I guess I'd also like to comment on the whole accelerationist / looking for the revolution thing.
Here are my politics:
I affirm the commonwealth with a small-r republican form of government as my own idea of the best available form of government. In Lincoln's formulation, a government of, by, and for the people. And I think in general, at least for certain definitions of "the people", that's what the sainted founders tried to establish, and they did a pretty good job considering the conditions under which they were working. Which is to say, basically in a contentious social and political climate and while at war. And I think we've been trying to expand the definition of "the people" since then, with some success, and at some significant cost.
I also affirm the ideas presented by Locke in the 2nd Treatise on Government. We're born with certain inherent rights, but in the absence of society - which is to say government - we're on our own to defend those rights. And as a result, the strong take what they want and the less strong suffer what they must. So we have governments. And because there are lots of different kinds of people, almost anything a government does will piss off some of those people. So, assuming a government that is remotely representative of the people governed, we accept that there be some limitations on what we can and cannot do - some limitations on the exercise of our inherent rights - in the interest of not living in a world of warlords.
That's my political manifesto, FWIW.
You have to go back at least 50 years - Vietnam War days - to find people "on the left" who had any interest in anything resembling revolution.
Over the last 30 years at least, the people who have been unwilling to abide by the basic social contract I described above have all been on the right. The people who have consisted threated the lives of People Like Me if they don't get their way, all on the right. The people organizing themselves into unaccountable militias - private unaccountable armies - are all on the right. The people engaging in political violence and terror, not all on the right, but overwhelmingly on the right.
And most recently, the people who engaged in a deliberate scheme to overturn a lawful election, all on the right. And I am talking not just about the J6 rioters, although they most certainly are included. But also people in government, including people who are in Congress as I write this.
I won't even get into the current POTUS' fanciful understandings of, and disrespect for, the institutions that have allowed this country to persist as something resembling a republic for 250 years.
So I am not interested in, as Paul Simon had it, hints and allegations that people like me are trying to spur on some kind of revolution. We are holding on by our fingertips hoping this republic survives the next three years.
I hope I make myself clear.
I apologize for the belligerent tone of my last few comments. I wake up every day wondering what fresh hell awaits, and trying to get my head around the idea that somebody like our current POTUS not only holds that office, but does so with the support of a significant percent of the population. I have utterly lost respect for the Republican party and the soi-disant "conservative movement" as it currently exists, and also for a lot of people I know personally, because as far as I can tell they have no regard whatsoever for the institutions and traditions of this country. And saying that brings me no pleasure whatsoever. And all of that puts me in a truly foul mood, one which I do not enjoy and would be glad to be rid of.
But nonetheless, here we are.
What is going on now is utter bullshit. If you are offended by my referring to the likes of Miller, Noem, Patel, et al as "freaks", pick another word. Sociopaths. Corrupt lickspittles. Whores to power. Opportunistic sycophants to a sick, sad, increasingly demented old man.
They are deeply and profoundly corrupt, starting with Trump, and they are destroying this nation. We're rich and have a formidable military, so we'll survive in some form, but our standing in the world will be diminished for at least a generation, and our cohesion as a polity is in tatters.
So yes, I am pissed off. Thank you all for your patience.
"And this is where we part company on this issue."
I can live with that.
What I would submit for your consideration is that some people dehumanize themselves. I don't have to lift a finger.
Comport yourself like a sociopath and eventually people are gonna consider you to be a sociopath.
"My point is that by defunding ICE, you do give Trump what I think (I’m doing a bit of mind reading here) you fear"
The reality is that DHS has all the money they will ever realistically need, and more, in the bank already. The BBB gave them $178 billion, $30B for ops and $45B for detention. The DHS piece of the current package is $64 billion, with about $10 billion for ICE.
So they'll be okay unless they keep spending like a bunch of drunken sallors on shore leave. They just delivered a couple dozen brand spanking new SUVs to the ICE facility near me, so I think they're all set for a while.
None of which likely has any bearing on whether Trump sends the military into US cities. If he wants to and thinks he can get away with it, he'll find a reason. Or no reason.
The man does whatever the f*** pops into his head on any given day, unless and until somebody tells him no. So let's tell him no, whenever that opportunity presents itself.
That is asking Trump to deploy the military for immigration enforcement without actually asking him, IMO.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. And we can't all spend our lives trying to figure out WTF Trump is going to do on a given day.
