In the context of the instant "debate", this is missing the mark. The moral question isn't what happened hundreds of years ago to dead people; it's what do living people want (as is their right to self-determine), and the polls are 85% against 6% in the "we don't want to be Americans" direction. (I infer "Ameerikkamiuunianngilagut" is their word for that?)
Here's a joint statement from yesterday by every major political party in Greenland speaking in unison, which you can't post on HN because it offends Americans and they flag these things on sight, though they desire to own the people who are speaking. ("The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice" (214 comments) is, of course, welcomed by HN). You're invited to translate it for yourself, as they have pointedly not released official statements in English, which is not and never has been their language.
> which you can't post on HN because it offends Americans
They may be loud, but the actual percentage of Americans who want to force Greenland to become a part of the US is similar to the percentage of Greenlanders who want Greenland to become part of the US.
Agreed (mostly, but going into the Electoral College debate is a whole other rabbit hole, and regardless a majority voted for these people at least once, with full prior knowledge), and in a democracy we get the government we deserve.
But still, I saw a good clip from Bernie Sanders arguing that when people voted for Trump, they weren't really voting for giant tax breaks for billionaires, or making health care much more expensive, or kicking lots of people off food stamps (though I'd argue they should have realized these things were coming if they had paid attention). What they were voting for was a fundamental shake up of the system, and (for better or worse) Trump was the only one offering fundamental change, vs. the incremental anodyne "can't we all just get along" milquetoast plans from the Democrats (or at least the "elite" Democrats).
Also, for this imperial expansionism issue in particular, I'd argue that this really does feel like a 180 flip flop from Trump after all his "America First" and isolationist rhetoric. For a lot of other issues, for example the immigration crackdown or tariffs, I was truly baffled that some people were surprised how dumb or extreme his policies were, as he basically laid out that this was exactly what he was going to do in the campaign. But putting us in the path of more global conflict and territorial expansionism was actually the exact opposite of what he said he'd do. I'm not that surprised because he's such a transparent malignant narcissist, but again, at least on this issue he flip flopped.
I hear this a lot from Americans, that the percentage of Americans that align with the current right-wing party is actually low. Sometimes you'll see people state that a lot of the right-wing posts you see online are mostly bots.
It's curious to me though, that:
The majority of state governorships,
The majority of state congresses,
The majority of law enforcement,
The majority of military members,
The majority of the US house,
The majority of the US senate,
The majority of the US labor unions,
The majority of the US corporations,
The majority of the US media organizations; both legacy and new,
The majority of the US Supreme Court,
and of course the US Executive branch....
... all belong to the right-wing party we're supposed to believe, according to online rhetoric, is actually only backed by ~30% of Americans. You'd expect a more broad and public resistance if that were true?
Supposedly the centrists and left-wing party members are the silent majority while the right-wing party enacts their agenda with no resistance?
I think the reality is; what we see and hear in the real world is who the US truly is.
In quite a few areas you mention (control of congresses, senates, president) the system has been optimized to allow less densely populated areas to have outsized control. Less densely populated areas historically were the ones that wanted slavery and currently are the areas dominated by Republicans for a number of reasons. The majority it the supreme Court reflects who was in power when people died it retired, not an actual reflection of the people. If a state has a Democrat governor it probably means most of the state is left wing. If that same state has a Republican Senate and a Democrat governor (like mine does) it means that more people are left, but the right has disproportionate control do to low population areas getting disproportionate control
I think for law enforcement and corporations, there is more money and power to be found in supporting the right, so it requires strong leadership to try to do what is best for the population instead of themselves. On the corporate side, this isn't helped by the view pushed into the legal system that corporations only social responsibility is to make the most money for their shareholders in the short term.
We seem to have a system of democracy that may be inferior to many other countries and the cracks are showing. On the not so positive other hand, countries that I would have said have a more robust system are also starting to show cracks, and I don't think it is only because of the influence of foreign big money.
I think it is true that many policies of this administration are only supported by a small minority of Americans and this doesn't seem at all strange to me. The US is (with various state and local exceptions) a first-past-the-post democracy. That means that all political interests necessarily have to coalesce into two political parties or forgo any chance at representation. So the Republican party (and the Democratic party) are really coalitions of dozens of different political interests.
Some people are Republicans because of their opinions on abortion. Some because of their opinions on immigration or crypto regulation. Or their dislike of covid lockdown policies associated with Democrats. Or their preference for tariffs. And so on.
So if a given voter's most important issue is crypto regulation, even if this voter is pro-choice and supports traditional multi-lateral foreign policy, they very may well support Republican politicians, not because they are against abortion or want to invade Greenland, but because those issues are less important to them than their primary issue of crypto regulation.
Now I'm not saying this exonerates the character of the nation. One could argue that it is immoral for voters to prioritize crypto deregulation over multi-lateral foreign policy.
I'm just saying that it is very plausible that only a small minority of the US population supports an invasion of Greenland and, given the political system, there is nothing particularly mysterious about that fact.
Half of these items can be attributed to the fact that low density, rural states have a structural advantage in representation in federal governments, and in the current political era these states lean conservative.
Some of these are just wrong - unions generally lean democratic:
I’m also skeptical of the media organization claim.
And it should surprise no one that purely profit driven corporations switch their professed values with different administrations - see the rapid adoption of DEI programs during the Biden administration, then subsequent abandonment in the Trump era.
Bunch of people explaining this based on voting representation structures but I think they're missing the forest for the trees.
It comes down to power and money. In any capitalist economy with large highly profitable corporate entities, the part(ies) that represent their interests most strongly are simply going to have more leverage and power.
Biden and Harris made the "mistake" of starting to go after Silly Valley for tax evasion and for social/communal issues and so on.
They made the "mistake" of trying to actually advance, modestly, some climate change policy that hurt the oil industry. They made the "mistake" of harming the same global energy industry by heavily sanctioning energy superpower Russia and trying to defeat it in a proxy war.
They made the "mistake" of trying to regulate the cancer that is the cryptocurrency "industry."
And they were completely buried for it. "Allies" in the tech industry just completely abandoned them, and put Vance up as their sock puppet. Musk went scorched earth.
It doesn't matter that centrist opinions might accord with the majority of US society. At least to some degree.
It doesn't match with those who hold real effective power -- monetary, capital power -- need.
Capitalism and democracy only sometimes overlap. They only do so when people keep corporate interests in check through mass action and opposition and unionization and having an active social democratic party, etc. Something the US entirely lacks.
What are you expecting in terms of "broad and public resistance"?
Unfortunately, the political system in the US has been untenable since Citizens United. We only have two viable parties, and both receive their funding from the same sources. I regularly send letters to my Democrat senators and representative, and based on the responses I get back, I can only assume Republicans and Democrat are the same party - they just wear different fashion.
The powers at be are waiting for a Reichstag fire. But, (luckily) Americans are too lazy for that.
I know I’ll get downvoted for this but it needs saying.
I don’t think the allies made any exemptions for the German that wrote their representatives in the lead-up to and during the second world war.
All got stuck with the bill, 6 million got forcibly deported from their homes.
There is a thing as collective guilt and responsibility.
Your country is on collision course with mine, threatening invasion. I really don’t think a few letters absolve you.
I might like you as an individual, who knows, but you can’t run from some responsibility for this.
A bit unrelated vut this "sending letters" schpiel is genious. A letter sent is not seen by anyone else than the one sending it and the receiving it. They could get millions of letters and the public could still think it was a minor issue.
What are you expecting in terms of "broad and public resistance"?
At the very least, a general strike. That's absolutely the bare minimum that should be expected of the 94% of US citizens that do not support this regime (as is the claim upthread).
Not parent, but while I agree with you, I have very little faith (virtually none) in that happening. Most people are in a week-to-week or month-to-month financial situation; so, even if the desire & political will were to manifest, most people literally can't afford to strike.
Hint: these are not independent, random samplings. Turns out when you eliminate restrictions on campaign finance the people who run corporations, the people who get elected, and the people hired and appointed by those elected all wind up being aligned.
It's like commenting that it's weird everyone in any sort of position of power in Russia just happens to be a Putin supporter.
> I hear this a lot from Americans, that the percentage of Americans that align with the current right-wing party is actually low.
The percentage isn't low, you just aren’t going to find them here. And by here I mean hackernews, or the cities that people who are on hackernews live in. There are basically two Americas and they don’t really mix.
There are also moderates who see both sides as corrupt. I’m one of those, but unlike me some of them were disillusioned enough to vote for trump and didn’t know what they were getting into. If you actually look at those voters, they are really confused by this Greenland nonsense.
This is also equal to the percentage of Americans who wanted to forcefully depose Maduro. And the low percentage did not stop Trump. Unfortunately this same low percentage by itself will not stop Trump from attacking Greenland.
(On a side note, I was quite surprised when during Trump’s inaugural speech on Jan 20 2025 he said America will expand its territory. I had no idea he really meant to attack other countries. How little did I know)
Invading Venezuela is not even remotely the same thing as invading a fellow NATO country, and most Americans know it. If Trump tries to invade, he'll trigger a domestic crisis. i.e. Will congress block it? Will the military obey orders? How severe will the protests be?
If Trump quells all that and his invasion goes ahead, he'll trigger an international crisis too. Does NATO simply implode, or do the EU and other former-NATO countries form an anti-U.S. alliance? What kind of insurgency forms in Greenland? Does what's left of the old world order turn against the U.S. with economic sanctions? Does China take advantage of the moment to finally invade Taiwan? How loudly will Putin be laughing during all this?
We can only hope Trump is merely trying to distract people from the Epstein files with a bluff.
Regarding an 'invasion' of Greenland, it would actually be done in a day, and I highly doubt an effective insurgency would form. The US already has military control over the territory, and the population is way too low and concentrated to offer opposition.
This is implicit in the reaction of the EU: If the US takes over Greenland, Europe will close down all American bases in Europe.
This is what makes this particular foreign policy so incredibly stupid: The US already gets everything it needs from Denmark/Greenland. The US is considering throwing away European allies to have their flag be bigger on a world map.
Yes, it could be done quickly. There are only several population centres of any note, often separated by hundreds of miles/km but Nuuk would be the main target.
If Trump does something it will be the same as with Venezuela. This invalidates most of your pointed questions against it happening.
These questions would at most be raised after it already happened, and after watching a few political influencer like Zack who routinely gets 50k+ viewers I suspect your trust in "most Americans know the difference" to be exaggerated, sadly.
This scenario also strongly reminds me of an old fable from the Middle ages, where the king reassures the peasant that the noble will be punished if he kills the peasant... But what meaning does such a punishment have for the peasant who'd be dead?
So yeah, there will be political fallout once Trump's invades it's ally Denmark, at it will invalidate NATO entirely. But does that matter to the annexed people? They'll still have lost their sovereignty to be exploited by American mega corporations.
Take a second look at Venezuela. Congress passed an act limiting Trump's ability to operate in the country. The U.S. is currently not occupying or controlling the country. They have not effected regime change. The former VP has taken over and may take some pro-U.S. actions due to threats of being kidnapped but, with Maduro gone, she could be replaced at any moment. Meanwhile, U.S. oil execs are balking at doing anything in Venezuela and all Trump can do to keep Venezuela on the front page (instead of the Epstein files) is continue pirating oil tankers.
Venezuela could realistically come out of this with their sovereignty intact and no significant U.S. takeover of their oil industry materializing. If anything, the lesson we should learn here is that Trump is so inept that, should he try to take over Greenland, he may trigger all the negative consequences of doing so without actually accomplishing much of anything. Someone living in Nuuk, far from any American military base, might be forgiven for not noticing when they wake up in an American territory. A couple of leaders might get a promotion and the cheques may start coming from Washington rather than Copenhagen, but the Americans may have no interest in governing Greenlanders and American mining companies may refuse to get bogged down in another one of Trump's swamps.
What may happen to Venezuela is not the point. The point is how little control American people have on this Administration (which BTW last week started effectively giving immunity to ICE agents who kill Americans)
> the polls are 85% against 6% in the "we don't want to be Americans" direction
The realistic plan for Greenland involves it voting for independence from Denmark and then entering into a compact with the U.S. in the model of Palau.
Greenlanders appear to understand as well as the rest of the EU that the current US administration is only capable of ludicrous offers and a deeply abusive relationship.
> A poll from January shows that only 6% of Greenlanders are in favor of joining the U.S., with 85% against it.
Say what you want but presidential democracies where presidents are elected by popular vote are a disaster for stability and democracy.
What's happening with this doing and undoing in the US (or Russia, Belarus, Hungary and countless other presidential republics) fully displays why this is a terrible political system:
1. Winner takes all. You may have been voted by 50% + 1 (even less) citizens but the other half is totally not represented like in a parliament.
2. No parliament/party that you need to have backing of. In a parliamentary democracy the prime minister won't just lose opposition's votes, but has to govern in a way that its own party won't boot you.
3. Single person can claim popular mandate. Often in opposition to the parliament/senate whatever. So you end up in situations like the disaster in Poland where government and president are from different parties and the government gets vetoed everything.
4. Extremely hard to remove. A prime minister is a vote of no confidence away from losing its seat. The president can ask them to resign in extreme situations. A president? Removing them is beyond difficult.
Honestly this is such an obvious disaster to have people vote for a president rather than a parliamentary prime minister.
The last parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian has been Sri Lanka 50+ years ago. It's very hard to get so bad so fast in parliamentary republics.
Honestly I can't comprehend Americans thinking their constitution is some holy grail. It's old and has been written centuries ago without all the experience we have in modern democracies. Eastern Europe too has made very bad choices with similar setups and democratically elected presidents.
Say what you want but Germany or Italy have built in way more resilience to these absurdities by having the parliament elect the president which forces them to elect mostly neutral unbiased figures that will support and oversee whoever ends up being in government.
Yes, I guess I'm biased by living in a Westminster system (which isn't perfect, I'd prefer Germany's structure like you say, but) I think you're entirely right that the American republic system is just broken. I think we'll look back on it in 100 years as an absolutely awful way to run government because it effectively created an "elected" "king" role and gave them real powers -- and then let that king get more and more powers over 100 years until, effectively, they have a rotating (for now) despot.
The Westminster system "solves" this problem by having an actual king but giving them zero powers. The German system I think you're right is superior. Ireland also seems to have a nice system.
Americans are very enamoured with their constitution, and it has some good words in it. Too bad they don't seem like they want to actually defend it with the real source of power .. which is not words, or "well-armed militias" [almost always the wrong kind], but feet in the street.
And that's not even getting into the complete and total dysfunction of their two party structure.
The leader of the US was actually supposed to function as a king. Washington was offered the role of king for the new country however he rejected it which ended up leading to the presidential role.
It's strange how much reverence Americans place in the presidential role as if it were actually a king.
It's also strangely martial. Commander in chief, first president a general, all that stuff.
The blurring of the executive and the military, the adoration of troops and war, etc. All very strange(?) for a country whose military has only ever been really involved in outside interference and war and not defense of homeland.
"Thank you for your service" is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans -- service for what? The US is at no risk of invasion.
Hegseth is a low-IQ fascist fool, but renaming to Department of War is at least acknowledging reality.
The Trump government just mostly says the formerly quiet part out loud.
> "Thank you for your service" is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans -- service for what?
Well they are serving the US military, which is generally used for the benefit of the US people. Does not mean it's defending their territory.
Now to be fair, when the US people thanks their soldiers for their service, I don't think they are necessarily thankful for the US threatening to invade what used to be considered as allies (like Canada or Europe).
But I do agree that it is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans.
Well, it’s usually in the context of saying thanks, for things like nights and weekends away from family and friends on training deployments (or real ones), getting up early every morning, being the first one who has to take action if there is a crises and put their life at risk.
So usually it’s said even if the nation isn’t at war because it’s not an easy job. You’ll hear Americans say it to first responders, nurses, fire fighters, police officers, &c.
Idk why it’s being characterized as weird though instead of what it is which is just an aspect of our culture to say thanks to others who are doing jobs you perceive to be dangerous or difficult.
As a veteran of the US armed forces I hate it because I never know what to say…”thanks for your service’ …uh you’re welcome? But it comes from a good place. Though I try to remind folks that saying thanks isn’t enough, spend time and money helping others, vote, keep your community clean, have high standards for yourself and others, because otherwise your fellow citizens are doing all this for nothing.
That's kind of what I was trying to say: it comes from a good place.
But the "service" is more likely to be "invading another country" than "defending the US territory from an invasion", so when you are not a US citizen, it may feel odd.
Again, the US have threatened to invade quite a few democracies in the last year. Not sure how happy the people living there are about that "service"...
The assumption throughout here seems to be that US troops are performing service that is of advantage to all Americans and thus their sacrifice is worth of respect. And you're recognizing this may not be the case for at least some non-Americans.
I'd go further: I am not convinced the actions of the US military -- which are primarily abroad -- are always advancing the interests for all Americans. In fact they sometimes are directly undermining the interests of some of the poorest members of society. The US's imperial interests abroad can suppress global labour prices, it can contribute to climate change (by advancing and encouraging more fossil fuel exploration), among other things. It can indirectly or even directly harm the interests of some working people in the United States. While at the same time recruiting directly from those people.
