Everything Is Serious Even If Nothing Is

Four Years of This Huh?

It appears that for the moment the stories of an American military expedition targeting Panama or Greenland aren’t going away. This has caused a lot of people to rightfully go back to debating one of the constant themes of Trump’s political career—should we talk about his proposals and give them even more coverage?

I’ve already breathlessly written about these proposals and what they mean for American foreign policy twice now, and I loathe to continue posting anything about this. It is, however, I think, worth writing one last piece about the fundamental Catch-22 of Trump’s political game. Namely, that everything is both serious and a joke at the same time.

The sheer incomprehensibility of the idea of using military force against a NATO ally to seize their territory ought to make the proposal laughable on its face. The domestic blowback, and likely crisis it would set off would be enough to kill any such policy in its crib in normal times. Trump’s floating of this idea has therefore been met with skepticism from most people since it is after all verifiably insane. Nobody really wants to take it seriously.

But that’s sort of the game of it. If you take it seriously and react to the statement of the incoming President as though it were the statement of any other President—you’re being overly shrill and can’t take a joke. It sets the expectation that he can just go on stage and say whatever he wants and there’s no actual consequence to it.

But he is (and do not forget this) about to be the single most powerful person on the planet. Anything he says is the expression of policy intent from the United States. Every leader in every country in the world looks to these statements for signals of our intent. Denmark now needs to worry about this, no matter how far-fetched it might actually be.

Everything he says matters. If he says something, it’s a policy position from the President. Unless he doesn’t want it to be. Then it was just trolling.

Historically, the GOP has used the ambiguity between is he joking or is this his real position to run interference for him until it was too late to actively mobilize a response to his plans. In the run-up to the 2020 elections, GOP officials routinely characterized Trump’s refusal to accept the election results as just trolling, right up until he refused to accept the election results.

It’s almost brilliant in how it works. You can socialize a policy idea and normalize the concept while simultaneously making yourself immune from criticism. If you criticize it after all you’re just being a shrill and annoying lib who can’t take a joke. You leave yourself the decision-space on whether or not to enact a particular course of action until the last possible moment, because if it never happens, well then it was just a joke.

Think of it like the 2021 buildup of Russian forces on the Ukrainian border—except for political speech. Putin by engaging in an ambiguous display of military forces on the Ukrainian border under the guise of training activities gave himself the space to claim that the West was being shrill about nothing until the moment Russian troops crossed the border. He also gave himself the choice until the very last second to call the whole thing off and make it appear like the West was just a bunch of alarmists the entire time.

We of course responded (correctly) as though he was serious the entire time. We began shipping weapons before Russian forces ever crossed the border. But what if we treated that military buildup like we now treat Trump’s rhetoric? There wouldn’t have been a single Javelin in Kyiv until T-72s had crossed the border, and Ukraine would have been in a worse position than they already were.

There’s no reason to treat Trump’s will he won’t he style of political rhetoric any different. Why should we give him the benefit of the doubt? I say fuck that. If he wants to talk about invading an allied country, we should be happy to oblige him and treat him like he’s serious. Because you know, what if he is this time?

Democrats should go out there and continuously repeat his words into every microphone available every time he does something like this. Make sure every voter in the country knows that he says he wants to start a war and don’t stop saying it.

Who cares if he does it or not? It should be a story that’s breathlessly repeated because he’s the President-elect. It should be continuously repeated over and over for the next four years that if the President says it, that’s the President’s policy position. I realize we live in an irony-poisoned era where nothing matters, but that doesn’t absolve people from continuing to give a shit.

You don’t get to just check out because the other side won an election. We still have expectations of how our politicians behave and act.

When Trump says he wants to emulate Putin in launching wars of aggression, you act like an actual opposition party and vocally oppose it, rather than this meek nonsense about toning down the rhetoric. You shouldn't lower your expectations of what’s acceptable rhetoric because the other side refuses to operate in good faith—you need to continue to relentlessly advocate for what’s right.

We should also be extremely clear with what this proposal is—the President-elect is not taking off the table using military force to kill members of an allied nation to annex a piece of territory. We fought alongside the Danes in Afghanistan. 33 Danish soldiers were killed fighting alongside us after we called on them to be there with us by activating Article 5.

If you decide to not take these ideas seriously the first time, you give Trump the ability to reach back into this well and keep repeating his playbook until he does implement the policy that he wants. He’s deadening his audience to his continuous saber-rattling such that they never organize an opposition when the actual day comes.

It’s fucking appalling that a man that’s going to be President is alluding to using military force against Denmark. Treat it like the appalling idea that it is.