Or is that the point?
The point is to get DHS to stop beating the shit out of people, breaking into their homes, and shooting them.
Clear?
Push escalation until the revolution?
First, I'm not sure holding funding for DHS until they stop acting like the Gestapo counts as "escalation".
"Escalation" is when People Like Me start shooting back. Which is not on the calendar.
And I'm really not interested in hearing anything about "escalation" from any conservative voice, at all, right now and probably for the forseeable future.
You're a conservative, get your freaking Congress people to stop giving these freaks the space to destroy this country.
If the (D)'s actually manage to turn off the DHS money, Trump et al will (a) bit h and moan and write a million Truth Social posts about it and (b) try to find a way around it.
FWIW and for the record, my issue with Brooks is probably much simpler than y'alls.
He seems to live in, and speak from, a pretty privileged place. Which is all well and good, I live in and speak from a pretty privileged place.
But a lot of his writing seems to be along the lines of "If everyone would just calm down and stop being so extreme they would see that everything is kind of OK".
Which is not really true for all the folks who don't live in or speak from a pretty privileged place.
I think the Trump years have kind of freaked him out and made him understand that we all don't live in the kind of well-groomed world that he does.
But I generally agree that if he thinks it's all down to Trump, he is mistaken and is still wearing his blinders.
And that's everything I have to say about Brooks.
On another topic, I encourage everyone reading this who lives in the US to get on the horn to your Senators and let them know you want them to NOT PASS funding for the DHS.
I think the (R)'s in the Senate are currently trying to figure out how to separate that stuff from the overall budget so that turning off the tap to DHS doesn't shut the whole government down (again). Which tells me that they are finally beginning to understand that the current ICE/CBP thing is fucking toxic and might well lose them a (R) majority in the Senate.
But one way or another, it's time to shut these fuckers down.
I try not to use bad language but the times are what they are.
When in high school, Miller ran for some class office - student council president or similar. His platform was that he would "say the things nobody else would say". The example he offered was that he sick and tired of being told to pick up his own trash, because they paid janitors to do that kind of thing.
What a funny guy! Such a comedian.
He was a malicious, shit-stirring, smart-assed little punk. It's not unusual, but most folks grow out of it. He has embraced it as his personal brand.
I'm not a mind-reader or a psychologist, so I can't really speak to whether he is clinincally sociopathic. That said, his public statements and actions are those of a sociopath.
If he's not one, he certainly does a great imitation.
I once had a long-ish conversation with a friend about whether everyone has some redeeming aspect - some spark of decency, no matter how deeply hidden, which could perhaps be brought to light.
No, my friend said. Some people are just bad people.
I think Miller is one of those people. I think he enjoys it.
"would we have the same time for the person who points to accepting white South Africans to the US as springing from the same sort of impulse?"
Russia is not dropping bombs on the heads of white South Africans.
And I'm not sure it's accurate to say there isn't a humanitarian motivation to let those Asian, black, and brown people in, then or now. The safety concern wjca mentions is tangible for many of those folks.
I think the Reagan administration was a negative tipping point for this country, but I absolutely give him credit for the amnesty he granted to folks who were here and contributing. I was living in a predominantly Dominican neighborhood in Salem at the time, and folks were getting booted out who were contributing to the commnity in huge ways.
I'd like to think we have somehow moved past the white supremacist legacy of our history, but I don't think we have. I'm not sure if it's a matter of re-remembering, I don't think it ever went away. Trump just gives it permission to come back out in the light of day.
can someone point to a transcript? I don't subscribe to the NYT but would be interested in reading. unfortunately I don't have time to watch the podcast.
"First and foremost, this is a tragic event, and I want to extend my sincere condolences to the family and loved ones of Renee Nicole Good," Kyle Milowski, a former ICE agent, told Newsweek. "It is inappropriate to judge an officer's actions during a dynamic and rapidly changing situation in hindsight through the lens of social media videos."
"Officers are trained to position themselves in front of a vehicle to create a 'contact and cover' environment, referred to as a tactical 'L-shape,' used to maintain control of a scene," he said.
The "L shape" thing caught my eye so I consulted our friend Dr. Google. It's a military ambush tactic, meant to trap an enemy in a crossfire.
ICE is using military tactics in a civilian context. That is going to continue to get people killed.
It needs to be shut down. I don't know who has the authority or the juice to make that happen, but until it does, people are going to continue to get killed.