So while I feel for armed forces members individually as people, the product of their service in their forces I don't think is some universal good. In fact, for much of the 20th century outside of WWII it's been mostly malevolent and imperial. And I'd argue not just to the world outside the US, but to many of its own broader population.
I don't think it's for a universal good either, but for most Americans they are basically saying, well as a country we voted for whatever it is the government is doing and that may be good or bad but we support the institution you represent and wish it to generally be successful. You don't need to over-analyze it.
You're right that US military action sometimes cause harm even for people that are supposedly represented, but the military is just another tool leveraged by governments which do good or bad things all the time. It's really as simple as the US spending taxpayer dollars on initiative X with spending taxpayer dollars on initiative Y just with a bomb. You could argue that bombs kill people so the military is different, but so do rising interest rates and civil wars and famines. Even saying that some actions taken by the US might not be good for non-Americans it's kind of a weird criticism. It's true, but that applies to all countries and all peoples, and the United States has no moral obligation to take actions that are specifically good for other people while advancing American interests. Hopefully we do, and I think we should, but it's unfair to characterize the US as having a moral failure for not doing so unless you're going to apply those standards to everyone else. For example, if you are going to criticize the United States in this way, I'll criticize China for taking actions that harmed Americans by manufacturing products so cheaply and efficiently that it put American workers out of jobs. Many people died because of that over the years. Maybe China should do better and not undermine the interests of poor Americans for whom a manufacturing job is the gateway to as good of a life as they can expect?
I was one of those folks "recruited". The 4 years I put in including a tour taught me a lot not just about myself but about the countries I was stationed in, and eventually paid for me to college through a semester or two of grad school and allowed me to take college courses while I was in. I learned how to work out, learned about nutrition, and learned a lot about working with other people from different backgrounds, handling conflict, teamwork, all of those things. Many people make the military a career, too, or they're able to land jobs after their time in working as contractors helping to fix or maintain equipment. It's not all bad, and I think your characterization which is effectively: "the US takes actions that harm poor people and then recruits them to further harm those same people" is, well, to put it politely rather uncharitable.
I also don't think we should over-index on actions taken by a country undermining the interests of some of the poorest members of society. I think we should do what we can to help those who are the least well off at least here in the US. Healthcare, education, you name it. But we should not have a dogmatic approach toward helping one group at the expense of everyone else. If the US took an action that didn't benefit the poorest members of society but benefited everyone else at their expense, maybe it's still a good action and maybe we should continue to do it. It depends on the action and the effects. Was bombing Iraq good? Idk, maybe over the long term, but Americans including the poorest sure do like cheap gas prices.
> but it's unfair to characterize the US as having a moral failure for not doing so unless you're going to apply those standards to everyone else
Who says we aren't? There is always criticism against countries that invade other countries. Be it the US, Russia, China, you name it.
But it's not as if Greenland (or the EU, or Canada) was threatening to invade the US, is it?
> Was bombing Iraq good? Idk, maybe over the long term, but Americans including the poorest sure do like cheap gas prices.
I think this is an interesting point: people in many countries would not be grateful if their military invaded other countries. So they wouldn't "thank the military for their service". That the Americans do it may sound weird to non-Americans, given that the US are generally more invading than defending their own territory. "Thanks for destroying an entire country and disrupting millions of life, because I like cheap gas".
> Who says we aren't? There is always criticism against countries that invade other countries. Be it the US, Russia, China, you name it.
Because while I recognize the OP being about the US, the vast majority of the criticism and discussion takes place regarding the United States. But even in criticizing the US here one could in good faith argue a caveat is required saying "but this is done by all countries" or something along those lines.
> But it's not as if Greenland (or the EU, or Canada) was threatening to invade the US, is it?
No, but I don't think that's particularly relevant in this context? You're just venting.
> I think this is an interesting point: people in many countries would not be grateful if their military invaded other countries. So they wouldn't "thank the military for their service". That the Americans do it may sound weird to non-Americans, given that the US are generally more invading than defending their own territory. "Thanks for destroying an entire country and disrupting millions of life, because I like cheap gas".
Well my point here was just that the Iraq war is widely criticized, and in this context I think it's safe to assume that it would also have been criticized as not being good for the poorer folks in the United States, and I just wanted to point out that they want their cheap gas prices too, and they're also thanking the US military for bombing Iraq. Some want to try and say America is bad but not the poor people because of an internal juxtaposition they hold in their mind. The poor Americans are just as complicit and benefit too. In fact, they're typically more supportive of these endeavors than the wealthy elites regardless of who benefits.
> people in many countries would not be grateful if their military invaded other countries
Well most countries lack a military that is capable of doing much of anything so they don't really experience this happening, and if their country does try to invade another one it is usually facing repercussions from the United States, so your sample size is small.
But I also don't think this is quite true and you can broaden it to general military activity.
Iranians for example were celebrating in the streets over bombings of Israel. Israelis were celebrating the bombing of Iran's military and leadership. Do I need to even get in to Russia and Z? Nevermind Pakistan and India, even internally in countries like India you have religious or ethnic minorities murdered and it is celebrated. Do you think there is a lack of patriotic Chinese who are eagerly awaiting the bombing and invasion of Taiwan? You're thinking about this in an American-centric way. Americans aren't special, all countries like and do these things and have done so historically and will continue to do so in the future provided they have the means and internal justification.
> No, but I don't think that's particularly relevant in this context? You're just venting.
Okay let me take a step back. The discussion starts with:
> The blurring of the executive and the military, the adoration of troops and war, etc. All very strange(?) for a country whose military has only ever been really involved in outside interference and war and not defense of homeland.
"Thank you for your service" is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans -- service for what? The US is at no risk of invasion.
And you say that it's unfair because all countries who have a powerful enough military also invade other countries, and their people also thank them for doing it". Sounds like I am not the only one venting, to be honest.
Even the United States government and its advisors are aware of this; when they installed a new form of government in Iraq after the invasion, it was a parliamentary system.
> Honestly I can't comprehend Americans thinking their constitution is some holy grail
There exists a concept of "American exceptionalism" [1], which describes this popular belief that the US are superior. It also probably goes with the fact that it is a very big country sharing one culture, and it is easy to not spend too much time looking at what other countries are doing.
> presidential democracies where presidents are elected by popular vote are a disaster
I would like to add France to the examples supporting your case: in the first round, Macron got less than 20% of the votes, and a non-negligible part of those was already trying to be "efficient". As in, the people would have voted for someone else, but they voted for Macron because it seemed more likely that he could win against Le Pen, the far-right candidate.
This means that less than 20% of the people (those who voted of course) wanted Macron. On his first day, more than 80% didn't want him. Still he behaves like if the French people wanted him.
> by having the parliament elect the president
An example I like is Switzerland: they don't have a president at all. They elect their parliament, and the parliament elects the Federal Council made of 7 people from the main parties.
What this means is that the executive power is a consensus by construction, and most of the people is represented (because the Federal Council is made of the major parties, which represent the majority of the people and go from left to right).
Feeling represented is very important: when the people does not feel represented, they take out to the street and protest. I don't think it happens as much in the countries you described (Germany, Italy) or Switzerland.
> > Still he behaves like if the French people wanted him.
Well he's the closest to that benchmark no?
You can hardly regulate how emboldened a person feels, especially after having obtained such a big result.
He is the most liked person in France , as if you just take into consideration the raw number of people who like him and ignore those who dislike , his number would be higher than the everybody else.
It's always like that with elections, once the polls are closed and the votes counted someone will have a mandate and a mandate is determined by number of preferences expressed. Those who stayed home or the raw number of "dislikes" doesn't count.
A thing that would somewhat diminish the power of the elected person is an election where just 15-20% of the population who has the right to vote decided to cast their vote
> This means that less than 20% of the people (those who voted of course) wanted Macron. On his first day, more than 80% didn't want him.
That’s not true. “I want someone else more than X” isn’t the same as “I don’t want X”. That’s the advantage of Approval voting and Ranked Choice voting—you can make those things clear.
If you look at the situation in France, I think it's pretty damn obvious that the people don't feel represented by their government.
My point was not to nitpick on the numbers, but rather to say that having a president elected by the people and having as much executive power as the president has in France doesn't seem to work really well. As opposed to countries that enforce a consensus.
> It also probably goes with the fact that it is a very big country sharing one culture
Some Americans, even here on HN, genuinely believe that different states have different cultures in the same way different countries in Europe have different cultures cultures.
Sure, it's not incompatible. There is a European culture, it's just a question of granularity. And there are subcultures in countries (some countries are even divided between different languages).
Still, Americans from everywhere in the US have this tendency to genuinely believe that the whole world believes the US are the best country in the world. That seems like a cultural trait in the US.
> 1. Winner takes all. You may have been voted by 50% + 1 (even less) citizens but the other half is totally not represented like in a parliament.
I agree with your argument in general, but couldn't this still happen with a parliament? If a party controls 50% + 1 of the parliament, then they're in control. Still, it's better than that control being given to a single person of course.
Typically no (unless you're the UK with a very dysfunctional FPTP system).
Typically the parliament is fractured in multiple parties, because in parliamentarism there is not automatic incentive to vote for one of the big parties otherwise you are wasting your vote. If the party you vote for has 5% of the representation in the parliament, it can still be part of a coalition to form the government and influence decisions.
I'm not an expert on this, but the way I see it, the opposite is true: people don't vote on small parties, because if a small party doesn't reach the minimum required, the vote is wasted. This way there's only a few parties (if the minimum is 5% then there can't really be more than 20 parties, and since the distribution is very far from even, you get around around 4-7 parties with 5% minimum).
However, the big parties often consist of sub-factions.
However, it seems there are mechanisms that turn parties into dictatorships with one person ruling everything in the entire party, as well as people get carried away with negative emotions and vote against, polarizing the politics into just 2 parties alternating in power.
Pick any European parliamentarism. You will find at least 4 or 5 parties with some relevance in any country. Besides the UK (with their absolutely bonkers FPTP system), I can't remember a single one with 2 major parties and that's it.
Those smaller parties end up having an important role, because typically the Major parties cannot form a government otherwise. So the major parties end up having to make some concessions to get a coalition going.
Australia has a proportional voting "washminster" system with two and half major parties ..
( Labor Vs. Liberal+Nationals OR (cartoonishly) "Masses" Vs Urban-Capital+Rural-LandOwners (comically grotesque oversimplification) )
There are, however, many smaller parties that a great many people vote on first in proportional run-offs.
Australians are well aware that the smaller parties often don't get a seat but they're also well aware that the voltes are tallied to reveal the issues championed by smaller parties and how the secondary preferences "run off" to the majors.
eg: (say) Labor only squeaked in ahead of the Liberals because people that care about issue {X} first then preferenced Labor second .. expecting Labor to address that issue.
Fail to address an issue and the margin votes switch secondary preferences.
( That said, a number of small parties do hold independant seats )
Much of this small party preference voting kicked off from The Australian Democrats, a centrist political party founded in 1977 with the slogan
> you end up in situations like the disaster in Poland where government and president are from different parties and the government gets vetoed everything
>Honestly I can't comprehend Americans thinking their constitution is some holy grail. It's old and has been written centuries ago without all the experience we have in modern democracies. Eastern Europe too has made very bad choices with similar setups and democratically elected presidents.
I don't think it's the Constitution in of itself that's a holy grail. Just look at how hotly debated the 2nd Amendment is, especially among Americans.
I think the true holy grail is the process to amend it, because that requires a relatively clear majority of Americans to agree to change it; well beyond 50% if I remember American civics correctly. It's a living document, changed as needed. It just hasn't as of late because the process is arduous on purpose to prevent heated decisions from being rushed through.
"Greenlanders appear to understand as well as the rest of the EU"
Greenland has never been in the European Union, even though it is effectively a Danish colony. It left its predecessor, the EEC, many years ago. Its interaction with the other EU member states is minimal.
Not off topic at all. For what its worth, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey and the Faroe Islands have never been in the EU either. Gibraltar has been though, and has a land border with the EU unlike these other territories.
The US agreed to recognize Greenland being a part of Denmark in the same treaty where the US purchased the Virgin Islands. If the US changes its mind right now and uses force or other coercion, why would anyone trust any treaty or other agreement with the US ever again?
> During 1916, the two sides agreed to a sale price of $25,000,000, and the United States accepted a Danish demand for a declaration stating that they would "not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland".
The 1 trillion budget says the US can flex its muscles, but once sovereignty is at stake, the US army becomes an ineffective money sinkhole only good at committing war crimes, as the last century has clearly shown.
Exactly, and that isn't in the billionaires interest so it's not going to happen. They'd rather all their consumers attention be available to them than dealing with nuclear fallout.
There was a similar argument some years ago about the Falkland Islands, that every single local could be bought off by Argentina. I think most Americans are much more mobile and not used to the idea that someone could be strongly attached to an area as their home.
Canadian perspective: it seems like many (not all) Americans are also explicitly brought up with, and heavily absorb, "greatest country in the world" rhetoric that also leaves them incapable of understanding that this is not necessarily how people outside of it see the USA.
Trying to be diplomatic? I've seen a lot of really insane shit in comment sections -- and even more insane shit from public officials -- over the last year since these "topics" came up.
Belief in or unconscious absorbance of the concept of "manifest destiny" and American exceptionalism seems to run deep in a portion of the American psyche.
No, it's not "their" continent to take. Might doesn't make right. And it certainly doesn't make for superiority in anything but brawn and bravado.
I'll also add this: the (imho encouraging) trend in the north and with the indigenous populations there has been in the opposite direction from what the Trump regime is proposing: sovereignty and autonomy for the Inuit to run their own lands. Canada carved out new Inuit administered territories, trying in some respect (and inconsistently) to rectify over a century of mis(mal?)governance and exploitation and mistreatment.
From the polls I see the Inuit in Greenland want more self governance, not a new external boss.
From an American perspective, it’s not the “rhetoric,” it’s just “noticing.” My mom is an immigrant who was not brought up here to absorb the rhetoric. But when she went to Canada and Australia to visit family, she came back ranting about how poor everyone was and how small the houses were. (I take it you have fewer suburban McMansions and giant SUVs.) It’s hard not to notice our GDP per capita is 50% higher than yours. It’s big enough now where we notice it just going up there to visit family.
And you can say what you want about safety nets for poor people, but that doesn’t affect most Americans. My parents are on Medicare and they head down to the ER every time have a stomach ache and get a CAT scan. Meanwhile my family is convinced that Canadian healthcare nearly killed my aunt when she had a kidney issue because they didn’t immediately schedule her for a million tests and surgery. (I suspect that isn’t true and the Canadian system reasonably triaged the care.)
And to be clear, I like Canada (and I love Denmark). I’d rather have a more orderly society with an efficient and expansive government that’s focused on comprehensive outcomes across the population, in contrast to our system where you have McMansions but randomly you can fall through a giant crack. But Americans temperamentally are biased towards upside potential and they devalue downside risk. This is a cultural trait that seems very quickly absorbed even by immigrants. My immigrant family isn’t meaningfully American in many respects—they don’t have Anglo sensibilities about things like civic institutions and personal freedoms—but they’re indistinguishable from other americans in their materialistic optimism
> From an American perspective, it’s not the “rhetoric,” it’s just “noticing.”
Yes, but that does not go against the parent comment. When you grow up in it, you have it in you, and it's difficult to question it. If you ask Americans who live abroad, they often have a more nuanced perspective.
Apart from American finding it better in the US than everywhere else in the world (your "noticing"), there is this tendency from Americans to genuinely believe that the rest of the world agrees with that. "Everybody wants to live in the US because it is the best country in the world".
And this is very, very far from true. It's not just about money. The US have a lot of fossil energy, which is good for their economy, which is good for their military. The US is a big and rich country, which makes it powerful. But that is bad for the countries and people who are threatened by the US (and recently the US have been militarily threatening countries who until then were seeing the US as an ally or at least a friend), and it is bad for our survival (through the climate and biodiversity issues).
Tons of people outside of the US wouldn't want to live in the US, even if it meant earning more money. And on top of that, tons of people outside of the US feel threatened by the US, for good reasons.
This comment underscores how mono-dimensional some people are.
To Rayiner more stuff, bigger stuff = happier and more fullfilling life. An incredible lack of depth.
That is also the reason why Americans when they go abroad are astonished and always come back saying "people are amazing" somewhere else, well no wonder considering the state of domestic affairs and domestic relationships between people.
Please offer my apologies to your mom , as it's true that our vehicles are dangerously underdimensioned , maybe next time something in the order of 10-15 short tons could be adequate to transport her to the nearest McMansion (or McDonald's rather).
A more diplomatic way to say it would be that it is a different culture. And I would agree that Americans struggle to see that other countries have different cultures and different priorities.
