European troops are arriving in Greenland, a territory of Denmark, in a show of support against its potential aggressors — us. These are strange times. It’s certainly not that the violence, greed, and apathy on display are unprecedented. Rather, it’s just that it’s so very well-documented. Each day brings a thousand new reminders pinging to the supercomputer in my pocket.
By the numbers, roughly 75 percent of Americans are against President Donald Trump’s attempts to acquire Greenland. Even more Greenlanders — a whopping 84 percent! — want the United States to keep its grubby, imperialistic paws to itself, though I have heard from a family member who spent time in the country last year that some Greenlanders she spoke with welcomed the increase in funds they thought a closer relationship with the U.S. might bring.
Surely there are better ways of fostering a closer, and mutually beneficial, relationship than by suggesting we might “take” the country, “whether they like it or not” (Trump’s words). Why, in this day and age, would the U.S. need to actually acquire a new territory anyway?
Maybe Greenland really is essential to U.S. defense. Maybe it’s true that the ultra-rich tech bros want to build a so-called “Freedom City” in Greenland, and maybe that proposed city will be an experimental frontrunner of similarly libertarian settlements planned for Mars. Maybe it’s that Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and Sam Altman have all invested in Kobold Metals, a company that looks for valuable rare-earth metals and allegedly has its AI-driven eye on Greenland. Maybe this is about Arctic resource protection, or maybe Trump is telling the truth and this is all about “saving” Greenland from Russia and China, whether or not the fine folk of Greenland are looking for such a rescue. Whatever the reason, polling suggests it’s a low priority for the everyday people of both the U.S. and Greenland. In fact, I expect that, if the U.S. were to press a claim on that cold island, the only measurable difference in my life would be that, as with Trump’s oh-so-smoothly rolled-out tariff initiative, many things would get more expensive.
Policies that fly in the face of popular support are not uncommon lately, though. A recent poll from The Economist shows that 46 percent of Americans — that’s Americans, not just Democrats — support abolishing ICE. The numbers are even higher for questions of whether ICE has gone too far or if their methods are too forceful — and these polls were conducted before all the videos documenting the brutal shooting and killing of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent were released. For some reason, though, a recent memo from the Democratic think tank Searchlight Institute is suggesting that Democrats refrain from taking up the apparently popular and moral rallying cry of “abolish ICE.” Instead, the top-level Dems seem to want everyone to cool down the rhetoric, instead opting for “Reform and Refrain.”
I’m not sure we can “Reform and Retrain” an agency that’s been posting Nazi slogans on social media, whose members have snatched U.S. citizens off the streets, and executed a human being in broad daylight, and I’m not sure why we should be afraid to discuss scrapping an agency that’s only 24 years old. ICE is not exactly a sacred part of national history.
Immigration enforcement should require a clipboard and a pencil, not a gun and an identity-obscuring face mask. We don’t need — and we can’t afford — a paramilitary agency to check in on people who overstay their visas, and I seriously doubt that most Americans actually want a group of well-armed thugs to have, indefinitely, the authority to conduct random traffic stops or go door to door to check citizens’ papers.
A militia with little oversight and less training? Martian colonies? War with Venezuela? Invasion of Greenland? Who wants any of this?
Most Americans don’t want another war, let alone one in Greenland and one in Venezuela. These aren’t left-versus-right, red-or-blue issues. These are issues with broad support, relatively uncomplicated ideas held by the majority, yet they can’t get traction. We can’t get gun laws passed or keep our president from threatening that the U.S. will control Greenland, one way or another. Our representatives have dropped even the slimmest pretense of working to represent us. What’s next, is the president going to flip the bird to an American worker?
Oh, wait.
I’m not calling on us to storm the Capitol, but when so many resoundingly unpopular initiatives are rolling ahead unchecked, when it feels as though we’re all living in a country that increasingly caters to the selfish whims of a powerful and privileged few, it’s long past time to ask ourselves if we like where we’re going.
Because I’ve got a feeling we aren’t exactly headed for Freedom City.
Jesse Davis is a former Flyer staffer; he writes a monthly Books feature for Memphis Magazine. His opinions, such as they are, are packing their bags for Freedom City.