I'll add that my niece works as a nurse in Phoenix AZ. She has contact with ICE and/or CBP officers who bring immigrants to the hospital, as well as with the folks they bring in.
In general, she says, the officers are kind to the folks they are handling. She hasn't met that many - 10 or 12? - but that's the pattern. So at least some of these people have retained some degree of their own humanity. That, perhaps, offers a path to de-escalating some of this bullshit. Things are so polarized that I don't how anyone. can make the kind of contact that would allow that to happen, but it is, perhaps, helpful to recognize that not all of these people are utter monsters.
Some no doubt are. And the prisons - the for-profit prisons - where the immigrants are being held suck.
This is the most fucked-up situation I've seen in my lifetime. Which includes some truly fucked-up times.
I don't know how we get out of it. Even if Trump keeled over dead tomorrow, the whole MAGA crazy train has been unleashed and it's not going anywhere.
When your personal wealth reaches a billion dollars, you are required to move to the seasteading platform of your choice. Your citizenship likewise transfers to the seasteading platform.
"If you take it, we take every single base of the Americans from Aviano to Ramstein, from Romania, to all the other military bases will be confiscated, and you will lose it, and the whole position of American power since World War II, if you take Greenland, you have to leave,"
Gunther Fehlinger, chair of Austria's NATO Enlargement Committee
"The killing of Renee Good is truly shocking – could this be a tipping point?"
I second cleek's "nah".
Based on the reaction so far, folks are generally responding to Good's killing exactly as you might predict.
MAGAs and right-leaning people in general respond with some mixture of "she tried to kill the cop", "she should have complied", "she had no business being there in the first place". Or just that old favorite, FAFO.
Folks holding, for lack of a better term, a progressive point of view see it as further evidence of an autocratic regime gone out of bounds.
Folks who, for whatever reason, don't want to line up on one side or the other generally think it's terrible, a shame that such things "happen".
Most news sources stick to a neutral stance. Either "this happened' with no further comment, or some version of "both sides".
I don't think this will move the needle, in any direction.
My own point of view is that ICE and the CBP in their current form need to be disbanded. They are a public menace. We need to manage immigration, but not like this. Shut it down and start over from a clean slate.
"Worth noting that a single US Wasp-class amphibious assault ship..."
I don't think the question on the table is whether the US could prevail in a military takeover of Greenland.
As Stephen Miller notes, rule by brute force and hegemonic domination by the strong has been the way things worked since the beginning of time. Among other things, this led to several centuries of almost continuous warfare in Europe and elsewhere, culminating in the two world wars of the 20th C.
After WWII we - "we" being most nations on the planet - attempted to establish a regime under which we would do things differently. It was imperfect and imperfectly successful. But we've had about 80 years of sort-of peace, at least relative to historical standards. In general, and with the exception of the Soviet Union, we haven't had a lot of wars that were based on "we want your stuff, we're bigger than you, so we're taking it".
Which has been a pretty good thing.
Trump is ripping that up.
I'm pretty sure that, were he to stop threatening to take Greenland by force of arms, folks there would be happy to discuss our security needs and accommodate them to a sufficient degree.
Trump is incapable of dealing with counterparties other than by threats and attempts at domination. With, of course, the notable exception of Russia under Putin. Other nations are not obliged to accept that.
On “Moral insanity”
I guess I'd also like to comment on the whole accelerationist / looking for the revolution thing.
Here are my politics:
I affirm the commonwealth with a small-r republican form of government as my own idea of the best available form of government. In Lincoln's formulation, a government of, by, and for the people. And I think in general, at least for certain definitions of "the people", that's what the sainted founders tried to establish, and they did a pretty good job considering the conditions under which they were working. Which is to say, basically in a contentious social and political climate and while at war. And I think we've been trying to expand the definition of "the people" since then, with some success, and at some significant cost.
I also affirm the ideas presented by Locke in the 2nd Treatise on Government. We're born with certain inherent rights, but in the absence of society - which is to say government - we're on our own to defend those rights. And as a result, the strong take what they want and the less strong suffer what they must. So we have governments. And because there are lots of different kinds of people, almost anything a government does will piss off some of those people. So, assuming a government that is remotely representative of the people governed, we accept that there be some limitations on what we can and cannot do - some limitations on the exercise of our inherent rights - in the interest of not living in a world of warlords.