If you believe that the goal in life is to live like an American, then obviously the best at doing that are... the Americans. The mistake is to not recognise that other people may have different beliefs.
> To Rayiner more stuff, bigger stuff = happier and more fullfilling life. An incredible lack of depth
Please read my whole post! I’m a Europoor at heart. I live in a 3BR house with three kids and no yard despite being able to afford a bigger one. I drive an EV, and it’s not a Tesla. I’m just trying to convey my impression of American culture though the lens of my mom, who embodies this aspect of American culture quite strongly.
Yo, chill. You can always make your point just fine without resorting to aggression or making it personal.
I’d suggest treating this as an opportunity to reflect a bit on patience and tone. Speaking from firsthand experience, these are things I’ve had to work on myself over time, helped in no small part by this community and @dang’s exceptional patience for which I'm quite grateful. I now owe HN therapy money as well, lol. :)
More generally, it would be nice if we made a conscious effort to keep HN a little less negative overall [1].
I honestly can't see a difference in housing sizes between Canada and the United States -- we've got the same McMansion sprawl all over the place here -- so strikes me this person's mother is just like every other human, and bad at statistics and handling their own biases.
The US does have a higher rate of wealth inequality than Oz and here in Canuckistan tho.
Yes, that's why I found 'house size' a strange complaint. The three countries in question have comparable square footage - the largest-sized houses in the world.
The inequality is what she’s reacting to. Most people in my extended family are professionals or business owners. That class has a lot more money in the US. Top 1% in Canada is $315,000 while in the U.S. that’s outside the top 3%.
Yes, it's absolutely the case that people in our profession and adjacent do a lot better in the US than here.
And the situation for working class Canadians isn't great either right now -- housing prices have skyrocketed. Tariffs from economic warfare are destroying the labour market. There are many aspects about our situation that are inferior.
But guess what -- that has fuck-all to do with how we perceive the relative value of our country or the pride or love we have for our homeland and love.
No, the majority of Canadians don't see the US as the world's best country because the wealthiest there make more money than the wealthiest here.
I worked at Google in Waterloo for 10 years. At any point I could have packed up and moved to the Valley and transferred to Mountain View. I had jobs before that that could have taken me to the US on transfer, as well. I chose not to. Why?
During part of that time, after Trump was first elected, I saw lots of expat Canadians who had been working for Google in the US return and transfer back to our office. They came back and earned less, and the choice of projects in our office was slimmer. But they chose to. Why?
Love of country, of culture, of family, of nature, of the land, nostalgia, familiarity. What came up often when I spoke to people coming back was a strong distaste for the idea of bringing their children up in the American education system with its extreme degrees of inequality, status seeking, elitism around "Ivy League" and ranking of schools right from kindergarten. Values on the whole unfamiliar to the same degree among Canadians.
Expats in particular, and immigrants who primarily migrated for economic reasons... yes, I'd naturally expect them not to understand this POV. I even meet plenty of new (often temporary) Canadians using Canada as a convenient springboard before their "final" migration choice which is the US. Not sure I like that, but that's their choice.
My father is also an immigrant, from Germany. He came here for the nature / wilderness. He's intensely critical of the politics and economics here and where he lives in Alberta, and there's many things in those respects he prefers about Germany. But he has love of land, and Canada is his homeland, because of the peace and love he finds in the rivers, the forests, the muskeg.
I love my people and country I imagine in the same way or similar way Greenlanders love theirs. The size of the McMansions has no bearing on it. Canadians by and large don't walk around proclaiming theirs the best country in the world. We are not interested in our superiority. But we will defend our home, same as any other.
The original point stands -- to talk about "greatest country on earth" and then act baffled or smug about why others wouldn't want to join it -- is nothing but schoolyard bully logic. Like picking on the weird or weak kid in the playground, and then proclaiming that as a moral virtue. This Greenland stuff, and the rhetoric heard about Canada this past year as well, has exposed the very darkest underbelly of the US. One we have seen here many times over 200 years, but many Americans seem blind to.
I know some that did move to the US for economic reasons only that have moved back to Canada because of the way the US has changed during their time there.
I take a drive through Detroit and I "notice" entirely different things which somehow your screed above is mostly blind to.
That's about as diplomatic as I can summon up as a reply to your comment, whose substance mostly proves my point about the bizarre exceptionalist world Americans seem to occupy in their heads. It really isn't "noticing"... what you're talking about. It's ideology.
Also GDP per capita is the kind of garbage metric I would expect someone frequent on this forum, and hopefully literate in statistics, to understand the ridiculousness of deploying in conversation.
Also, there's rarely anybody more invested in seeing the superiority of their new (chosen) place other than immigrants, so I don't think that's the argumentative flex you think it is.
As I said, I like Canada! I’m just trying to explain the American point of view. For example, I care about Detroit. But your typical American doesn’t live in Detroit. The average new home is built in a booming, low tax, Sun Belt state like Georgia and Texas, where my cousins bought McMansions in the last few years.
Also, my cousin grew up in Windsor and having been there plenty of times, it’s shit too.
Much of the world would have no problem with americans being in love with their McMansions.
But many would find them wasteful, and a terrible place to live, compared to a decently sized apartment (one 10m² - 100 sq ft - bedroom per person/couple and maybe an extra office) in a walkable town.
Just as we find american SUVs totally inadequate compared to our cars.
And it's not matter of cost, we're perfectly “happy” paying borrowing millions of euro for such apartments, and paying far more for our cars.
My perspective is from Scotland, and what annoys me is the vanilla press continually going to the Copenhagen government and even the Danish royal family for quotes. Greenland is a Danish colony/overseas territory (delete according to view), and I'd prefer to hear from Greenlanders. I'm sure the average Dane rarely thinks about Greenland, or didn't until recently. (Much like most British never thought about the Falkland Islands until Argentina invaded.)
We had a similar scenario during the Scottish independence referendum with the international media going to London to talk about the matter.
As for the Manifest Destiny thing, maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm thinking more Monroe Doctrine. Manifest Destiny was heading westward, and grabbing Greenland, or even Venezuela, seems more aimed at those who would influence them from outside the Americas.
Monroe Doctrine I think has always been considered to apply to Latin America. But probably mainly because the US has almost always (in the 20th century) had a subservient "partner" here in Canada.
But we were invaded (twice) here in Canada (or what became Canada) by the US. The only people to have ever invaded us. And when they did so, their leaders at the time were definitely flying the Manifest Destiny rhetoric. So much so they could not even imagine why the Quebecois and others didn't just welcome them with open arms.
So, no, I think it definitely applies northward too, not just westward. Or at least some of the ideological underpinnings of it.
Greenland, and Canada are in the Americas, as are Venezuela and Cuba. Three of these are independent nations while one is more or less a European colony. Venezuela and Cuba have strong ties with Russia that the USA resents.
Yes, I'm aware of the US attempts on Canada. I think US pop culture, and TV has done a better job of Americanising Canada than the military... Same with Europe.
I tend to think of it more like this: There is a North American culture and then subcultures. "Canada" is in large part contiguous culturally with two North American cultural regions -- the midwest [hi there Minnesota, we love you!] and (at least parts of) New England.
This isn't really because of TV or cultural export but because of real population origins and movements. We say "pop" and have "Canadian raising" in our speech, and so do people from Minnesota or Wisconsin and that doesn't come from TV or radio or movies. It comes from being neighbours and descended from the same population groups. The border also used to be a lot more porous. My mother's mother were (German descendant) North Dakotans who just basically popped across the border and started farming and lived in Sask and Alberta... without a lot of legal hassle at all.
Overtop of that, yes, there is a whole set of other cultural/legal/economic overlays, and media is a big part of that.
But this is still a regional story-- there's I think more in common culturally between e.g. regular families in Ontario and Wisconsin than there is between Wisconsin and Florida.
From that perspective, I have rarely fallen back to Canadian nationalism. I would in fact have been more in favour of a stronger union between some US states and the US economy and Canada -- in the past. But events of the last year have made clear what many our Loyalist ancestors already tried to warn us about 200 years ago: there is a dark and frankly kind of insane undercurrent in American political culture, and the foundations of the Canadian state are anything but artificial, they are based on an entirely different perspective on governance and culture because there's something kinda messed up in the kernel of the American conception of governance.
Which I think the people of Minnesota are seeing right now.
What was arrogant about my post? My point was that Canadians (like you) often exhibit this baffling, unfounded sense of superiority, one completely at odds with cold, hard migration data, as well as the habits of successful Canadians. It's especially baffling in light of Canada's "lost decade" of flat real GDP growth. Canada now has a per capita GDP that's lower than all but one or two U.S. states, and its economic "growth" is just people selling overpriced houses back and forth to each other. Yet the arrogance and condescending attitude towards their southern neighbor remains.
The big difference is the falkland islands are populated by brits loyal to britain whereas Greenland is populated by greenlanders who hate denmark because the danes committed many acts of genocide against greenlanders.
> I think most Americans are much more mobile and not used to the idea that someone could be strongly attached to an area as their home.
You think the people in the falklands are "native" to the falkland islands?
There are people who have been born and brought up in the Falkland Islands and have connections going back generations. They have been there longer than anyone else, and the islands had no previous indigenous population before France first colonised them.
As to whether they are native, that is a whole other can of worms, but they are more rooted to there than people who live in continental South America. Geographically they can't claim to be British but by sympathy they are. Things were shifting in Argentina's favour until the invasion.
By the way, this does apply to a certain percentage of Greenlanders. There are a few European Greenlanders, or people of recent mixed heritage so we could make similar arguments about them.
> polls also consistently show that Greenlanders do not want independence if the price is the collapse of the Greenlandic welfare state.
Even replacing independence with becoming part of the US - any one time payment couldn't ensure the continuation of the welfare state. That is, free healthcare, free higher education, access to social support, etc.
> > Even replacing independence with becoming part of the US - any one time payment couldn't ensure the continuation of the welfare state. That is, free healthcare, free higher education, access to social support, etc.
Yes if the one time payment is then invested in a big fund like Norway has, or considering the outcome that is at play here...more like California has with its CalPers
Of course it means that the actual money would be invested in US companies , hence subject to expropriation of the stock
And even the actual money if in dollars they can be taken away at any time
Wyoming or Vermont at 1 million each would be sub trillion range. Seems like reasonable. Technically they could just transfer all the debt they hold to residents there and get deal done.
I'm too lazy, but I hope someone is less lazy and would set up a Kickstarter and collect funds to be given to every resident of US Virgin Islands once they rejoined[1] Denmark. Would happily chip in a hundred or two for a good cause.
[1] Just learned that US Virgin islands are ex Danish colony US bought from Denmark about a century ago. In that agreement United States recognized Denmark's control over Greenland. Funny that.
They would have declined, as it's obviously a bad deal. European TV channels are interviewing Greenlanders these days asking the same question. They don't want it.
Furthermore, what you are suggesting is literally a mafia practice - sell us your business/property for an unfair price or we'll take it by force anyway.
I’m not sure why anyone is surprised that trump is acting like a mafia boss trying to shake down the rest of the world. This is who he has always been, the first time around there were just more people to say no to him.
Greendland People's Republic? Actually they were American all along, USA needs to save them from nazi Denmark. Grab it quick, before Russia does its usual scheme.
Even if every person on Greenland wanted to join the US, could they? Isn't the Land property of every Dane, not just the people currently living there?
If Greeland declares independence, Danish army would arrest all the local resisting people for terrorism, unlawful orders, etc (or shoot at them if needed).
They don't have a choice, they can't split away from Denmark right now, they are like in jail.
If someone tells you that Greenland can declare independence tomorrow without consequences from Denmark this is not true. They would first need to do great PR "we want freedom" and spread in the news that Denmark is evil and forgot about them, etc.
In 1979, Greenland achieved Home Rule, which included the formation of the Greenlandic Parliament, and it gained self-rule in 2009 through the passage of a law that included a ‘blueprint’ for seeking independence. The 2009 law firmly established that the decision to go for independence from Denmark would now rest with the Greenlandic people.
There is no doubt that the majority of Greenlanders want to use this option eventually. Polls show this. Independence has been accepted in Denmark as well. However, polls also consistently show that Greenlanders do not want independence if the price is the collapse of the Greenlandic welfare state.
Of course, you can't do that, there are criminal consequence: yes you can get arrested for that. Like in any country.
There are even worse: financial consequences (600M USD lost per year!).
But what if a richer buddy offers you protection and more money ?
In that specific agreement:
> "The agreement on independence shall be endorsed by a referendum in Greenland. The agreement shall furthermore be subject to the consent of the Folketing [Danish Parliament]."
It's "yes, you can leave, but you need our permission".
Today, Danish parliament is not really happy at the idea of giving away Greenland to anyone.
1) They want a new source of funding, ideally one they develop on their own (e.g. a mining and refining industry), to maintain their welfare state. It's a preference of theirs, not something imposed on them by the evil Danes.
Finding a new "buddy" to replace Denmark makes no sense. Why would they want to swap their dependence on a country which likes its welfare state (and is demonstrably good at administering it) for one which takes a notoriously dim view on such things?
2) Greenland becoming independent implies changing the borders of the kingdom of Denmark. That obviously requires a decision by parliament, no way around it.
Anyone interested in the facts can see the law in question here:
It would obviously not exist if Denmark was hellbent on denying Greenland its independence. All it does is lay out an orderly and straightforward process for the transition.
Factually, I agree with you on both points. Like from the rule of law perspective.
Statistically you are right, but in practice I would be cautious. I'm betting on the fact that a mad world is going to be even more mad (I couldn't imagine US threatening to invade Denmark... though I understand the US opportunity as well).
it would be a million times more probable that they would throw money to their friends in the military complex to take things by force, than to give money to strangers.
During the Cold War the United States military had 15,000 soldiers stationed in Greenland. That presence has been reduced by 99% to just 150 soldiers today.
Denmark has given the US exclusive and full military access to Greenland but the US does not use it. This has nothing to do with security.
I see so many americans suddenly hyperfocus on the strategic importance of Greenland because Trump again talks about stealing it. They fall over themselves inventing fantastically involved rationales and really weird moral justifications. Meanwhile Donald is above such pretense. He just wants it. (In way that honesty is refreshing.)
It's especially tragicomical when they frame it as a defense measure against Russia - which those same people are generally aligned with.
Exactly, USA already has military bases there and could nuke Ruzzia if they really would invade Greenland, but MAGAs can't use their brain, same like the Zed patriots, when the leader says something stupid and obviously fake they turn their brains off and use the hate in their harts to justify it.
Is worse then an alternative reality, the logic does not work in those brains, anything is relative, if X did Y is good if X = Putin/Trump but is evil if X != Putin/Trump
> It's especially tragicomical when they frame it as a defense measure against Russia - which they are generally aligned with.
How is a country that has sanctions against Russia, sends aid to a country it is at war with, and has recently been seizing Russian ships be aligned with Russia?
I don’t think “aligned with Russia” is what’s happening. Instead, I think they are aligned with the old fashioned “spheres of influence” concept, where each superpower owns and operates its own region. Thus, Russia owning Ukraine and the US owning Greenland are not inconsistent.
US aid towards Ukraine is just strong enough to keep the conflict going indefinitely (the “forever wars” policy) without resolving it.
I agree. In general powers want to expand their own spheres of influence and reduce those of others but it is a strategic decision. In Ukraine Russia is not the highest priority as it is a regional power rather then a rival superpower and a forever war weakens it. It is also enough of a threat to keep Europe aligned with the US.
I edited my comment to clarify that I meant the people who make these absurd statements. It was kinda clear before the edit ("they"); now it's very clear.
There seems to be some confusion around the basis of morals.
Once you are in power and you have things arranged the way you want, you claim that violence is not the answer.
Otherwise, practically speaking might makes right.
So for Greenlanders and those opposed to the US imperialism, it makes sense to say that the rule of existing law must prevail, regardless of the fact that there is no traditional military willing and able to back this up.
However, if you are American and you stand to benefit, what you want to happen is backed up by the most powerful military the world has ever seen.
And I bet a good chunk of people in Greenland know that with no roads and no infrastructure, they can go toe to toe with the US military inland, that is until they stop getting shipments of grain. But can even the vaunted US military blockade this continent sized island, especially with zero allies in tow?
So morally speaking, both parties are in the right. But you can predict what the outcome would eventually be, it is very much David vs Goliath, barring Greenlandic alignment with another foreign power in a proxy war.
Ethically speaking, the chronic under development and under investment in the global North is not beneficial to humanity. Viewed from afar, it does seem that Denmark has not been handling this colonial remnant particularly well.
I think what I mean by colonial remnant is "administration and control from afar", not "subjugation of indigenous peoples", and it's concerned with what's happening now, rather than what happened 1000 or more years ago and it's no longer particularly relevant. By remnant, I mean that it's administered by Denmark as a byproduct of a colonial gold rush, not because they are the best entity for that job.
USA had its own legislative assemblies too before the declaration of Independence, look what happened.
Depends what you mean by large areas. Most of it is an kce sheet, the interior is uninhabitable and the habitable sections are hundreds of miles apart.
