Greenlandicly Speaking
Until I moved to Denmark, Greenland was just a location that I was vaguely aware of on a map. I think it may have in fact featured in the board game Risk, where I got most of my geographical knowledge from before adult life (where it remained distinctly unimpressive). To me, it was an anonymous mass of land that appeared to serve little purpose; a metaphor for a place that was extremely cold and essentially uninhabitable.
But now, things have really kicked off, and Greenland has become undeniably important. Mean old Trump has violated an international taboo by in turn making it glaringly obvious that he wants to get his chubby little chicken-greased hands on the territory, and will possibly do so by any means necessary. The position of Greenland in all this is like that of a child whose parents are going through a divorce: they can express their opinion, but the reality is that they have no say in what actually happens. They pretty much have to wait for mum and dad to decide and then adapt to the new situation.
It’s hard to get massively angry about an unfair intervention into a country when you’re doing something unfair in the first place. That’s the issue for Denmark, I reckon. It’s like someone threatening to come round to your house to take over the mistreatment of someone you’ve abducted. You can kick up a fuss, but surely people are going to start asking why they were chained up in your basement in the first place. They might even suggest that if you gave them their freedom, rather than throwing a couple of sandwiches into their lair every day, they’d be better off in the longer term.
Much of the anger at Trump stems from the fact that he just does things that we spend much time pretending that people don’t do. It seems that we are most bothered because he doesn’t try to cover up his actions with sufficient ideological effort. We prefer it when we can pretend that a powerful figure is essentially trying to do the right thing and then find out thirty years later in a documentary that this was not the case at all due to either an impenetrable system of financial power that they could not overcome, or that they never had any intention of doing any good in the first place.
But I suppose that, for all his bluster, you probably can’t just nick a massive piece of important territory off of Denmark, and, by proxy, Europe. Surely that’s going to cause a stir. It sounds like a total nightmare to me. If I were Trump, I wouldn’t bother. In fact, I spend so much of my time avoiding big tasks that if the world was full of people like me, not much would happen. Making a decision of that magnitude would be sure to cause anxiety.
But Trump keeps on sending people over there. First it was Shady Vance, now Mr Laundry. He can’t even be bothered to pop over there himself. He’s treating it like he’s buying a property but not a significant enough one to actually go and see in person. His minions are most likely giving feedback after their visits, reporting on their nationwide infrastructure like it’s a double-glazed window or a boiler.
According to Laundry, Greenland wasn’t ‘on a map’ until the USA put it on a map. But who says they even want to be on a map in the first place, if it’s not for a good reason? It’s like someone exposing your secret location when you’ve been forced to live at a safe house, only for them to ask for thanks because they’ve made you famous in doing so.
Laundry’s also threatening to make ‘future trips’ to Greenland. They’ll have to put paid to that. They’ll need to nip it in the bud, like you would with any unwanted guest who shows too much interest in coming over again after an unsuccessful visit. The people of Nuuk will have to pretend to be busy just to stop him trying to make another trip.