That's my political manifesto, FWIW.
You have to go back at least 50 years - Vietnam War days - to find people "on the left" who had any interest in anything resembling revolution.
Over the last 30 years at least, the people who have been unwilling to abide by the basic social contract I described above have all been on the right. The people who have consisted threated the lives of People Like Me if they don't get their way, all on the right. The people organizing themselves into unaccountable militias - private unaccountable armies - are all on the right. The people engaging in political violence and terror, not all on the right, but overwhelmingly on the right.
And most recently, the people who engaged in a deliberate scheme to overturn a lawful election, all on the right. And I am talking not just about the J6 rioters, although they most certainly are included. But also people in government, including people who are in Congress as I write this.
I won't even get into the current POTUS' fanciful understandings of, and disrespect for, the institutions that have allowed this country to persist as something resembling a republic for 250 years.
So I am not interested in, as Paul Simon had it, hints and allegations that people like me are trying to spur on some kind of revolution. We are holding on by our fingertips hoping this republic survives the next three years.
I hope I make myself clear.
I apologize for the belligerent tone of my last few comments. I wake up every day wondering what fresh hell awaits, and trying to get my head around the idea that somebody like our current POTUS not only holds that office, but does so with the support of a significant percent of the population. I have utterly lost respect for the Republican party and the soi-disant "conservative movement" as it currently exists, and also for a lot of people I know personally, because as far as I can tell they have no regard whatsoever for the institutions and traditions of this country. And saying that brings me no pleasure whatsoever. And all of that puts me in a truly foul mood, one which I do not enjoy and would be glad to be rid of.
But nonetheless, here we are.
What is going on now is utter bullshit. If you are offended by my referring to the likes of Miller, Noem, Patel, et al as "freaks", pick another word. Sociopaths. Corrupt lickspittles. Whores to power. Opportunistic sycophants to a sick, sad, increasingly demented old man.
They are deeply and profoundly corrupt, starting with Trump, and they are destroying this nation. We're rich and have a formidable military, so we'll survive in some form, but our standing in the world will be diminished for at least a generation, and our cohesion as a polity is in tatters.
So yes, I am pissed off. Thank you all for your patience.
"
Also, too:
"Sanctuary cities/counties/states are actively resisting the enforcement of federal law."
You're gonna have to show some receipts on that one.
"
"And this is where we part company on this issue."
I can live with that.
What I would submit for your consideration is that some people dehumanize themselves. I don't have to lift a finger.
Comport yourself like a sociopath and eventually people are gonna consider you to be a sociopath.
"My point is that by defunding ICE, you do give Trump what I think (I’m doing a bit of mind reading here) you fear"
The reality is that DHS has all the money they will ever realistically need, and more, in the bank already. The BBB gave them $178 billion, $30B for ops and $45B for detention. The DHS piece of the current package is $64 billion, with about $10 billion for ICE.
So they'll be okay unless they keep spending like a bunch of drunken sallors on shore leave. They just delivered a couple dozen brand spanking new SUVs to the ICE facility near me, so I think they're all set for a while.
None of which likely has any bearing on whether Trump sends the military into US cities. If he wants to and thinks he can get away with it, he'll find a reason. Or no reason.
The man does whatever the f*** pops into his head on any given day, unless and until somebody tells him no. So let's tell him no, whenever that opportunity presents itself.
"
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. And we can't all spend our lives trying to figure out WTF Trump is going to do on a given day.
The point is to get DHS to stop beating the shit out of people, breaking into their homes, and shooting them.
Clear?
First, I'm not sure holding funding for DHS until they stop acting like the Gestapo counts as "escalation".
"Escalation" is when People Like Me start shooting back. Which is not on the calendar.
And I'm really not interested in hearing anything about "escalation" from any conservative voice, at all, right now and probably for the forseeable future.
You're a conservative, get your freaking Congress people to stop giving these freaks the space to destroy this country.
Thank you.
"
do. whatever. is. available.
the (D)'s are minority but they are not utterly without any power. use what you have.
the sternly worded letters are not working.
"
What hairshirt said.
If the (D)'s actually manage to turn off the DHS money, Trump et al will (a) bit h and moan and write a million Truth Social posts about it and (b) try to find a way around it.
They might be successful with (b).
But do it anyway. Do whatever is available.
"
yikes, the Brooks debate again!