Depends what I mean with large areas? Ever been to Greenland?
Greenland is about 25% of the US excluding Alaska, the ice sheet covers 80% of that.
This means that the ice free area of Greenland is a bit larger than California. Thats the third largest state in the US. I would say that is a large area.
The vikings landed there, not Denmark, who were Norse, Erik the Red was from Norway (But was considered by then an Icelander exile?). Before Danish control Greenland was a Norwegian colony, this was the colony that died out.
Norse colonisation tended to reflect their origin e.g. the Norwegians colonised the north west of Scotland and Iceland, which were more similar to Norway; Danes went to England and Normandy which were more southerly, flatter and more fertile, much like Denmark; the Swedes with their long Baltic coastline turned their attentions eastward.
Denmark got the North Atlantic islands through the union with Norway, and retained them after Norway became independent.
I know, but that was much later and had a very different dynamic, due to climatic changes etc.
The earlier Norse colonisation of Greenland seemed to consist of farmers and independent settlers, mostly via Iceland. In some areas, they never interacted with Inuit, or rarely.
The later effort seems more focussed on Christian missions to the natives, and commercial whaling and sealing.
- Will the rare earth minerals be mined eventually? As far as I see EU is going into that direction as well, as Greenland became so strategic over time
- What happens with all the land rights that American mineral extraction companies already bought? It means that even if EU/Greenland accepts mining they are already starting from a losing position
- What happens if the American government pays off the people and they want to join US? Will the Danish government still believe in the self determination of Greenland, or it's just political talk?
- what happens after US gets Greenland? Will NATO fall apart and EU get into an even worse position?
- The only way minerals there will be mined profitably is by someone strongarming and displacing any local population, disregarding all environmental protection rules and destroying large swathes of land
- They either mine the minerals responsibly or ask their king to take over the country so they can mine irresponsibly
- Bribery to vote for independence and subsequent joining with the US is the only legal way that Greenland will become part of the US. It would have to be accepted by the Kingdom of Denmark
- Depends on whether it is done legally or with force. If done with force NATO would go under pretty fast. If done with bribery NATO is probably done anyway just way further out.
Because there's absolutely no infrastructure where noone lives. For good reason
The mineral dream is a dream for a reason. Americans have tried. The Chinese have tried. The Danes have tried. None have made a profit, and none have kept up operations
But I'm sure the US will be able to do it this time. Afterall the US has someone with an acute sense of realism in absolute power
And they'll be back in a few years later. I think the rest of the world has learnt that the US cannot be trusted beyond a 4-year horizon even when they make sensible noises.
Not everybody's for sale, even more so in actually developed countries with functioning public services. Buying votes is illegal even in the US, in theory.
The sad thing is there's an obvious path forward if America wants to control Greenland.
1. Campaign for Greenland's independence, and apply pressure on Denmark to achieve that. Offer security agreements and trade deals to a newly independent Greenland.
A small majority of Greenlander's support independence today; this number would likely rise if they knew they had strong external support.
2. The trade agreements, security agreements and goodwill of Greenlanders for #1 would bring Greenland into the American sphere of influence.
3. Over time, use carrots and sticks to tie Greenland closer & closer to America.
This strategy has a high likelihood of success, has the moral high ground and would minimize the damage to America's alliances.
The only problem is that it would take multiple decades, and Trump won't be around that long.
The horrible things the Danes did to Greenlanders in living memory are unbelievable. They forced contraceptive devices on them as recent as the 1980s and kept it quiet till some of the women recently spoke up.
Europe has a long and sordid history of such colonialist horrors but few perpetrated these crimes so recently.
When you think about the history of Europe you are faced with a society that violently performs genocide repeatedly. Having pacified the population through these eugenic methods they now claim that present day Greenlanders would rather be part of them.
Indeed one is reminded of Crimea, now assuredly Russian, and Donbas which will answer similarly.
I've listened to numerous Europeans describe the Roma - online and in real life. America is not pure on the violence and racism aspect, but it's less like the pot calling the kettle black and more like the grey felt calling the BLK 3.0 black.
In the end, there are people alive today who escaped the European 250k/month killings. Nothing comparable in the US.
This is disingenuous because the US has massive problems with its ethnic minorities today, never-mind in the past. With mass incarceration and funky electoral borders being used to disenfranchise people.
Since Denmark and Greenland are already NATO allies, the US has pretty much full access to Greenland. The Trump admin says they need it for defence purposes, well, there already is a US base in Greenland and I'm sure the other NATO allies would happily allow the US to expand their presence for defence purposes. Re. the minerals and what's not, also here, the US has pretty much full access. However, there is no company that's interested since digging out those minerals is very difficult and not really worth the investment at this point in time. So, the "I need it" argument is really weak as they already pretty much have it for the purposes they say they want it for.
What is really happening here is part of the Monroe Doctrine [1]. Trump is trying to consolidate the Western Hemisphere. Remember Canada being the 51st state?
Inuit people are understood to have lived in Greenland since as early as 2,500BC and it was reached by Norse seafarers in the first millennium AD, who established settlements lasting several centuries. Modern colonisation began after the arrival of Hans Egede in 1721, acting with the support of what was then Denmark-Norway. During the second world war, when Denmark was occupied by Germany, Greenland was occupied by the US and was returned to Denmark in 1945.
It became part of the kingdom of Denmark in 1953, and in 1979 home rule was introduced. But Denmark still controls Greenland’s foreign and security policy. It has its own parliament, Inatsisartut, and two MPs in the Danish parliament, Folketing. But calls for independence have been growing.
Tensions have escalated significantly between Greenland and Denmark in recent years. There is intense anger in Greenland over investigations into the forced contraceptive (IUD) scandal of the 1960s and 70s, prompting the former Greenlandic prime minister to accuse Denmark of genocide. There have also been protests in Copenhagen and Nuuk over the separation of Greenlandic children from their parents.
Denmark has banned the use of highly controversial “parenting competency” tests on Greenlandic people that have resulted in Greenlandic mothers being separated from their children. In September, after years of failing to acknowledge the violations, Denmark officially apologised to the victims of the IUD scandal, in which thousands of Greenlandic women and girls were forcibly fitted with contraceptive coils without their knowledge or consent. And in December, victims won a legal fight with the Danish government to receive compensation.
In recent years there has been growing support for Greenlandic independence. But amid the spectre of Trump’s threat, Greenland in March formed a new four-party coalition government in a show of national unity, with the first page of the coalition agreement stating: “Greenland belongs to us.” The pro-independence party, Naleraq, which is the most US- and Trump-friendly party, came second in the election and is now in opposition.
According to a 2009 agreement with Denmark, Greenland must hold a successful referendum before declaring independence.
The guardian's historical overview is a bit lacking. The "Inuit" didn't exist in 2500BCE to inhabit Greenland. The Arctic small tool tradition did, but the branch which inhabited Greenland isn't the one that modern Inuit trace their ancestry to and it went extinct when the Dorset culture disappeared. The Thule culture that became modern Inuits arose in Alaska around 1000CE and spread eastward. Modern Greenlandics are related to those first inhabitants, they simply weren't Inuit.
It always has. Or at least tried to. Despite that the Civil Rights movement achieved massive success during a much more regressive period of US society. Trump represents a swing of the pendulum that has been brewing ever since. The election of Obama supercharged this reaction and incited panic in the white nationalist segments of the population. This too shall pass.
That’s why slavery “no longer exists in the US” (up for debate). That’s not what makes it morally unacceptable. Force doesn’t determine morality. It determines what happens. Your statement amounts to a tautology: “whatever happens is what happens”
And by the way, that’s not even the whole story. The civil rights movement succeeded without force or violence for the most part. So your whole framework is pretty flimsy I think.
It seems the issue boils down to what the Greenlanders want: to become some sort of Venezuela of the north in Trump's imperial crown, and be used to maximize the profits of the American corporations that ultimately get to own it; OR full rights as EU citizens and local autonomy to decide who gets the mining concessions, under competitive terms open to all countries that maximize their profits, which stay in their hands.
The historical path of Greenland in DK is irrelevant.
if it becomes US territory would it not be more like be more like Alaska than Venezuela?
> full rights as EU citizens and local autonomy to decide who gets the mining concessions
There is no such thing as an EU citizen - people are citizens of EU states. Would an independent Greenland join the EU? Would it join NATO? I can see advantages for a small (in population) country with rich national resources playing the big powers against each other.
Indigenous Greenlanders have also been treated pretty badly by Denmark, even very recently, not just a long time ago when it was a colony:
Alaska received statehood a century after it was acquired, and only after being substantially colonized by Americans. It's entirely laughable to suggest that US will grant 2 seats ~= 4% of the Senate (plus one representative and 3 electors) to basically a small city of Inuits and Danes, most of which won't even speak English for a good many years to come.
One of the tricky situations now is that full independence for Greenland now would leave it weak to more aggressive imperialist predation from the USA.
Not that Denmark (or even the EU) is capable of militarily defending it now. But politically it carries more clout than a tiny population in its own state.
I think the situation of Quebec here in Canada does show it's possible for regions/provinces to become somewhat more sovereign in their own land without full legal independence. Even if that has been fraught with all sorts of ridiculous conflict.
There was an election in 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Greenlandic_general_elect... Pro-independence parties won a supermajority. The only party whose leader said that he trusts Trump in the debate before the election got 305 votes and no seats.
The next parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2029, too late for a pro-Trump swing unless he manages to stay in office somehow.
In the case of Scotland the state resources (those of the Scottish govt) were promoting the leave side.
Both of those have very different histories and circumstances Greenland was a colony and in thr current (or at least very recent) treatment of indigenous people.
They certainly were not. The full force of British institutions was ranged against Scottish independence, including the civil service, BBC and even certain businesses like Baxters or Tesco.
Scotland forgets its past. Most people don't know that most of Scotland including non-Jacobite areas was garrisoned in the late 1740s. Or that there was an uprising in 1820. Or famines and rioting around the Moray Firth in the 1840s so bad that the army was brought in. Most of that is forgotten.
"Indigenous" is code for tribal. Scotland was partly tribal into the Middle Ages but is never classed as such. Why the difference?
can you clarify on what grounds it is irrelevant? As I see it, most things in the world are arranged in their current way for 'hysterical raisins', so I don't quite follow? There are approximately 200 countries that could carry continued support for greenland,but currently denmark is the one doing it, for HR. By the same logic,greenland could go to China or Russia?
The US officially took over greenland after denmark allied with nazi germany during ww2. People forget that the danes were nazi collaborators. We defended greenland against the nazis/danes during ww2 and the soviets during the cold war. I'd say greenland is more of a US territory than even puerto rico or american samoa is. All trump has to do is make it official.
Seems Greenlanders didn't get the memo, the vast, overwhelming majority still think of themselves as "not Americans".
This is the problem with historical narratives, history is not established fact but a continuous re-evaluation of the past. There is always that wako who will interpret some convenient or made up facts as proof that "Greenland is American in all but name".
In the context of the instant "debate", this is missing the mark. The moral question isn't what happened hundreds of years ago to dead people; it's what do living people want (as is their right to self-determine), and the polls are 85% against 6% in the "we don't want to be Americans" direction. (I infer "Ameerikkamiuunianngilagut" is their word for that?)
https://www.reuters.com/world/poll-shows-85-greenlanders-do-... ("Greenlanders overwhelmingly oppose becoming part of the United States, poll shows" / "only 6% of Greenlanders are in favour of their island becoming part of the U.S.")
Here's a joint statement from yesterday by every major political party in Greenland speaking in unison, which you can't post on HN because it offends Americans and they flag these things on sight, though they desire to own the people who are speaking. ("The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice" (214 comments) is, of course, welcomed by HN). You're invited to translate it for yourself, as they have pointedly not released official statements in English, which is not and never has been their language.
https://siumut.gl/inuiattut-ataatsimoorpugut/ (Greenlandic)
https://dk.siumut.gl/vi-star-sammen-som-et-folk/ (Danish)
> "Ameerikkamiuunianngilagut, qallunaajunianngilagut, Kalaaliuniarpugut."
> which you can't post on HN because it offends Americans
They may be loud, but the actual percentage of Americans who want to force Greenland to become a part of the US is similar to the percentage of Greenlanders who want Greenland to become part of the US.
Well, but a majority voted for these people. Twice.
Well, no, 30% voted for these people. This turned out to be a majority of the people who bothered to vote.
The invasion of Greenland was not a topic of discussion during the election.
Agreed (mostly, but going into the Electoral College debate is a whole other rabbit hole, and regardless a majority voted for these people at least once, with full prior knowledge), and in a democracy we get the government we deserve.
But still, I saw a good clip from Bernie Sanders arguing that when people voted for Trump, they weren't really voting for giant tax breaks for billionaires, or making health care much more expensive, or kicking lots of people off food stamps (though I'd argue they should have realized these things were coming if they had paid attention). What they were voting for was a fundamental shake up of the system, and (for better or worse) Trump was the only one offering fundamental change, vs. the incremental anodyne "can't we all just get along" milquetoast plans from the Democrats (or at least the "elite" Democrats).
Also, for this imperial expansionism issue in particular, I'd argue that this really does feel like a 180 flip flop from Trump after all his "America First" and isolationist rhetoric. For a lot of other issues, for example the immigration crackdown or tariffs, I was truly baffled that some people were surprised how dumb or extreme his policies were, as he basically laid out that this was exactly what he was going to do in the campaign. But putting us in the path of more global conflict and territorial expansionism was actually the exact opposite of what he said he'd do. I'm not that surprised because he's such a transparent malignant narcissist, but again, at least on this issue he flip flopped.
I hear this a lot from Americans, that the percentage of Americans that align with the current right-wing party is actually low. Sometimes you'll see people state that a lot of the right-wing posts you see online are mostly bots.
It's curious to me though, that:
The majority of state governorships,
The majority of state congresses,
The majority of law enforcement,
The majority of military members,
The majority of the US house,
The majority of the US senate,
The majority of the US labor unions,
The majority of the US corporations,
The majority of the US media organizations; both legacy and new,
The majority of the US Supreme Court,
and of course the US Executive branch....
... all belong to the right-wing party we're supposed to believe, according to online rhetoric, is actually only backed by ~30% of Americans. You'd expect a more broad and public resistance if that were true?
Supposedly the centrists and left-wing party members are the silent majority while the right-wing party enacts their agenda with no resistance?
I think the reality is; what we see and hear in the real world is who the US truly is.
In quite a few areas you mention (control of congresses, senates, president) the system has been optimized to allow less densely populated areas to have outsized control. Less densely populated areas historically were the ones that wanted slavery and currently are the areas dominated by Republicans for a number of reasons. The majority it the supreme Court reflects who was in power when people died it retired, not an actual reflection of the people. If a state has a Democrat governor it probably means most of the state is left wing. If that same state has a Republican Senate and a Democrat governor (like mine does) it means that more people are left, but the right has disproportionate control do to low population areas getting disproportionate control
I think for law enforcement and corporations, there is more money and power to be found in supporting the right, so it requires strong leadership to try to do what is best for the population instead of themselves. On the corporate side, this isn't helped by the view pushed into the legal system that corporations only social responsibility is to make the most money for their shareholders in the short term.
We seem to have a system of democracy that may be inferior to many other countries and the cracks are showing. On the not so positive other hand, countries that I would have said have a more robust system are also starting to show cracks, and I don't think it is only because of the influence of foreign big money.
I think it is true that many policies of this administration are only supported by a small minority of Americans and this doesn't seem at all strange to me. The US is (with various state and local exceptions) a first-past-the-post democracy. That means that all political interests necessarily have to coalesce into two political parties or forgo any chance at representation. So the Republican party (and the Democratic party) are really coalitions of dozens of different political interests.
Some people are Republicans because of their opinions on abortion. Some because of their opinions on immigration or crypto regulation. Or their dislike of covid lockdown policies associated with Democrats. Or their preference for tariffs. And so on.
So if a given voter's most important issue is crypto regulation, even if this voter is pro-choice and supports traditional multi-lateral foreign policy, they very may well support Republican politicians, not because they are against abortion or want to invade Greenland, but because those issues are less important to them than their primary issue of crypto regulation.
Now I'm not saying this exonerates the character of the nation. One could argue that it is immoral for voters to prioritize crypto deregulation over multi-lateral foreign policy.
I'm just saying that it is very plausible that only a small minority of the US population supports an invasion of Greenland and, given the political system, there is nothing particularly mysterious about that fact.
Half of these items can be attributed to the fact that low density, rural states have a structural advantage in representation in federal governments, and in the current political era these states lean conservative.
Some of these are just wrong - unions generally lean democratic:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/17/key-facts...
I’m also skeptical of the media organization claim.
And it should surprise no one that purely profit driven corporations switch their professed values with different administrations - see the rapid adoption of DEI programs during the Biden administration, then subsequent abandonment in the Trump era.
Bunch of people explaining this based on voting representation structures but I think they're missing the forest for the trees.
