Hold Your Tongue

Trump's Greenland plan isn't quite so dumb as some might think

This Christmas, I was reminded that Trump Derangement Syndrome isn’t just an American affliction. Far from it. TDS is just as bad, if not worse, among people who really have no business hating Donald Trump at all, and certainly not that much. It’s a malady whose symptoms seem to increase in severity, bizarrely, with the distance one travels from the US.

I’ve often wondered why that is. Why, for example, would a Christmas drinks party in a quiet little English village descend into acrimony over the man who presented The Apprentice? The man who shaved Vince McMahon’s head on Smackdown? The Donald—for God’s sake!

It’s virtue-signalling of course, an easy display of moral worth and supposed intelligence. But I think there’s more to it than that. I could speculate at length about the psychological kinks that turn even mild-mannered churchgoers into frothing lunatics the moment the 45th—and soon to be 47th—president of the United States is mentioned. I won’t, though.

Anyway: picture the scene. It’s the day after Boxing Day. A gathering of family friends, all ages, young and old. There’s wine, artfully arranged leftovers from Christmas Day (the cold stuffing, wrapped in bacon, is especially good) and a variety of dips and nibbles. Mum’s made mince pieces. There’s a roaring fire.

How charming.

The guests assemble in the living room. Conversation is proceeding at a lively pace, mostly the kind of banal things that people say at such gatherings—work, holidays, baby pictures, etc.—but everyone seems happy.

All of a sudden, things take a political swerve. And then somebody says it.

Two words: “Donald Trump.”

The mood instantly sours, faces harden—as if somebody had just planted a huge, steaming turd in the mulled wine.

“Oh God, I can’t stand that man!”

“Here comes World War III!”

“He told people to drink bleach during the pandemic!”

“He killed hundreds of thousands of people with his chloroquine nonsense! It’s fish-tank cleaner!”

“He’ll be cosying up to dictators in no time. He’s Vladimir Putin’s little orange puppet.”

“Yes, he has tiny hands and I bet that’s not the only thing about him that’s tiny!”

“He’s a misogynist!”

And so it continues. And frankly, I don’t really care, at least not at first. Usually when this happens, I just switch off, nodding occasionally to signal my approval. As the host, it’s my duty to keep the peace, after all.

It’s what I did in Oxford in 2016 when I was still studying for my PhD and every academic and his uncle wanted to tell me how the Orange Man was about to open the gates of Hell and wave in the apocalypse.

“Yes, terrible, isn’t it? Yes, we really are in the End of Days…”

I’m well versed in dissembling in these situations. Perhaps you are too. It’s just easier that way.

Despite being long-time family friends, none of these people know what I do. They don’t know I work for INFOWARS or that I write under the moniker of “Raw Egg Nationalist,” which would kind of give the game away, wouldn’t it? I don’t actually know what they think I do. They just assume I agree with them because—well, wouldn’t any rational moral human being be anti-Trump?

Then somebody makes a comment about Greenland and I don’t know why, but I decide to bite. Maybe it’s the wine.

“I can’t believe the stupidity of that man. He wants to buy Greenland and build another one of those ghastly Trump Towers.”

“Actually,” I say, “Trump’s idea to buy Greenland makes a lot of sense, economically and strategically. It’s not stupid at all.”

Silence.

You could hear a crisp drop.

I continue: “The US has been trying to buy Greenland for decades. They came very close to buying it just after the Second World War. They wanted Greenland to be a base for long-range bombers on their way to Europe and Russia. It was considered one of the most important geo-strategic issues for the US in the early stages of the Cold War.”

(This is true, by the way. The first serious proposals for the US to buy Greenland were made as far back as 1910. In 1945, at the close of the Second World War, Senator Owen Brewster said he considered buying the world’s largest island a “military necessity.” The next year, the US government offered Denmark $100 million in gold bullion, the equivalent of a billion dollars today, for Greenland. The US government even considered offering land in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Denmark in exchange, which would have allowed Denmark to benefit, 20 years later, from the largest discovery of petroleum in American history. Although the offer amounted to nothing, serious discussions about purchasing Greenland continued well into the 1950s. Details about the negotiations remained classified until the 1970s.)

Since I’ve started, and have my guests in rapt, if horrified, attention, I decide I might as well keep going.