.
The thing itself speaks seemingly a truth though: growing up too coddled will risk a twisted perspective of what you deserve and what's a given.
Seemingly? Do you have any indication that this is a consistent pattern in the world outside of imagination?
Rich kids with inherited wealth are always perfectly fine and reasonable people?
They overwhelmingly do better than their poorer peers, yes. Anectdote vs statistics.
If you think that it's just an imagination, the universe will make you physically feel what it really is. Not all at once, but gradually, drop by drop. And then, you'll learn the true meaning of another "meme" word: ignorance.
Or you’ll find out that strong men thinking in memes create even worse times.
In any case, that's the beauty of life: we live the consequences. Both sweet and bitter, depending on choices of the past.
Most of what happens to us is by chance, not by choice. And when it's by choice, its often not our own choice.
This is what they want you to believe. You are useful and convenient when you are malleable (to someone's else agenda aka "their choice"). Ideally, you should not practice any discernment at all, raise no questions, silence any suspicions. As if it's all by sheer coincidence and predefined by external forces ("chance").
Straight out of "Manipulators' Handbook 101".
You're the one not raising questions about this nonsensical maxim. It seems neat to you so you accept it as truth uncritically.
The annoying part is when I’ve got to live with the consequences of someone else’s choices.
Thinking in memes is exactly what the right is doing. It’s short, succinct and pretty much a termination point for all further thought on the matter.
When the next terrorist attack happens on US soil, who will be surprised?
Personally I find all of the pretense and posturing around these issues both comical and concerning. The Arctic Circle is opening, and Chinese and Russian pressure will increase. At this time, there is no sign that Canada and the European nations will be in a position to even put up a shadow of resistance to it.
Russia can barely hold its own in a war against a neighboring country 30x smaller than them. Do people really still think they are a threat on the global stage anymore? China, yes, but their tactic is economic rather than military. And they are already winning in that front considering how dependent the rest of the world is on their manpower and manufacturing.
It's pretty clear that going forward the only real military threat the rest of the world has to concern itself with is the USA.
>30x smaller
Russia is ~144 million people, I don't think there is 4.8 mil people in Ukraine tbh.
> Personally I find all of the pretense and posturing around these issues both comical and concerning
> There is no sign that Canada and the European nations will be in a position to even put up a shadow of resistance to it.
Same for the US. There has been ample reporting about how there is no shipbuilding capacity in the US (but there still is in Europe).
Don't worry, the US is ordering icebreakers from Finland (which will now get hit by with a 25% tariff).
There wouldn't have been a problem if the US would've just done a deal go deploy all their stuff on Greenland, hell, even a whole autonomous military zone or something?
But nooooo, they gotta buy the whole thing like it's Alaska or something.
I don't get it. Especially because now Russia/China will actually get real interested in the Arctic, plus that they now have an opportunity to disrupt the alliance and delegitimize NATO etc.
They don’t even need a deal, the agreements have been in place since sometime in the 1950s.
Like Trump, I too am a (albeit, small-time) real estate guy. Ownership gives me tingles that renting could never give me. You rent a place for 30 years, diligently pay rent, and in the end you own nothing? Pshaw.
I get it, but the world doesn't run on hard power, it runs on soft power.
The US could simply invade Greenland if it actually refuses to let them stay there, or if an adversary tries to take it over.
That's why I'm so appalled. There is no such imminent threat which would force such a transaction to take place.
Subtle deals like the one I was talking about won't fly as justifications to take action against the US by Russia/China, nor will it up tensions unlike this drama.
Trump wants to acquire Greenland and rent it back to the Greenlanders.
This comment shows why the damage done by Trump will be so hard to reverse, no matter who's in charge next. When Trump talks about taking Greenland, the answer should be "no, moron, it's effectively a part of NATO", and instead you get all this muddying analysis of the strategic signifficance of Greenland, history, and how the EU is weak.
Trump is a symptom. The US cannot be trusted because we will always be one US election away of this bullshit again, because there are a lot of people there that actually agree with this.
The EU should be untangling itself from the US as quickly as possible. Any dependency on it is a major security risk.
I guess from the point of view of Europeans and Canada, the Arctic Circle is opening and Chinese, Russian and US pressure will increase. I hear they found a new powerful enemy recently.
If only there was some sort of military alliance that covered the northern Atlantic.
The US used to have multiple military bases in Greenland during the Cold War. It has closed most of them and is down to one.
It could, at any time, reopen them and move troops there under existing agreements, or build more. Nobody would bat an eyelid.