It comes down to power and money. In any capitalist economy with large highly profitable corporate entities, the part(ies) that represent their interests most strongly are simply going to have more leverage and power.
Biden and Harris made the "mistake" of starting to go after Silly Valley for tax evasion and for social/communal issues and so on.
They made the "mistake" of trying to actually advance, modestly, some climate change policy that hurt the oil industry. They made the "mistake" of harming the same global energy industry by heavily sanctioning energy superpower Russia and trying to defeat it in a proxy war.
They made the "mistake" of trying to regulate the cancer that is the cryptocurrency "industry."
And they were completely buried for it. "Allies" in the tech industry just completely abandoned them, and put Vance up as their sock puppet. Musk went scorched earth.
It doesn't matter that centrist opinions might accord with the majority of US society. At least to some degree.
It doesn't match with those who hold real effective power -- monetary, capital power -- need.
Capitalism and democracy only sometimes overlap. They only do so when people keep corporate interests in check through mass action and opposition and unionization and having an active social democratic party, etc. Something the US entirely lacks.
What are you expecting in terms of "broad and public resistance"?
Unfortunately, the political system in the US has been untenable since Citizens United. We only have two viable parties, and both receive their funding from the same sources. I regularly send letters to my Democrat senators and representative, and based on the responses I get back, I can only assume Republicans and Democrat are the same party - they just wear different fashion.
The powers at be are waiting for a Reichstag fire. But, (luckily) Americans are too lazy for that.
I know I’ll get downvoted for this but it needs saying.
I don’t think the allies made any exemptions for the German that wrote their representatives in the lead-up to and during the second world war. All got stuck with the bill, 6 million got forcibly deported from their homes. There is a thing as collective guilt and responsibility.
Your country is on collision course with mine, threatening invasion. I really don’t think a few letters absolve you.
I might like you as an individual, who knows, but you can’t run from some responsibility for this.
A bit unrelated vut this "sending letters" schpiel is genious. A letter sent is not seen by anyone else than the one sending it and the receiving it. They could get millions of letters and the public could still think it was a minor issue.
What are you expecting in terms of "broad and public resistance"?
At the very least, a general strike. That's absolutely the bare minimum that should be expected of the 94% of US citizens that do not support this regime (as is the claim upthread).
Not parent, but while I agree with you, I have very little faith (virtually none) in that happening. Most people are in a week-to-week or month-to-month financial situation; so, even if the desire & political will were to manifest, most people literally can't afford to strike.
If it's true that history repeats, the rational thing to do right now is to lay low, take care of those nearby, and wait for an external rescue party
Hint: these are not independent, random samplings. Turns out when you eliminate restrictions on campaign finance the people who run corporations, the people who get elected, and the people hired and appointed by those elected all wind up being aligned.
It's like commenting that it's weird everyone in any sort of position of power in Russia just happens to be a Putin supporter.
> I hear this a lot from Americans, that the percentage of Americans that align with the current right-wing party is actually low.
The percentage isn't low, you just aren’t going to find them here. And by here I mean hackernews, or the cities that people who are on hackernews live in. There are basically two Americas and they don’t really mix.
There are also moderates who see both sides as corrupt. I’m one of those, but unlike me some of them were disillusioned enough to vote for trump and didn’t know what they were getting into. If you actually look at those voters, they are really confused by this Greenland nonsense.
This is also equal to the percentage of Americans who wanted to forcefully depose Maduro. And the low percentage did not stop Trump. Unfortunately this same low percentage by itself will not stop Trump from attacking Greenland.
(On a side note, I was quite surprised when during Trump’s inaugural speech on Jan 20 2025 he said America will expand its territory. I had no idea he really meant to attack other countries. How little did I know)
> This is also equal to the percentage of Americans who wanted to forcefully depose Maduro
It’s not. Maduro’s removal is supported by roughly a third of Americans [1].
It’s vastly more popular than a military engagement over Greenland.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/only-33-americans-app...
Invading Venezuela is not even remotely the same thing as invading a fellow NATO country, and most Americans know it. If Trump tries to invade, he'll trigger a domestic crisis. i.e. Will congress block it? Will the military obey orders? How severe will the protests be?
If Trump quells all that and his invasion goes ahead, he'll trigger an international crisis too. Does NATO simply implode, or do the EU and other former-NATO countries form an anti-U.S. alliance? What kind of insurgency forms in Greenland? Does what's left of the old world order turn against the U.S. with economic sanctions? Does China take advantage of the moment to finally invade Taiwan? How loudly will Putin be laughing during all this?
We can only hope Trump is merely trying to distract people from the Epstein files with a bluff.
Regarding an 'invasion' of Greenland, it would actually be done in a day, and I highly doubt an effective insurgency would form. The US already has military control over the territory, and the population is way too low and concentrated to offer opposition.
This is implicit in the reaction of the EU: If the US takes over Greenland, Europe will close down all American bases in Europe.
This is what makes this particular foreign policy so incredibly stupid: The US already gets everything it needs from Denmark/Greenland. The US is considering throwing away European allies to have their flag be bigger on a world map.
Yes, it could be done quickly. There are only several population centres of any note, often separated by hundreds of miles/km but Nuuk would be the main target.
If Trump does something it will be the same as with Venezuela. This invalidates most of your pointed questions against it happening.
These questions would at most be raised after it already happened, and after watching a few political influencer like Zack who routinely gets 50k+ viewers I suspect your trust in "most Americans know the difference" to be exaggerated, sadly.
This scenario also strongly reminds me of an old fable from the Middle ages, where the king reassures the peasant that the noble will be punished if he kills the peasant... But what meaning does such a punishment have for the peasant who'd be dead?
So yeah, there will be political fallout once Trump's invades it's ally Denmark, at it will invalidate NATO entirely. But does that matter to the annexed people? They'll still have lost their sovereignty to be exploited by American mega corporations.
Take a second look at Venezuela. Congress passed an act limiting Trump's ability to operate in the country. The U.S. is currently not occupying or controlling the country. They have not effected regime change. The former VP has taken over and may take some pro-U.S. actions due to threats of being kidnapped but, with Maduro gone, she could be replaced at any moment. Meanwhile, U.S. oil execs are balking at doing anything in Venezuela and all Trump can do to keep Venezuela on the front page (instead of the Epstein files) is continue pirating oil tankers.
Venezuela could realistically come out of this with their sovereignty intact and no significant U.S. takeover of their oil industry materializing. If anything, the lesson we should learn here is that Trump is so inept that, should he try to take over Greenland, he may trigger all the negative consequences of doing so without actually accomplishing much of anything. Someone living in Nuuk, far from any American military base, might be forgiven for not noticing when they wake up in an American territory. A couple of leaders might get a promotion and the cheques may start coming from Washington rather than Copenhagen, but the Americans may have no interest in governing Greenlanders and American mining companies may refuse to get bogged down in another one of Trump's swamps.
What may happen to Venezuela is not the point. The point is how little control American people have on this Administration (which BTW last week started effectively giving immunity to ICE agents who kill Americans)
That's a matter of perspective. You'll have to forgive the rest of the world for being more concerned with the rest of the world.
> the polls are 85% against 6% in the "we don't want to be Americans" direction
The realistic plan for Greenland involves it voting for independence from Denmark and then entering into a compact with the U.S. in the model of Palau.
Ameerikkamiuunianngilagut=American trucking company
> they desire to own the people who are speaking
No.
People are not their government.
> which you can't post on HN because it offends Americans
Alternatively, folks are not interested in /r/politics tier posting in _Hacker_ News.
The history of Greenland is interesting enough. A political statement from a political body is the kind of thing one can go see on CNN.
Greenlanders appear to understand as well as the rest of the EU that the current US administration is only capable of ludicrous offers and a deeply abusive relationship.
> A poll from January shows that only 6% of Greenlanders are in favor of joining the U.S., with 85% against it.
This won't bother at all this administration.
Say what you want but presidential democracies where presidents are elected by popular vote are a disaster for stability and democracy.
What's happening with this doing and undoing in the US (or Russia, Belarus, Hungary and countless other presidential republics) fully displays why this is a terrible political system:
1. Winner takes all. You may have been voted by 50% + 1 (even less) citizens but the other half is totally not represented like in a parliament.
2. No parliament/party that you need to have backing of. In a parliamentary democracy the prime minister won't just lose opposition's votes, but has to govern in a way that its own party won't boot you.
3. Single person can claim popular mandate. Often in opposition to the parliament/senate whatever. So you end up in situations like the disaster in Poland where government and president are from different parties and the government gets vetoed everything.
4. Extremely hard to remove. A prime minister is a vote of no confidence away from losing its seat. The president can ask them to resign in extreme situations. A president? Removing them is beyond difficult.
Honestly this is such an obvious disaster to have people vote for a president rather than a parliamentary prime minister.
The last parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian has been Sri Lanka 50+ years ago. It's very hard to get so bad so fast in parliamentary republics.
Honestly I can't comprehend Americans thinking their constitution is some holy grail. It's old and has been written centuries ago without all the experience we have in modern democracies. Eastern Europe too has made very bad choices with similar setups and democratically elected presidents.
Say what you want but Germany or Italy have built in way more resilience to these absurdities by having the parliament elect the president which forces them to elect mostly neutral unbiased figures that will support and oversee whoever ends up being in government.
Yes, I guess I'm biased by living in a Westminster system (which isn't perfect, I'd prefer Germany's structure like you say, but) I think you're entirely right that the American republic system is just broken. I think we'll look back on it in 100 years as an absolutely awful way to run government because it effectively created an "elected" "king" role and gave them real powers -- and then let that king get more and more powers over 100 years until, effectively, they have a rotating (for now) despot.
The Westminster system "solves" this problem by having an actual king but giving them zero powers. The German system I think you're right is superior. Ireland also seems to have a nice system.
Americans are very enamoured with their constitution, and it has some good words in it. Too bad they don't seem like they want to actually defend it with the real source of power .. which is not words, or "well-armed militias" [almost always the wrong kind], but feet in the street.
And that's not even getting into the complete and total dysfunction of their two party structure.
The leader of the US was actually supposed to function as a king. Washington was offered the role of king for the new country however he rejected it which ended up leading to the presidential role.
It's strange how much reverence Americans place in the presidential role as if it were actually a king.
The President is roughly like a federal version of a state governor. State governors are modeled after Tudor monarchs.
Over time the symbolism has evolved - the American people tend to want more pomp and ceremony than the presidents themselves.
We are looking for something like the Venetian Doge - a very showy anti-monarch.
It's also strangely martial. Commander in chief, first president a general, all that stuff.
The blurring of the executive and the military, the adoration of troops and war, etc. All very strange(?) for a country whose military has only ever been really involved in outside interference and war and not defense of homeland.
"Thank you for your service" is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans -- service for what? The US is at no risk of invasion.
Hegseth is a low-IQ fascist fool, but renaming to Department of War is at least acknowledging reality.
The Trump government just mostly says the formerly quiet part out loud.
> "Thank you for your service" is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans -- service for what?
Well they are serving the US military, which is generally used for the benefit of the US people. Does not mean it's defending their territory.
Now to be fair, when the US people thanks their soldiers for their service, I don't think they are necessarily thankful for the US threatening to invade what used to be considered as allies (like Canada or Europe).
But I do agree that it is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans.
Well, it’s usually in the context of saying thanks, for things like nights and weekends away from family and friends on training deployments (or real ones), getting up early every morning, being the first one who has to take action if there is a crises and put their life at risk.
So usually it’s said even if the nation isn’t at war because it’s not an easy job. You’ll hear Americans say it to first responders, nurses, fire fighters, police officers, &c.
Idk why it’s being characterized as weird though instead of what it is which is just an aspect of our culture to say thanks to others who are doing jobs you perceive to be dangerous or difficult.
As a veteran of the US armed forces I hate it because I never know what to say…”thanks for your service’ …uh you’re welcome? But it comes from a good place. Though I try to remind folks that saying thanks isn’t enough, spend time and money helping others, vote, keep your community clean, have high standards for yourself and others, because otherwise your fellow citizens are doing all this for nothing.
That's kind of what I was trying to say: it comes from a good place.
But the "service" is more likely to be "invading another country" than "defending the US territory from an invasion", so when you are not a US citizen, it may feel odd.
Again, the US have threatened to invade quite a few democracies in the last year. Not sure how happy the people living there are about that "service"...
The assumption throughout here seems to be that US troops are performing service that is of advantage to all Americans and thus their sacrifice is worth of respect. And you're recognizing this may not be the case for at least some non-Americans.
I'd go further: I am not convinced the actions of the US military -- which are primarily abroad -- are always advancing the interests for all Americans. In fact they sometimes are directly undermining the interests of some of the poorest members of society. The US's imperial interests abroad can suppress global labour prices, it can contribute to climate change (by advancing and encouraging more fossil fuel exploration), among other things. It can indirectly or even directly harm the interests of some working people in the United States. While at the same time recruiting directly from those people.
So while I feel for armed forces members individually as people, the product of their service in their forces I don't think is some universal good. In fact, for much of the 20th century outside of WWII it's been mostly malevolent and imperial. And I'd argue not just to the world outside the US, but to many of its own broader population.
I don't think it's for a universal good either, but for most Americans they are basically saying, well as a country we voted for whatever it is the government is doing and that may be good or bad but we support the institution you represent and wish it to generally be successful. You don't need to over-analyze it.
You're right that US military action sometimes cause harm even for people that are supposedly represented, but the military is just another tool leveraged by governments which do good or bad things all the time. It's really as simple as the US spending taxpayer dollars on initiative X with spending taxpayer dollars on initiative Y just with a bomb. You could argue that bombs kill people so the military is different, but so do rising interest rates and civil wars and famines. Even saying that some actions taken by the US might not be good for non-Americans it's kind of a weird criticism. It's true, but that applies to all countries and all peoples, and the United States has no moral obligation to take actions that are specifically good for other people while advancing American interests. Hopefully we do, and I think we should, but it's unfair to characterize the US as having a moral failure for not doing so unless you're going to apply those standards to everyone else. For example, if you are going to criticize the United States in this way, I'll criticize China for taking actions that harmed Americans by manufacturing products so cheaply and efficiently that it put American workers out of jobs. Many people died because of that over the years. Maybe China should do better and not undermine the interests of poor Americans for whom a manufacturing job is the gateway to as good of a life as they can expect?
I was one of those folks "recruited". The 4 years I put in including a tour taught me a lot not just about myself but about the countries I was stationed in, and eventually paid for me to college through a semester or two of grad school and allowed me to take college courses while I was in. I learned how to work out, learned about nutrition, and learned a lot about working with other people from different backgrounds, handling conflict, teamwork, all of those things. Many people make the military a career, too, or they're able to land jobs after their time in working as contractors helping to fix or maintain equipment. It's not all bad, and I think your characterization which is effectively: "the US takes actions that harm poor people and then recruits them to further harm those same people" is, well, to put it politely rather uncharitable.
I also don't think we should over-index on actions taken by a country undermining the interests of some of the poorest members of society. I think we should do what we can to help those who are the least well off at least here in the US. Healthcare, education, you name it. But we should not have a dogmatic approach toward helping one group at the expense of everyone else. If the US took an action that didn't benefit the poorest members of society but benefited everyone else at their expense, maybe it's still a good action and maybe we should continue to do it. It depends on the action and the effects. Was bombing Iraq good? Idk, maybe over the long term, but Americans including the poorest sure do like cheap gas prices.
> but it's unfair to characterize the US as having a moral failure for not doing so unless you're going to apply those standards to everyone else
Who says we aren't? There is always criticism against countries that invade other countries. Be it the US, Russia, China, you name it.
But it's not as if Greenland (or the EU, or Canada) was threatening to invade the US, is it?
> Was bombing Iraq good? Idk, maybe over the long term, but Americans including the poorest sure do like cheap gas prices.
I think this is an interesting point: people in many countries would not be grateful if their military invaded other countries. So they wouldn't "thank the military for their service". That the Americans do it may sound weird to non-Americans, given that the US are generally more invading than defending their own territory. "Thanks for destroying an entire country and disrupting millions of life, because I like cheap gas".
> Who says we aren't? There is always criticism against countries that invade other countries. Be it the US, Russia, China, you name it.
Because while I recognize the OP being about the US, the vast majority of the criticism and discussion takes place regarding the United States. But even in criticizing the US here one could in good faith argue a caveat is required saying "but this is done by all countries" or something along those lines.
> But it's not as if Greenland (or the EU, or Canada) was threatening to invade the US, is it?
No, but I don't think that's particularly relevant in this context? You're just venting.
> I think this is an interesting point: people in many countries would not be grateful if their military invaded other countries. So they wouldn't "thank the military for their service". That the Americans do it may sound weird to non-Americans, given that the US are generally more invading than defending their own territory. "Thanks for destroying an entire country and disrupting millions of life, because I like cheap gas".
