Dana Allin
Where to begin on the subject of Donald Trump’s decision to call off a state visit to Denmark? He cancelled in one of last night’s tweets, ‘based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland…’
I might start by noting that there were other subjects I wanted to tackle in writing this week: the turmoil in American politics after Jerusalem barred two US Congresswomen from entering Israel; the conceptual place of racist mass murder, in El Paso and elsewhere, for defining terrorism as a threat to US national security; and the under-reported declaration from US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the Trump administration’s promotion of a hard Brexit with promises of a US–UK trade agreement should be considered void, because trade deals must be approved by Congress and Congress will not participate in damaging the Good Friday Agreement.
The Greenland affair, by contrast, may be considered trivial. I’m not so sure. Since well before January 2017, our big problem of epistemology and analysis is that, by neglecting the daily dose of farce, we would ignore much of what is going on – and what’s going on is significant. The president of the United States indicated to aides that he would like to buy Greenland. They weren’t sure if this was a joke. Among his tweets on the subject was a photo of a golden Trump Tower superimposed on a Greenland village, with the helpful promise that he did not actually intend to build it. Prime Minister Frederiksen reacted with some measure of incredulity. So, the president of the United States pulled out. The Danish Royal House, official host for Trump’s planned visit, expressed ‘surprise’.
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