To pretend this is about defence is nonsense. It’s about taking territory.
The Danish demanded we close those bases and get out fast or they might still be there.
EDIT: I was wrong we mostly left because of an ice collapse and the Danish insistence that we not fly or house nuclear weapons in Greenland.
As far as I know that is not true. Source?
This is not true. This person is spreading disinformation.
They were closed because the Cold War ended and they were no longer needed.
You are correct I was wrong. Comment corrected.
Turning your allies into non-allies sounds like a great plan in these circumstances.
I think the administration's real goal isn't taking over Greenland. I think it's scaring the EU enough about the possibility the US might take over Greenland that the EU pays to fortify it so the US doesn't have to. (Somebody needs to fortify it, because the world is warming and it will become a strategically important trade choke point when a Northwest Passage opens up.)
Just like Trump being hot-and-cold on Ukraine. The administration's real goal isn't the US letting Russia take over Europe or even Ukraine. The goal is to scare the EU enough about the possibility the US might let Russia take over Europe or Ukraine that they start paying the expense of making sure that doesn't happen.
Greenland only has a population of 56k. If the US really wanted to buy Greenland, it should suggest a referendum whether Greenland should be annexed by the US, then pass a law that says the US will give each Greenlander $1 million if the referendum passes. I'm sure it would pass in a landslide and it would only cost $56 billion, which seems much lower than the price of trying to capture it militarily.
I don't know if I understand, grasp or agree with the geopolitics in your comment, but the weather in the north has indeed been getting nicer as of late; last summer I spent quite some time swimming in the beach without wearing thermal suits or anything at all really. So if anybody thinks that living in US is a tough bite to swallow lately, emigrating to Scandinavia or Iceland is not such a bad thing. Greenland though is still a little too tree-less and bare for my taste, and there my wild speculation[^1] is that the current US administration is looking for some harsh hell to set up forced labor camps to send anybody they don't like.
[^1] With NATO, the security reason given by US makes no sense. And as for natural resources, I'm sure there are perfectly legal and inexpensive mechanisms that US companies can use to set up mining operations in Greenland.
That would be a horrible deal for the Greenlanders, and they know it - there were polls recently and Vance was pretty much told that when he visited there.
The US is allowed for decades to have a military presence on Greenland, but the US Army has been diminishing it's presence as the time went by.
Up it to $5 million per Greenlander then. The US can afford to pull the trigger on a $250-$280 billion acquisition. The EU can't afford to counter it. To put that sum into perspective for the US economy: that's merely 2.x years of operating income for Google. There's no scenario where the people of Greenland reject that $250b offer in a free vote.
Where is that money coming from? The defense budget is 800B - this is a major budget item just throwing money in the trash along with most of your alliances
Sure they would, because it's fucking stupid. There's no need to entertain such fucking stupid thoughts, just say no to how stupid it is and move on.
Politically if he gave out $5mil per Danish citizen in Greenland he would face an actual revolt at home.
Ah yes, the "Donald Trump is playing 4D chess" story his supporters have been repeating since 2016.
This comment assumes Trump has some grand plan and is playing 4D chess.
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
>US might take over Greenland that the EU pays to fortify it so the US doesn't have to
Does not make sense. Denmark had already budgeted with a huge increase of military capabilities on Greenland. If US wanted more they could talk with their allied.
And the 'lol just pay them' argument is tone deaf and insulting to the Greenlanders. If you followed along you would know that they have already stated that they would not take money. To say nothing about the laws that governs the Kingdom and the process of leaving the it. Which can not be deferred by paying anyone. But I guess americans have a really hard time understanding the rule of law now.
The goal in Ukraine for the US is to bleed Russia. While Russia is busy in Ukraine, it's losing its influence and positions, from Syria to Iran.
The ideal for the US superpower right now, is to collapse Iran's regime while Russia is kept busy in Ukraine. It's unable to lend support to prop up its allies. The peace efforts are fake, meant to maintain a constant back and forth that never really goes anywhere. The US system has been focused on trying to strip Russia out of that region for decades, since before 9/11. Iraq was about Russia. Syria was about Russia. The first Gulf War was about decimating the Soviet supplied Iraqi army with the latest generation of US weapons, to put them to the test.
Most of the agenda exists from one administration to the next. The Pentagon works on its strategic aims across decades (see Bush & Obama & Trump and pivoting against China).
The US superpower is interested in the great power conflicts, it's not interested in Iraq because of oil, or Venezuela because of oil. It's about Russia and China, the other components (oil, chips, weapons, etc) are mere strategic calculations on the board.