Well my point here was just that the Iraq war is widely criticized, and in this context I think it's safe to assume that it would also have been criticized as not being good for the poorer folks in the United States, and I just wanted to point out that they want their cheap gas prices too, and they're also thanking the US military for bombing Iraq. Some want to try and say America is bad but not the poor people because of an internal juxtaposition they hold in their mind. The poor Americans are just as complicit and benefit too. In fact, they're typically more supportive of these endeavors than the wealthy elites regardless of who benefits.
> people in many countries would not be grateful if their military invaded other countries
Well most countries lack a military that is capable of doing much of anything so they don't really experience this happening, and if their country does try to invade another one it is usually facing repercussions from the United States, so your sample size is small.
But I also don't think this is quite true and you can broaden it to general military activity.
Iranians for example were celebrating in the streets over bombings of Israel. Israelis were celebrating the bombing of Iran's military and leadership. Do I need to even get in to Russia and Z? Nevermind Pakistan and India, even internally in countries like India you have religious or ethnic minorities murdered and it is celebrated. Do you think there is a lack of patriotic Chinese who are eagerly awaiting the bombing and invasion of Taiwan? You're thinking about this in an American-centric way. Americans aren't special, all countries like and do these things and have done so historically and will continue to do so in the future provided they have the means and internal justification.
> No, but I don't think that's particularly relevant in this context? You're just venting.
Okay let me take a step back. The discussion starts with:
> The blurring of the executive and the military, the adoration of troops and war, etc. All very strange(?) for a country whose military has only ever been really involved in outside interference and war and not defense of homeland. "Thank you for your service" is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans -- service for what? The US is at no risk of invasion.
And you say that it's unfair because all countries who have a powerful enough military also invade other countries, and their people also thank them for doing it". Sounds like I am not the only one venting, to be honest.
Even the United States government and its advisors are aware of this; when they installed a new form of government in Iraq after the invasion, it was a parliamentary system.
That's quite an interesting observation.
> Honestly I can't comprehend Americans thinking their constitution is some holy grail
There exists a concept of "American exceptionalism" [1], which describes this popular belief that the US are superior. It also probably goes with the fact that it is a very big country sharing one culture, and it is easy to not spend too much time looking at what other countries are doing.
> presidential democracies where presidents are elected by popular vote are a disaster
I would like to add France to the examples supporting your case: in the first round, Macron got less than 20% of the votes, and a non-negligible part of those was already trying to be "efficient". As in, the people would have voted for someone else, but they voted for Macron because it seemed more likely that he could win against Le Pen, the far-right candidate.
This means that less than 20% of the people (those who voted of course) wanted Macron. On his first day, more than 80% didn't want him. Still he behaves like if the French people wanted him.
> by having the parliament elect the president
An example I like is Switzerland: they don't have a president at all. They elect their parliament, and the parliament elects the Federal Council made of 7 people from the main parties.
What this means is that the executive power is a consensus by construction, and most of the people is represented (because the Federal Council is made of the major parties, which represent the majority of the people and go from left to right).
Feeling represented is very important: when the people does not feel represented, they take out to the street and protest. I don't think it happens as much in the countries you described (Germany, Italy) or Switzerland.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
> > Still he behaves like if the French people wanted him.
Well he's the closest to that benchmark no?
You can hardly regulate how emboldened a person feels, especially after having obtained such a big result.
He is the most liked person in France , as if you just take into consideration the raw number of people who like him and ignore those who dislike , his number would be higher than the everybody else.
It's always like that with elections, once the polls are closed and the votes counted someone will have a mandate and a mandate is determined by number of preferences expressed. Those who stayed home or the raw number of "dislikes" doesn't count.
A thing that would somewhat diminish the power of the elected person is an election where just 15-20% of the population who has the right to vote decided to cast their vote
I think you missed my point.
My point was that instead of having one person trying to "represent" the people, you can split that role.
it's the same! The Prime Minister would then be the person performing better than everybody else and would thus be emboldened
I gave examples where it's not like that. If you don't want to read them, I don't know what to say.
> This means that less than 20% of the people (those who voted of course) wanted Macron. On his first day, more than 80% didn't want him.
That’s not true. “I want someone else more than X” isn’t the same as “I don’t want X”. That’s the advantage of Approval voting and Ranked Choice voting—you can make those things clear.
Not sure what this brings other than nitpicking.
If you look at the situation in France, I think it's pretty damn obvious that the people don't feel represented by their government.
My point was not to nitpick on the numbers, but rather to say that having a president elected by the people and having as much executive power as the president has in France doesn't seem to work really well. As opposed to countries that enforce a consensus.
> It also probably goes with the fact that it is a very big country sharing one culture
Some Americans, even here on HN, genuinely believe that different states have different cultures in the same way different countries in Europe have different cultures cultures.
Sure, it's not incompatible. There is a European culture, it's just a question of granularity. And there are subcultures in countries (some countries are even divided between different languages).
Still, Americans from everywhere in the US have this tendency to genuinely believe that the whole world believes the US are the best country in the world. That seems like a cultural trait in the US.
> 1. Winner takes all. You may have been voted by 50% + 1 (even less) citizens but the other half is totally not represented like in a parliament.
I agree with your argument in general, but couldn't this still happen with a parliament? If a party controls 50% + 1 of the parliament, then they're in control. Still, it's better than that control being given to a single person of course.
Typically no (unless you're the UK with a very dysfunctional FPTP system).
Typically the parliament is fractured in multiple parties, because in parliamentarism there is not automatic incentive to vote for one of the big parties otherwise you are wasting your vote. If the party you vote for has 5% of the representation in the parliament, it can still be part of a coalition to form the government and influence decisions.
I'm not an expert on this, but the way I see it, the opposite is true: people don't vote on small parties, because if a small party doesn't reach the minimum required, the vote is wasted. This way there's only a few parties (if the minimum is 5% then there can't really be more than 20 parties, and since the distribution is very far from even, you get around around 4-7 parties with 5% minimum).
However, the big parties often consist of sub-factions.
However, it seems there are mechanisms that turn parties into dictatorships with one person ruling everything in the entire party, as well as people get carried away with negative emotions and vote against, polarizing the politics into just 2 parties alternating in power.
Pick any European parliamentarism. You will find at least 4 or 5 parties with some relevance in any country. Besides the UK (with their absolutely bonkers FPTP system), I can't remember a single one with 2 major parties and that's it.
Those smaller parties end up having an important role, because typically the Major parties cannot form a government otherwise. So the major parties end up having to make some concessions to get a coalition going.
It is a stabilizing force.
Australia has a proportional voting "washminster" system with two and half major parties ..
( Labor Vs. Liberal+Nationals OR (cartoonishly) "Masses" Vs Urban-Capital+Rural-LandOwners (comically grotesque oversimplification) )
There are, however, many smaller parties that a great many people vote on first in proportional run-offs.
Australians are well aware that the smaller parties often don't get a seat but they're also well aware that the voltes are tallied to reveal the issues championed by smaller parties and how the secondary preferences "run off" to the majors.
eg: (say) Labor only squeaked in ahead of the Liberals because people that care about issue {X} first then preferenced Labor second .. expecting Labor to address that issue.
Fail to address an issue and the margin votes switch secondary preferences.
( That said, a number of small parties do hold independant seats )
Much of this small party preference voting kicked off from The Australian Democrats, a centrist political party founded in 1977 with the slogan
Keep the Bastards Honest.
> you end up in situations like the disaster in Poland where government and president are from different parties and the government gets vetoed everything
This sounds like the system failing as designed.
>Honestly I can't comprehend Americans thinking their constitution is some holy grail. It's old and has been written centuries ago without all the experience we have in modern democracies. Eastern Europe too has made very bad choices with similar setups and democratically elected presidents.
I don't think it's the Constitution in of itself that's a holy grail. Just look at how hotly debated the 2nd Amendment is, especially among Americans.
I think the true holy grail is the process to amend it, because that requires a relatively clear majority of Americans to agree to change it; well beyond 50% if I remember American civics correctly. It's a living document, changed as needed. It just hasn't as of late because the process is arduous on purpose to prevent heated decisions from being rushed through.
"Greenlanders appear to understand as well as the rest of the EU"
Greenland has never been in the European Union, even though it is effectively a Danish colony. It left its predecessor, the EEC, many years ago. Its interaction with the other EU member states is minimal.
> Greenlanders … as well as the rest of the EU …
This might be off-topic for the main discussion, but worth to point out: Greenland is not a part of EU.
Greenlanders are EU citizens, however: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_and_the_European_Uni...
Not off topic at all. For what its worth, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey and the Faroe Islands have never been in the EU either. Gibraltar has been though, and has a land border with the EU unlike these other territories.
The US agreed to recognize Greenland being a part of Denmark in the same treaty where the US purchased the Virgin Islands. If the US changes its mind right now and uses force or other coercion, why would anyone trust any treaty or other agreement with the US ever again?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_the_Danish_West_Indi...
> During 1916, the two sides agreed to a sale price of $25,000,000, and the United States accepted a Danish demand for a declaration stating that they would "not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland".
> why would anyone trust any treaty or other agreement with the US ever again?
Nobody would, but 1 trillion defense (scratch that) war budget says you have to agree.
The 1 trillion budget says the US can flex its muscles, but once sovereignty is at stake, the US army becomes an ineffective money sinkhole only good at committing war crimes, as the last century has clearly shown.
If the other side have sufficient nuclear warheads it does not really matter the size of the war budget.
You have to be willing to use them though and suffer the consequences. Having them isn’t enough on its own.
Exactly, and that isn't in the billionaires interest so it's not going to happen. They'd rather all their consumers attention be available to them than dealing with nuclear fallout.
> If the US changes its mind right now and uses force or other coercion, why would anyone trust any treaty or other agreement with the US ever again?
Why did denmark trust any treaty with the US when the US had broken pretty much every international treaty prior to and since?
The history of the world is a history of broken treaties. The US nor Denmark would exist without broken treaties.
And does it mean the Virgin Islands revert back to Denmark?
I wonder what would happen if the USA offered to pay $1,000,000 to every Greenlander if Greenland becomes part of the USA.
That would be just $50B - a pretty cheap way to increase the size of the USA by 20%.
There was a similar argument some years ago about the Falkland Islands, that every single local could be bought off by Argentina. I think most Americans are much more mobile and not used to the idea that someone could be strongly attached to an area as their home.
Canadian perspective: it seems like many (not all) Americans are also explicitly brought up with, and heavily absorb, "greatest country in the world" rhetoric that also leaves them incapable of understanding that this is not necessarily how people outside of it see the USA.
Trying to be diplomatic? I've seen a lot of really insane shit in comment sections -- and even more insane shit from public officials -- over the last year since these "topics" came up.
Belief in or unconscious absorbance of the concept of "manifest destiny" and American exceptionalism seems to run deep in a portion of the American psyche.
No, it's not "their" continent to take. Might doesn't make right. And it certainly doesn't make for superiority in anything but brawn and bravado.
I'll also add this: the (imho encouraging) trend in the north and with the indigenous populations there has been in the opposite direction from what the Trump regime is proposing: sovereignty and autonomy for the Inuit to run their own lands. Canada carved out new Inuit administered territories, trying in some respect (and inconsistently) to rectify over a century of mis(mal?)governance and exploitation and mistreatment.
From the polls I see the Inuit in Greenland want more self governance, not a new external boss.
From an American perspective, it’s not the “rhetoric,” it’s just “noticing.” My mom is an immigrant who was not brought up here to absorb the rhetoric. But when she went to Canada and Australia to visit family, she came back ranting about how poor everyone was and how small the houses were. (I take it you have fewer suburban McMansions and giant SUVs.) It’s hard not to notice our GDP per capita is 50% higher than yours. It’s big enough now where we notice it just going up there to visit family.
And you can say what you want about safety nets for poor people, but that doesn’t affect most Americans. My parents are on Medicare and they head down to the ER every time have a stomach ache and get a CAT scan. Meanwhile my family is convinced that Canadian healthcare nearly killed my aunt when she had a kidney issue because they didn’t immediately schedule her for a million tests and surgery. (I suspect that isn’t true and the Canadian system reasonably triaged the care.)
And to be clear, I like Canada (and I love Denmark). I’d rather have a more orderly society with an efficient and expansive government that’s focused on comprehensive outcomes across the population, in contrast to our system where you have McMansions but randomly you can fall through a giant crack. But Americans temperamentally are biased towards upside potential and they devalue downside risk. This is a cultural trait that seems very quickly absorbed even by immigrants. My immigrant family isn’t meaningfully American in many respects—they don’t have Anglo sensibilities about things like civic institutions and personal freedoms—but they’re indistinguishable from other americans in their materialistic optimism
> From an American perspective, it’s not the “rhetoric,” it’s just “noticing.”
Yes, but that does not go against the parent comment. When you grow up in it, you have it in you, and it's difficult to question it. If you ask Americans who live abroad, they often have a more nuanced perspective.
Apart from American finding it better in the US than everywhere else in the world (your "noticing"), there is this tendency from Americans to genuinely believe that the rest of the world agrees with that. "Everybody wants to live in the US because it is the best country in the world".
And this is very, very far from true. It's not just about money. The US have a lot of fossil energy, which is good for their economy, which is good for their military. The US is a big and rich country, which makes it powerful. But that is bad for the countries and people who are threatened by the US (and recently the US have been militarily threatening countries who until then were seeing the US as an ally or at least a friend), and it is bad for our survival (through the climate and biodiversity issues).
Tons of people outside of the US wouldn't want to live in the US, even if it meant earning more money. And on top of that, tons of people outside of the US feel threatened by the US, for good reasons.
This comment underscores how mono-dimensional some people are.
To Rayiner more stuff, bigger stuff = happier and more fullfilling life. An incredible lack of depth.
That is also the reason why Americans when they go abroad are astonished and always come back saying "people are amazing" somewhere else, well no wonder considering the state of domestic affairs and domestic relationships between people.
Please offer my apologies to your mom , as it's true that our vehicles are dangerously underdimensioned , maybe next time something in the order of 10-15 short tons could be adequate to transport her to the nearest McMansion (or McDonald's rather).
> An incredible lack of depth.
A more diplomatic way to say it would be that it is a different culture. And I would agree that Americans struggle to see that other countries have different cultures and different priorities.
If you believe that the goal in life is to live like an American, then obviously the best at doing that are... the Americans. The mistake is to not recognise that other people may have different beliefs.
> To Rayiner more stuff, bigger stuff = happier and more fullfilling life. An incredible lack of depth
Please read my whole post! I’m a Europoor at heart. I live in a 3BR house with three kids and no yard despite being able to afford a bigger one. I drive an EV, and it’s not a Tesla. I’m just trying to convey my impression of American culture though the lens of my mom, who embodies this aspect of American culture quite strongly.
Even your idea of how the "europoor" live is a rather strange one.
Do europeans live with three kids with less than three bedrooms?
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Yo, chill. You can always make your point just fine without resorting to aggression or making it personal.
I’d suggest treating this as an opportunity to reflect a bit on patience and tone. Speaking from firsthand experience, these are things I’ve had to work on myself over time, helped in no small part by this community and @dang’s exceptional patience for which I'm quite grateful. I now owe HN therapy money as well, lol. :)
More generally, it would be nice if we made a conscious effort to keep HN a little less negative overall [1].
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46515507
GDP is not a great measure of quality of life.
What are your Mom's thoughts on the US's poor life expectancy compared to Australia, Canada, etc?
Why would she have thoughts about that? South Asian Americans like us have a life expectancy of 84.4 years, just a hair short of Japan.
I would also expect that latitude plays a role in house sizes. Though I don't know. I think that'd be an interesting correlation.
I honestly can't see a difference in housing sizes between Canada and the United States -- we've got the same McMansion sprawl all over the place here -- so strikes me this person's mother is just like every other human, and bad at statistics and handling their own biases.
The US does have a higher rate of wealth inequality than Oz and here in Canuckistan tho.
Yes, that's why I found 'house size' a strange complaint. The three countries in question have comparable square footage - the largest-sized houses in the world.
The inequality is what she’s reacting to. Most people in my extended family are professionals or business owners. That class has a lot more money in the US. Top 1% in Canada is $315,000 while in the U.S. that’s outside the top 3%.
Yes, it's absolutely the case that people in our profession and adjacent do a lot better in the US than here.
And the situation for working class Canadians isn't great either right now -- housing prices have skyrocketed. Tariffs from economic warfare are destroying the labour market. There are many aspects about our situation that are inferior.
But guess what -- that has fuck-all to do with how we perceive the relative value of our country or the pride or love we have for our homeland and love.
No, the majority of Canadians don't see the US as the world's best country because the wealthiest there make more money than the wealthiest here.
I worked at Google in Waterloo for 10 years. At any point I could have packed up and moved to the Valley and transferred to Mountain View. I had jobs before that that could have taken me to the US on transfer, as well. I chose not to. Why?
During part of that time, after Trump was first elected, I saw lots of expat Canadians who had been working for Google in the US return and transfer back to our office. They came back and earned less, and the choice of projects in our office was slimmer. But they chose to. Why?