FWIW and for the record, my issue with Brooks is probably much simpler than y'alls.
He seems to live in, and speak from, a pretty privileged place. Which is all well and good, I live in and speak from a pretty privileged place.
But a lot of his writing seems to be along the lines of "If everyone would just calm down and stop being so extreme they would see that everything is kind of OK".
Which is not really true for all the folks who don't live in or speak from a pretty privileged place.
I think the Trump years have kind of freaked him out and made him understand that we all don't live in the kind of well-groomed world that he does.
But I generally agree that if he thinks it's all down to Trump, he is mistaken and is still wearing his blinders.
And that's everything I have to say about Brooks.
On another topic, I encourage everyone reading this who lives in the US to get on the horn to your Senators and let them know you want them to NOT PASS funding for the DHS.
I think the (R)'s in the Senate are currently trying to figure out how to separate that stuff from the overall budget so that turning off the tap to DHS doesn't shut the whole government down (again). Which tells me that they are finally beginning to understand that the current ICE/CBP thing is fucking toxic and might well lose them a (R) majority in the Senate.
But one way or another, it's time to shut these fuckers down.
I try not to use bad language but the times are what they are.
"
When in high school, Miller ran for some class office - student council president or similar. His platform was that he would "say the things nobody else would say". The example he offered was that he sick and tired of being told to pick up his own trash, because they paid janitors to do that kind of thing.
What a funny guy! Such a comedian.
He was a malicious, shit-stirring, smart-assed little punk. It's not unusual, but most folks grow out of it. He has embraced it as his personal brand.
I'm not a mind-reader or a psychologist, so I can't really speak to whether he is clinincally sociopathic. That said, his public statements and actions are those of a sociopath.
If he's not one, he certainly does a great imitation.
I once had a long-ish conversation with a friend about whether everyone has some redeeming aspect - some spark of decency, no matter how deeply hidden, which could perhaps be brought to light.
No, my friend said. Some people are just bad people.
I think Miller is one of those people. I think he enjoys it.
On “Rememory”
"would we have the same time for the person who points to accepting white South Africans to the US as springing from the same sort of impulse?"
Russia is not dropping bombs on the heads of white South Africans.
And I'm not sure it's accurate to say there isn't a humanitarian motivation to let those Asian, black, and brown people in, then or now. The safety concern wjca mentions is tangible for many of those folks.
I think the Reagan administration was a negative tipping point for this country, but I absolutely give him credit for the amnesty he granted to folks who were here and contributing. I was living in a predominantly Dominican neighborhood in Salem at the time, and folks were getting booted out who were contributing to the commnity in huge ways.
I'd like to think we have somehow moved past the white supremacist legacy of our history, but I don't think we have. I'm not sure if it's a matter of re-remembering, I don't think it ever went away. Trump just gives it permission to come back out in the light of day.
On “Talarico”
can someone point to a transcript? I don't subscribe to the NYT but would be interested in reading. unfortunately I don't have time to watch the podcast.
On “An open thread”
"what animates these militia, white power, and Christian nationalist types"
I'll pretend to be a mind reader for a minute and take a guess.
For some, fear, that they are unable to acknowledge, so they compensate.
And some people are just fucking bullies.
"
In the words of Good's widow, we have whistles but they have guns.
"
From here:
https://www.newsweek.com/former-ice-agents-break-down-jonathan-rosss-actions-11334133
The "L shape" thing caught my eye so I consulted our friend Dr. Google. It's a military ambush tactic, meant to trap an enemy in a crossfire.
ICE is using military tactics in a civilian context. That is going to continue to get people killed.
It needs to be shut down. I don't know who has the authority or the juice to make that happen, but until it does, people are going to continue to get killed.
I'll add that my niece works as a nurse in Phoenix AZ. She has contact with ICE and/or CBP officers who bring immigrants to the hospital, as well as with the folks they bring in.
In general, she says, the officers are kind to the folks they are handling. She hasn't met that many - 10 or 12? - but that's the pattern. So at least some of these people have retained some degree of their own humanity. That, perhaps, offers a path to de-escalating some of this bullshit. Things are so polarized that I don't how anyone. can make the kind of contact that would allow that to happen, but it is, perhaps, helpful to recognize that not all of these people are utter monsters.
Some no doubt are. And the prisons - the for-profit prisons - where the immigrants are being held suck.