Love of country, of culture, of family, of nature, of the land, nostalgia, familiarity. What came up often when I spoke to people coming back was a strong distaste for the idea of bringing their children up in the American education system with its extreme degrees of inequality, status seeking, elitism around "Ivy League" and ranking of schools right from kindergarten. Values on the whole unfamiliar to the same degree among Canadians.
Expats in particular, and immigrants who primarily migrated for economic reasons... yes, I'd naturally expect them not to understand this POV. I even meet plenty of new (often temporary) Canadians using Canada as a convenient springboard before their "final" migration choice which is the US. Not sure I like that, but that's their choice.
My father is also an immigrant, from Germany. He came here for the nature / wilderness. He's intensely critical of the politics and economics here and where he lives in Alberta, and there's many things in those respects he prefers about Germany. But he has love of land, and Canada is his homeland, because of the peace and love he finds in the rivers, the forests, the muskeg.
I love my people and country I imagine in the same way or similar way Greenlanders love theirs. The size of the McMansions has no bearing on it. Canadians by and large don't walk around proclaiming theirs the best country in the world. We are not interested in our superiority. But we will defend our home, same as any other.
The original point stands -- to talk about "greatest country on earth" and then act baffled or smug about why others wouldn't want to join it -- is nothing but schoolyard bully logic. Like picking on the weird or weak kid in the playground, and then proclaiming that as a moral virtue. This Greenland stuff, and the rhetoric heard about Canada this past year as well, has exposed the very darkest underbelly of the US. One we have seen here many times over 200 years, but many Americans seem blind to.
I know some that did move to the US for economic reasons only that have moved back to Canada because of the way the US has changed during their time there.
"My parents are on Medicare and they head down to the ER every time have a stomach ache and get a CAT scan"
Your parents are part of the problem. The ER isn't supposed to be used that way.
> Your parents are part of the problem
On so many levels!
I take a drive through Detroit and I "notice" entirely different things which somehow your screed above is mostly blind to.
That's about as diplomatic as I can summon up as a reply to your comment, whose substance mostly proves my point about the bizarre exceptionalist world Americans seem to occupy in their heads. It really isn't "noticing"... what you're talking about. It's ideology.
Also GDP per capita is the kind of garbage metric I would expect someone frequent on this forum, and hopefully literate in statistics, to understand the ridiculousness of deploying in conversation.
Also, there's rarely anybody more invested in seeing the superiority of their new (chosen) place other than immigrants, so I don't think that's the argumentative flex you think it is.
As I said, I like Canada! I’m just trying to explain the American point of view. For example, I care about Detroit. But your typical American doesn’t live in Detroit. The average new home is built in a booming, low tax, Sun Belt state like Georgia and Texas, where my cousins bought McMansions in the last few years.
Also, my cousin grew up in Windsor and having been there plenty of times, it’s shit too.
Much of the world would have no problem with americans being in love with their McMansions.
But many would find them wasteful, and a terrible place to live, compared to a decently sized apartment (one 10m² - 100 sq ft - bedroom per person/couple and maybe an extra office) in a walkable town.
Just as we find american SUVs totally inadequate compared to our cars.
And it's not matter of cost, we're perfectly “happy” paying borrowing millions of euro for such apartments, and paying far more for our cars.
Same experience as the child of migrants. America has boundless optimism and integrates people well
Same experience with safety nets too. America has tons of welfare. Not sure why people have issues with it honestly.
My perspective is from Scotland, and what annoys me is the vanilla press continually going to the Copenhagen government and even the Danish royal family for quotes. Greenland is a Danish colony/overseas territory (delete according to view), and I'd prefer to hear from Greenlanders. I'm sure the average Dane rarely thinks about Greenland, or didn't until recently. (Much like most British never thought about the Falkland Islands until Argentina invaded.)
We had a similar scenario during the Scottish independence referendum with the international media going to London to talk about the matter.
As for the Manifest Destiny thing, maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm thinking more Monroe Doctrine. Manifest Destiny was heading westward, and grabbing Greenland, or even Venezuela, seems more aimed at those who would influence them from outside the Americas.
Monroe Doctrine I think has always been considered to apply to Latin America. But probably mainly because the US has almost always (in the 20th century) had a subservient "partner" here in Canada.
But we were invaded (twice) here in Canada (or what became Canada) by the US. The only people to have ever invaded us. And when they did so, their leaders at the time were definitely flying the Manifest Destiny rhetoric. So much so they could not even imagine why the Quebecois and others didn't just welcome them with open arms.
So, no, I think it definitely applies northward too, not just westward. Or at least some of the ideological underpinnings of it.
Greenland, and Canada are in the Americas, as are Venezuela and Cuba. Three of these are independent nations while one is more or less a European colony. Venezuela and Cuba have strong ties with Russia that the USA resents.
Yes, I'm aware of the US attempts on Canada. I think US pop culture, and TV has done a better job of Americanising Canada than the military... Same with Europe.
I tend to think of it more like this: There is a North American culture and then subcultures. "Canada" is in large part contiguous culturally with two North American cultural regions -- the midwest [hi there Minnesota, we love you!] and (at least parts of) New England.
This isn't really because of TV or cultural export but because of real population origins and movements. We say "pop" and have "Canadian raising" in our speech, and so do people from Minnesota or Wisconsin and that doesn't come from TV or radio or movies. It comes from being neighbours and descended from the same population groups. The border also used to be a lot more porous. My mother's mother were (German descendant) North Dakotans who just basically popped across the border and started farming and lived in Sask and Alberta... without a lot of legal hassle at all.
Overtop of that, yes, there is a whole set of other cultural/legal/economic overlays, and media is a big part of that.
But this is still a regional story-- there's I think more in common culturally between e.g. regular families in Ontario and Wisconsin than there is between Wisconsin and Florida.
From that perspective, I have rarely fallen back to Canadian nationalism. I would in fact have been more in favour of a stronger union between some US states and the US economy and Canada -- in the past. But events of the last year have made clear what many our Loyalist ancestors already tried to warn us about 200 years ago: there is a dark and frankly kind of insane undercurrent in American political culture, and the foundations of the Canadian state are anything but artificial, they are based on an entirely different perspective on governance and culture because there's something kinda messed up in the kernel of the American conception of governance.
Which I think the people of Minnesota are seeing right now.
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Way to prove my point about arrogance, buddy.
Absolute eye-roll territory here.
> Way to prove my point about arrogance
What was arrogant about my post? My point was that Canadians (like you) often exhibit this baffling, unfounded sense of superiority, one completely at odds with cold, hard migration data, as well as the habits of successful Canadians. It's especially baffling in light of Canada's "lost decade" of flat real GDP growth. Canada now has a per capita GDP that's lower than all but one or two U.S. states, and its economic "growth" is just people selling overpriced houses back and forth to each other. Yet the arrogance and condescending attitude towards their southern neighbor remains.
I have no sense of superiority, my dude. And never asserted it.
Just a profound sense of your lack of it.
The big difference is the falkland islands are populated by brits loyal to britain whereas Greenland is populated by greenlanders who hate denmark because the danes committed many acts of genocide against greenlanders.
> I think most Americans are much more mobile and not used to the idea that someone could be strongly attached to an area as their home.
You think the people in the falklands are "native" to the falkland islands?
There are people who have been born and brought up in the Falkland Islands and have connections going back generations. They have been there longer than anyone else, and the islands had no previous indigenous population before France first colonised them.
As to whether they are native, that is a whole other can of worms, but they are more rooted to there than people who live in continental South America. Geographically they can't claim to be British but by sympathy they are. Things were shifting in Argentina's favour until the invasion.
By the way, this does apply to a certain percentage of Greenlanders. There are a few European Greenlanders, or people of recent mixed heritage so we could make similar arguments about them.
> polls also consistently show that Greenlanders do not want independence if the price is the collapse of the Greenlandic welfare state.
Even replacing independence with becoming part of the US - any one time payment couldn't ensure the continuation of the welfare state. That is, free healthcare, free higher education, access to social support, etc.
> > Even replacing independence with becoming part of the US - any one time payment couldn't ensure the continuation of the welfare state. That is, free healthcare, free higher education, access to social support, etc.
Yes if the one time payment is then invested in a big fund like Norway has, or considering the outcome that is at play here...more like California has with its CalPers
Of course it means that the actual money would be invested in US companies , hence subject to expropriation of the stock
And even the actual money if in dollars they can be taken away at any time
How much could China pay to every resident in Purto Rico to size it from the US? How much for Alaska?
Wyoming or Vermont at 1 million each would be sub trillion range. Seems like reasonable. Technically they could just transfer all the debt they hold to residents there and get deal done.
Maybe they should try this one.
The thought of the USA losing a state over debt collections is rather humerous.
US treasuries redeemable for states rather than cash?
The USA does pay rent for Guantanamo Bay but Cuba refuses to accept the payment. Foreign relations are bizarre.
I'm too lazy, but I hope someone is less lazy and would set up a Kickstarter and collect funds to be given to every resident of US Virgin Islands once they rejoined[1] Denmark. Would happily chip in a hundred or two for a good cause.
[1] Just learned that US Virgin islands are ex Danish colony US bought from Denmark about a century ago. In that agreement United States recognized Denmark's control over Greenland. Funny that.
Is it 1 million USD plus statehood? Or 1 million per head to become a US colony?
They would have declined, as it's obviously a bad deal. European TV channels are interviewing Greenlanders these days asking the same question. They don't want it.
Furthermore, what you are suggesting is literally a mafia practice - sell us your business/property for an unfair price or we'll take it by force anyway.
I’m not sure why anyone is surprised that trump is acting like a mafia boss trying to shake down the rest of the world. This is who he has always been, the first time around there were just more people to say no to him.
https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idRW556309012026RP1/
Greendland People's Republic? Actually they were American all along, USA needs to save them from nazi Denmark. Grab it quick, before Russia does its usual scheme.
Even if every person on Greenland wanted to join the US, could they? Isn't the Land property of every Dane, not just the people currently living there?
In theory Greenland is independent, but Danish government doesn't treat it as independent
If Greeland declares independence, Danish army would arrest all the local resisting people for terrorism, unlawful orders, etc (or shoot at them if needed).
They don't have a choice, they can't split away from Denmark right now, they are like in jail.
If someone tells you that Greenland can declare independence tomorrow without consequences from Denmark this is not true. They would first need to do great PR "we want freedom" and spread in the news that Denmark is evil and forgot about them, etc.
If you had read the article, you would know that
In 1979, Greenland achieved Home Rule, which included the formation of the Greenlandic Parliament, and it gained self-rule in 2009 through the passage of a law that included a ‘blueprint’ for seeking independence. The 2009 law firmly established that the decision to go for independence from Denmark would now rest with the Greenlandic people.
There is no doubt that the majority of Greenlanders want to use this option eventually. Polls show this. Independence has been accepted in Denmark as well. However, polls also consistently show that Greenlanders do not want independence if the price is the collapse of the Greenlandic welfare state.
"If Greenland declares independence" -> "If Greenland unilaterally declares independence"
Of course, you can't do that, there are criminal consequence: yes you can get arrested for that. Like in any country.
There are even worse: financial consequences (600M USD lost per year!).
But what if a richer buddy offers you protection and more money ?
In that specific agreement:
> "The agreement on independence shall be endorsed by a referendum in Greenland. The agreement shall furthermore be subject to the consent of the Folketing [Danish Parliament]."
It's "yes, you can leave, but you need our permission".
Today, Danish parliament is not really happy at the idea of giving away Greenland to anyone.
https://www.euronews.com/2026/01/08/danish-soldiers-would-sh...
They won't shoot at the US, but they can repress protests if that gets too far.
1) They want a new source of funding, ideally one they develop on their own (e.g. a mining and refining industry), to maintain their welfare state. It's a preference of theirs, not something imposed on them by the evil Danes.
Finding a new "buddy" to replace Denmark makes no sense. Why would they want to swap their dependence on a country which likes its welfare state (and is demonstrably good at administering it) for one which takes a notoriously dim view on such things?
2) Greenland becoming independent implies changing the borders of the kingdom of Denmark. That obviously requires a decision by parliament, no way around it.
Anyone interested in the facts can see the law in question here:
https://www.lovtidende.dk/api/pdf/125052
It would obviously not exist if Denmark was hellbent on denying Greenland its independence. All it does is lay out an orderly and straightforward process for the transition.
Factually, I agree with you on both points. Like from the rule of law perspective.
Statistically you are right, but in practice I would be cautious. I'm betting on the fact that a mad world is going to be even more mad (I couldn't imagine US threatening to invade Denmark... though I understand the US opportunity as well).
10 years ago I would totally agree with you.
So let's see.
You are insane
it would be a million times more probable that they would throw money to their friends in the military complex to take things by force, than to give money to strangers.
And then their children have to put up with racist Americans forever
During the Cold War the United States military had 15,000 soldiers stationed in Greenland. That presence has been reduced by 99% to just 150 soldiers today.
Denmark has given the US exclusive and full military access to Greenland but the US does not use it. This has nothing to do with security.
I see so many americans suddenly hyperfocus on the strategic importance of Greenland because Trump again talks about stealing it. They fall over themselves inventing fantastically involved rationales and really weird moral justifications. Meanwhile Donald is above such pretense. He just wants it. (In way that honesty is refreshing.)
It's especially tragicomical when they frame it as a defense measure against Russia - which those same people are generally aligned with.
Im convinced that Donnie would lose a lot of interest if we stopped using Mercator projection so Greenland looks smaller.
It’s still quite large, 22% of the USA.
Exactly, USA already has military bases there and could nuke Ruzzia if they really would invade Greenland, but MAGAs can't use their brain, same like the Zed patriots, when the leader says something stupid and obviously fake they turn their brains off and use the hate in their harts to justify it.
They also listen to right wing media that fabricates a narrative that aligns with their prejudices and justifies the stupid.
Is worse then an alternative reality, the logic does not work in those brains, anything is relative, if X did Y is good if X = Putin/Trump but is evil if X != Putin/Trump
> It's especially tragicomical when they frame it as a defense measure against Russia
There is more than a hint of "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it" to those kinds of rationalizations.
> It's especially tragicomical when they frame it as a defense measure against Russia - which they are generally aligned with.
How is a country that has sanctions against Russia, sends aid to a country it is at war with, and has recently been seizing Russian ships be aligned with Russia?
I don’t think “aligned with Russia” is what’s happening. Instead, I think they are aligned with the old fashioned “spheres of influence” concept, where each superpower owns and operates its own region. Thus, Russia owning Ukraine and the US owning Greenland are not inconsistent.
US aid towards Ukraine is just strong enough to keep the conflict going indefinitely (the “forever wars” policy) without resolving it.
I agree. In general powers want to expand their own spheres of influence and reduce those of others but it is a strategic decision. In Ukraine Russia is not the highest priority as it is a regional power rather then a rival superpower and a forever war weakens it. It is also enough of a threat to keep Europe aligned with the US.
I edited my comment to clarify that I meant the people who make these absurd statements. It was kinda clear before the edit ("they"); now it's very clear.
This was oddly predictive https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2008/12/01/our-friends-in-the-...
There seems to be some confusion around the basis of morals.
Once you are in power and you have things arranged the way you want, you claim that violence is not the answer.
Otherwise, practically speaking might makes right.
So for Greenlanders and those opposed to the US imperialism, it makes sense to say that the rule of existing law must prevail, regardless of the fact that there is no traditional military willing and able to back this up.
However, if you are American and you stand to benefit, what you want to happen is backed up by the most powerful military the world has ever seen.
And I bet a good chunk of people in Greenland know that with no roads and no infrastructure, they can go toe to toe with the US military inland, that is until they stop getting shipments of grain. But can even the vaunted US military blockade this continent sized island, especially with zero allies in tow?
So morally speaking, both parties are in the right. But you can predict what the outcome would eventually be, it is very much David vs Goliath, barring Greenlandic alignment with another foreign power in a proxy war.
Ethically speaking, the chronic under development and under investment in the global North is not beneficial to humanity. Viewed from afar, it does seem that Denmark has not been handling this colonial remnant particularly well.
> colonial remnant
The whole southern part of Greenland was empty when Denmark landed there a thousand years ago.
Bad weather and the Inuit managed to kill off the Danish settlers after that, before they returned a few hundred years later.
So the Danish were one of the original settlers of Greenland. Not "colonizers".
Or do you call the Inuit "colonizers" too, since they spread to lands outside of the original home?
I think what I mean by colonial remnant is "administration and control from afar", not "subjugation of indigenous peoples", and it's concerned with what's happening now, rather than what happened 1000 or more years ago and it's no longer particularly relevant. By remnant, I mean that it's administered by Denmark as a byproduct of a colonial gold rush, not because they are the best entity for that job.
USA had its own legislative assemblies too before the declaration of Independence, look what happened.
That whole post parent is woefully uninformed, talking as if Greenland is actually green or otherwise suitable for sustained guerrilla warfare.
It’s not, towns are solely on the coast and rely on the sea for a reason.
The talk of reasons for might make right is simplistic as well.
Large areas in Greenland is actually green though. Its a wilderness paradise.
Depends what you mean by large areas. Most of it is an kce sheet, the interior is uninhabitable and the habitable sections are hundreds of miles apart.
Depends what I mean with large areas? Ever been to Greenland?
Greenland is about 25% of the US excluding Alaska, the ice sheet covers 80% of that.
This means that the ice free area of Greenland is a bit larger than California. Thats the third largest state in the US. I would say that is a large area.
The vikings landed there, not Denmark, who were Norse, Erik the Red was from Norway (But was considered by then an Icelander exile?). Before Danish control Greenland was a Norwegian colony, this was the colony that died out.
Norse colonisation tended to reflect their origin e.g. the Norwegians colonised the north west of Scotland and Iceland, which were more similar to Norway; Danes went to England and Normandy which were more southerly, flatter and more fertile, much like Denmark; the Swedes with their long Baltic coastline turned their attentions eastward.
Denmark got the North Atlantic islands through the union with Norway, and retained them after Norway became independent.
after the Norwegian colony died out, another attempt was made when Denmark and Norway were in a union.
I know, but that was much later and had a very different dynamic, due to climatic changes etc.
The earlier Norse colonisation of Greenland seemed to consist of farmers and independent settlers, mostly via Iceland. In some areas, they never interacted with Inuit, or rarely.
The later effort seems more focussed on Christian missions to the natives, and commercial whaling and sealing.
The old settlers were mostly from Norway and Iceland, with a few Scottish and Irish slaves thrown in.
Very few Danes. The Danes mostly colonised the north of England, with Norwegians taking Scotland, Ireland and the North Atlantic islands.
This article creates more questions than answers.
- Will the rare earth minerals be mined eventually? As far as I see EU is going into that direction as well, as Greenland became so strategic over time
- What happens with all the land rights that American mineral extraction companies already bought? It means that even if EU/Greenland accepts mining they are already starting from a losing position
- What happens if the American government pays off the people and they want to join US? Will the Danish government still believe in the self determination of Greenland, or it's just political talk?
- what happens after US gets Greenland? Will NATO fall apart and EU get into an even worse position?
- The only way minerals there will be mined profitably is by someone strongarming and displacing any local population, disregarding all environmental protection rules and destroying large swathes of land
- They either mine the minerals responsibly or ask their king to take over the country so they can mine irresponsibly
- Bribery to vote for independence and subsequent joining with the US is the only legal way that Greenland will become part of the US. It would have to be accepted by the Kingdom of Denmark
- Depends on whether it is done legally or with force. If done with force NATO would go under pretty fast. If done with bribery NATO is probably done anyway just way further out.
> displacing any local population
Why displacing? Greenland is 3x the size of Texas and only 60k people, mostly concentrated around a single village.
Because there's absolutely no infrastructure where noone lives. For good reason
The mineral dream is a dream for a reason. Americans have tried. The Chinese have tried. The Danes have tried. None have made a profit, and none have kept up operations
But I'm sure the US will be able to do it this time. Afterall the US has someone with an acute sense of realism in absolute power
Nuuk is small but not really a village considering it contains thousands of people
> What happens if the American government pays off the people and they want to join US?
Honestly I believe if they are willing to sell their future like that, they deserve everything the turd reich does to them.
This lot will be out in a few years. Blame your country's two party system.
And they'll be back in a few years later. I think the rest of the world has learnt that the US cannot be trusted beyond a 4-year horizon even when they make sensible noises.
"A Short History"
$1 trillion divided equally. Case closed
Not everybody's for sale, even more so in actually developed countries with functioning public services. Buying votes is illegal even in the US, in theory.
The maga base would lose their minds. Stopping “Foreigners living off government handouts” is one of their founding tenets.
At the same time, nothing is consistent and just a matter of how you spin it as long as it's good for the in-group and bad for the out-group.
Parallel discussion of Silicon Valley's impact on White House's Greenland interest:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566444
The sad thing is there's an obvious path forward if America wants to control Greenland.
1. Campaign for Greenland's independence, and apply pressure on Denmark to achieve that. Offer security agreements and trade deals to a newly independent Greenland.
A small majority of Greenlander's support independence today; this number would likely rise if they knew they had strong external support.
2. The trade agreements, security agreements and goodwill of Greenlanders for #1 would bring Greenland into the American sphere of influence.
3. Over time, use carrots and sticks to tie Greenland closer & closer to America.
This strategy has a high likelihood of success, has the moral high ground and would minimize the damage to America's alliances.
The only problem is that it would take multiple decades, and Trump won't be around that long.
Faster:
Put sanctions on Denmark, not like actual sanctions, just +10000% tariffs.
Open investigations for corruption, funding terrorism, release dirty secrets of the government.
Help migrants to go to Denmark.
Arrange with Russia little green men to come on the island or just make it fear that Russia is planning an attack. US to the rescue.
Offer lot of money to each inhabitants.
Spread information that Denmark abandoned the island for so many years.
Plenty of ideas.
Those in my list are somewhat debatable, but you can get creative and figure out good ones.
etc
I wasn't as clear as I wanted to be.
The point was the US could achieve their goals by doing the right thing on the moral high ground.
So it's stupid to take the low road.
> just +10000% tariffs.
Denmark is in the EU, the US would have to apply this tariff to the whole of the EU.
I find it surprising how many people don't know this simple fact.
Steel, cheese, wines, pastas, etc, are all country-specific.
...
Fastest:
U.S. Marine Corps expeditionary units.
This could be done tonight.
The horrible things the Danes did to Greenlanders in living memory are unbelievable. They forced contraceptive devices on them as recent as the 1980s and kept it quiet till some of the women recently spoke up.
Europe has a long and sordid history of such colonialist horrors but few perpetrated these crimes so recently.
When you think about the history of Europe you are faced with a society that violently performs genocide repeatedly. Having pacified the population through these eugenic methods they now claim that present day Greenlanders would rather be part of them.
Indeed one is reminded of Crimea, now assuredly Russian, and Donbas which will answer similarly.
The United States has done the same things. In the 1900s 1/5 of Native American women were forcibly sterilized.
It's very funny to see Americans talking about the horrible things the Danes did when their country is founded on genocide and segregation
> but few perpetrated these crimes so recently
Oh my sweet summer child
Yeah right... because America's history is free of violence, racism, and genocides lol
I've listened to numerous Europeans describe the Roma - online and in real life. America is not pure on the violence and racism aspect, but it's less like the pot calling the kettle black and more like the grey felt calling the BLK 3.0 black.
In the end, there are people alive today who escaped the European 250k/month killings. Nothing comparable in the US.
This is disingenuous because the US has massive problems with its ethnic minorities today, never-mind in the past. With mass incarceration and funky electoral borders being used to disenfranchise people.
250k/month killed is a staggering number. You have to do a lot of funky electoral borders before you even come close to that kind of sin.
> 250k/month killed is a staggering number.
There were 250k to 500k roma people killed by nazis, in total, so idk how the "per month" thing is relevant here.
America was built on genocides and constructed in large part by salves, not much to boast about
The Nordic Countries' dirty secret is their eugenics policies. In neighbouring Iceland, they have a policy to stop Downs Syndrome babies.
The USA did literally the same thing just as recently. The USA is a colonial state founded by colonialist Europeans.
I need it ! Give it to me!
Since Denmark and Greenland are already NATO allies, the US has pretty much full access to Greenland. The Trump admin says they need it for defence purposes, well, there already is a US base in Greenland and I'm sure the other NATO allies would happily allow the US to expand their presence for defence purposes. Re. the minerals and what's not, also here, the US has pretty much full access. However, there is no company that's interested since digging out those minerals is very difficult and not really worth the investment at this point in time. So, the "I need it" argument is really weak as they already pretty much have it for the purposes they say they want it for.
What is really happening here is part of the Monroe Doctrine [1]. Trump is trying to consolidate the Western Hemisphere. Remember Canada being the 51st state?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
> Since Denmark and Greenland are already NATO allies, the US has pretty much full access to Greenland.
Not only that. This accord is in force since 1951:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/den001.asp
For context, The Guardian reports[1]:
Inuit people are understood to have lived in Greenland since as early as 2,500BC and it was reached by Norse seafarers in the first millennium AD, who established settlements lasting several centuries. Modern colonisation began after the arrival of Hans Egede in 1721, acting with the support of what was then Denmark-Norway. During the second world war, when Denmark was occupied by Germany, Greenland was occupied by the US and was returned to Denmark in 1945.
It became part of the kingdom of Denmark in 1953, and in 1979 home rule was introduced. But Denmark still controls Greenland’s foreign and security policy. It has its own parliament, Inatsisartut, and two MPs in the Danish parliament, Folketing. But calls for independence have been growing.
Tensions have escalated significantly between Greenland and Denmark in recent years. There is intense anger in Greenland over investigations into the forced contraceptive (IUD) scandal of the 1960s and 70s, prompting the former Greenlandic prime minister to accuse Denmark of genocide. There have also been protests in Copenhagen and Nuuk over the separation of Greenlandic children from their parents. Denmark has banned the use of highly controversial “parenting competency” tests on Greenlandic people that have resulted in Greenlandic mothers being separated from their children. In September, after years of failing to acknowledge the violations, Denmark officially apologised to the victims of the IUD scandal, in which thousands of Greenlandic women and girls were forcibly fitted with contraceptive coils without their knowledge or consent. And in December, victims won a legal fight with the Danish government to receive compensation.
In recent years there has been growing support for Greenlandic independence. But amid the spectre of Trump’s threat, Greenland in March formed a new four-party coalition government in a show of national unity, with the first page of the coalition agreement stating: “Greenland belongs to us.” The pro-independence party, Naleraq, which is the most US- and Trump-friendly party, came second in the election and is now in opposition. According to a 2009 agreement with Denmark, Greenland must hold a successful referendum before declaring independence.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/06/why-is-donald-...
The guardian's historical overview is a bit lacking. The "Inuit" didn't exist in 2500BCE to inhabit Greenland. The Arctic small tool tradition did, but the branch which inhabited Greenland isn't the one that modern Inuit trace their ancestry to and it went extinct when the Dorset culture disappeared. The Thule culture that became modern Inuits arose in Alaska around 1000CE and spread eastward. Modern Greenlandics are related to those first inhabitants, they simply weren't Inuit.
The Guardian's take on most things is a bit lacking. The voice of London's chattering classes even though it was started as a Manchester newspaper.
> the land belongs to the one with the bigger guns, and a willingness to use it
Yes it's true, this is how US was built (and almost all countries)
> the land belongs to the one with the bigger guns, and a willingness to use it
Not necessarily. USA certainly had bigger guns in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and yet they eventually had to retreat from both.
The US didn’t want the land
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This is the history of the world. This day and age is nothing special in that regard.
Except we are supposed to evolve as a species and as a civilization. Is slavery okay because “it’s always been done”?
The US increasingly rejects evolution, in every sense including this one.
It always has. Or at least tried to. Despite that the Civil Rights movement achieved massive success during a much more regressive period of US society. Trump represents a swing of the pendulum that has been brewing ever since. The election of Obama supercharged this reaction and incited panic in the white nationalist segments of the population. This too shall pass.
Slavery is not okay because the guys with the bigger guns said so. Read up on the civil war.
That’s why slavery “no longer exists in the US” (up for debate). That’s not what makes it morally unacceptable. Force doesn’t determine morality. It determines what happens. Your statement amounts to a tautology: “whatever happens is what happens”
And by the way, that’s not even the whole story. The civil rights movement succeeded without force or violence for the most part. So your whole framework is pretty flimsy I think.
> That’s not what makes it morally unacceptable.
Who decides what is morally unacceptable? Those with power.
> Force doesn’t determine morality.
Really? How else is morality enforced? Other than by force?
> It determines what happens.
What happens? Like deciding what is moral or not?
> Your statement amounts to a tautology: “whatever happens is what happens”
No it doesn't.
lol "secure its legitimate security interests"
lets go america!
It seems the issue boils down to what the Greenlanders want: to become some sort of Venezuela of the north in Trump's imperial crown, and be used to maximize the profits of the American corporations that ultimately get to own it; OR full rights as EU citizens and local autonomy to decide who gets the mining concessions, under competitive terms open to all countries that maximize their profits, which stay in their hands.
The historical path of Greenland in DK is irrelevant.
> to become some sort of Venezuela of the north
if it becomes US territory would it not be more like be more like Alaska than Venezuela?
> full rights as EU citizens and local autonomy to decide who gets the mining concessions
There is no such thing as an EU citizen - people are citizens of EU states. Would an independent Greenland join the EU? Would it join NATO? I can see advantages for a small (in population) country with rich national resources playing the big powers against each other.
Indigenous Greenlanders have also been treated pretty badly by Denmark, even very recently, not just a long time ago when it was a colony:
https://www.arctictoday.com/a-view-from-greenland-about-forc...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yelp5466no
> There is no such thing as an EU citizen - people are citizens of EU states.
People are citizens of both the EU and the member states:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_citizenship
>if it becomes US territory would it not be more like be more like Alaska than Venezuela?
Why not something like Puerto Rico? why would Trump give rights to natives of Greenland? those people would vote Democrats , less of the two evils.
it would probably be like ouerto rico yes. Favors would go in one direction only.
Alaska received statehood a century after it was acquired, and only after being substantially colonized by Americans. It's entirely laughable to suggest that US will grant 2 seats ~= 4% of the Senate (plus one representative and 3 electors) to basically a small city of Inuits and Danes, most of which won't even speak English for a good many years to come.
I don’t think the wishes of the population are being taken into account. Maybe they should hold a vote?
One of the tricky situations now is that full independence for Greenland now would leave it weak to more aggressive imperialist predation from the USA.
Not that Denmark (or even the EU) is capable of militarily defending it now. But politically it carries more clout than a tiny population in its own state.
I think the situation of Quebec here in Canada does show it's possible for regions/provinces to become somewhat more sovereign in their own land without full legal independence. Even if that has been fraught with all sorts of ridiculous conflict.
The government of Greenland has a right to call an independence referendum so it could happen depending on who wins elections.
There was an election in 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Greenlandic_general_elect... Pro-independence parties won a supermajority. The only party whose leader said that he trusts Trump in the debate before the election got 305 votes and no seats.
The next parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2029, too late for a pro-Trump swing unless he manages to stay in office somehow.
Independence is what the US wants to stop as it carries a risk of changes such as not joining NATO and EU, rethinking US bases.
So did Catalonia and Scotland, but neither of those were conducted properly. In both cases, a full array of state apparatus was brought into play.
In the case of Scotland the state resources (those of the Scottish govt) were promoting the leave side.
Both of those have very different histories and circumstances Greenland was a colony and in thr current (or at least very recent) treatment of indigenous people.
They certainly were not. The full force of British institutions was ranged against Scottish independence, including the civil service, BBC and even certain businesses like Baxters or Tesco.
Scotland forgets its past. Most people don't know that most of Scotland including non-Jacobite areas was garrisoned in the late 1740s. Or that there was an uprising in 1820. Or famines and rioting around the Moray Firth in the 1840s so bad that the army was brought in. Most of that is forgotten.
"Indigenous" is code for tribal. Scotland was partly tribal into the Middle Ages but is never classed as such. Why the difference?
can you clarify on what grounds it is irrelevant? As I see it, most things in the world are arranged in their current way for 'hysterical raisins', so I don't quite follow? There are approximately 200 countries that could carry continued support for greenland,but currently denmark is the one doing it, for HR. By the same logic,greenland could go to China or Russia?
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Please elaborate on how Greenland is US territory.
The US officially took over greenland after denmark allied with nazi germany during ww2. People forget that the danes were nazi collaborators. We defended greenland against the nazis/danes during ww2 and the soviets during the cold war. I'd say greenland is more of a US territory than even puerto rico or american samoa is. All trump has to do is make it official.
Seems Greenlanders didn't get the memo, the vast, overwhelming majority still think of themselves as "not Americans".
This is the problem with historical narratives, history is not established fact but a continuous re-evaluation of the past. There is always that wako who will interpret some convenient or made up facts as proof that "Greenland is American in all but name".
Oh boy, here we go. Now they even adopted Russia's playbook word by word.
> The US officially took over greenland after denmark *allied* with nazi germany during ww2. People forget that the danes were nazi collaborators.
Was occupied, comrade, is the word you're looking for. They've forgot to put it in your metodichka.
> Was occupied
Occupied? More like warmly welcomed in. Read about the german "invasion" of denmark if you want a good laugh. Denmark was nazi collaborators.
Denmark is within spitting distance of Hamburg, one of Germany's few major ports at the time. Easy for them to come in.
The UK grabbed Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
> Read about the german "invasion" of denmark if you want a good laugh.
Your comments are more than enough, don't need to go there.
Greenland left the EU decades ago in case you haven’t gotten the memo
Greenland was never in the EU. It left the EEC, a predecessor of the EU, as did the Faroes Islands.
My mistake.
But denmark didn't. And the EU is backing denmark. That was my point.