This is the most fucked-up situation I've seen in my lifetime. Which includes some truly fucked-up times.
I don't know how we get out of it. Even if Trump keeled over dead tomorrow, the whole MAGA crazy train has been unleashed and it's not going anywhere.
"
I'm not a mind reader, so I don't know the true answer to all of this.
That said, there is this:
https://hejon07.substack.com/p/the-man-who-learned-to-stop-worrying
"
A modest proposal:
When your personal wealth reaches a billion dollars, you are required to move to the seasteading platform of your choice. Your citizenship likewise transfers to the seasteading platform.
Optionally, you can move to Greenland.
Enjoy the fish!
"
So, I read the NRO article about Good belonging to ICE Watch. It includes a highly selective account of the events. Go figure.
Bullshit has eclipsed sensible discourse.
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
"If you take it, we take every single base of the Americans from Aviano to Ramstein, from Romania, to all the other military bases will be confiscated, and you will lose it, and the whole position of American power since World War II, if you take Greenland, you have to leave,"
Gunther Fehlinger, chair of Austria's NATO Enlargement Committee
So, there's that.
"
"If this isn’t prodding, it’s the Art of the Deal"
You realize, I hope, that The Art Of The Deal was a ghost written piece of Trump fluffing bullshit.
Right? Just ask the guy that wrote it. Who now regrets it.
On “An open thread”
" I have to think the administration is betting on cleek’s step #3"
Stephen Miller has wet dreams about invoking martial law.
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
'I don’t think anyone actually supports the CCP. Unless you voted for Bernie, Zohran, Waltz et.al"
I voted for Walz as VP.
Go ahead and try to claim I support thee CCP. Or that I'm a summer child, in any way, shape or from.
On “An open thread”
"The killing of Renee Good is truly shocking – could this be a tipping point?"
I second cleek's "nah".
Based on the reaction so far, folks are generally responding to Good's killing exactly as you might predict.
MAGAs and right-leaning people in general respond with some mixture of "she tried to kill the cop", "she should have complied", "she had no business being there in the first place". Or just that old favorite, FAFO.
Folks holding, for lack of a better term, a progressive point of view see it as further evidence of an autocratic regime gone out of bounds.
Folks who, for whatever reason, don't want to line up on one side or the other generally think it's terrible, a shame that such things "happen".
Most news sources stick to a neutral stance. Either "this happened' with no further comment, or some version of "both sides".
I don't think this will move the needle, in any direction.
My own point of view is that ICE and the CBP in their current form need to be disbanded. They are a public menace. We need to manage immigration, but not like this. Shut it down and start over from a clean slate.
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
"The second point looks implausible"
Actually, Ross (the officer who shot Good) had been dragged alongside a car during a previous attempr to arrest an alleged illegal immigrant.
He ended up in front of Good's car because he was walking around it while recording the incident.
This is not a guy who should be walking around with a badge and a gun.
On “An open thread”
and now, Customs and Border Patrol shoots two people in Portland OR.
what the actual fuck is going on.
On “2026, as f**ked up as 2025”
"Worth noting that a single US Wasp-class amphibious assault ship..."
I don't think the question on the table is whether the US could prevail in a military takeover of Greenland.
As Stephen Miller notes, rule by brute force and hegemonic domination by the strong has been the way things worked since the beginning of time. Among other things, this led to several centuries of almost continuous warfare in Europe and elsewhere, culminating in the two world wars of the 20th C.
After WWII we - "we" being most nations on the planet - attempted to establish a regime under which we would do things differently. It was imperfect and imperfectly successful. But we've had about 80 years of sort-of peace, at least relative to historical standards. In general, and with the exception of the Soviet Union, we haven't had a lot of wars that were based on "we want your stuff, we're bigger than you, so we're taking it".
Which has been a pretty good thing.
Trump is ripping that up.
I'm pretty sure that, were he to stop threatening to take Greenland by force of arms, folks there would be happy to discuss our security needs and accommodate them to a sufficient degree.
Trump is incapable of dealing with counterparties other than by threats and attempts at domination. With, of course, the notable exception of Russia under Putin. Other nations are not obliged to accept that.
"
bc, which of the concerns you list justify seizing Greenland by fiat?
The comments by Trump, Miller, et al are far beyond stupid and unnecessary. They are threats.
The people in Greenland, by an overwhelming majority, don't want to be part of the US. That should be the end of the discussion.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.