Former U.S. diplomat Stephen Helgesen, who now lives in Denmark, has an interesting post today describing public sentiment in Denmark, which is almost universally, and quite hatefully, opposed to President Trump. He writes that it's little different in Greenland, having access to their presses from his perch in Denmark as well.
For Americans, it's become obvious enough from second lady Usha Vance's planned visit to Greenland, which was greeted with an amazing amount of rage and paranoia from the Danes, some of the Greenlanders, and anti-American eurotrash all over the rest of Europe.
Helgesen writes:
... the Danish and Greenlandic press were quick to point out that they saw the arrival of two Hercules air transport planes show up at their civilian airport a few days ago as a bridge too far. To mix metaphors, America had crossed the Rubicon. The optics were, admittedly, bad for America. It looked like an invasion, albeit a benign one with armored vehicles and a few dozen security personnel. The Danes ended up sending a hundred or so Danish police from mainland Denmark seemingly as a countermeasure.
All this, to view an annual dogsled race on a remote iceblock island with a population of 59,000.
Now, one could argue that the incidental security sent might have seemed overdone to the Danes and Greenlanders, given that the locals are not used to this kind of attention, and might not even need major security.
Yet it was an overreaction, all the same. The security was likely standard operating procedure for the U.S. in this age of multiple assassination attempts on President Trump and the Secret Service can't be too careful.
So instead of just dismissing it as Americans in action and going about their business, the Danes and their coevals decided to go bonkers, reading the big entourage from a major public figure from a major nation as an invasion force.
They howled. They organized protests. And they treated Mrs. Vance, who only wanted to make friends with them in a public diplomacy mission, as well as learn about their culture, as a menace to their existence.
She put out this cordial video, descibing why she wanted to see the dogsled race with her kids in Greenland this week:
And this statement:
According to President Trump, it was a friendly visit:
And still they went bonkers.
It was irrational stuff, given that information has just leaked out about U.S. plans for military action in the Signal brouhaha -- which definitely didn't include a planned attack on Denmark or Greenland.
Sorry, folks, nobody wants to invade you from the states. All President Trump wants to do is buy Greenland, he doesn't want to seize it. And he's made no such threats to do so.
Fact is, the only thing President Trump wants to do with Denmark is give it some money. He's never once threatened military action on the kingdom, not even once, and not even in hints.
But if you're paranoid as the Danes seem to be, they're probably secretly disappointed at being wrong, so now they are doubling down on their paranoia and going out of their way to insult the friendly, unassuming, Usha.
This wilfully ignorance and willingness to believe the worst is infuriating, because Usha is a not a political operative of any kind and her politics are unknown.
What is known and remarked about in Beltway circles is that Vance is one of the few politicians out there who really loves his gracious, intelligent, and classy wife, so Vance then did something not so surprising.
He came to his wife's rescue.
They treated her bad when she tried to make friends with them, so Vance announced he was coming to Greenland, too, to join her.
With him coming over, they wouldn't be bothering with tourist stuff, they'll just go straight to the U.S. military base operations in the north and visit the U.S. troops.
No protests, no screaming, no hysteria after exposure to the Danish and Greenlandic public, just a trip to see the U.S. troops.
Which does seem to send a message.
After all, what does one talk about with the U.S. troops when one goes to see the troops in a place like Greenland? Probably some military matters. Seems to be the only game in town.
The Danes and the Greenlanders, if they were clever, would have treated Mrs. Vance as nicely and courteously as they could. Now that they've done the opposite, they get a military-oriented visit at a troop installation from a vice president of U.S., which should give them something to be really paranoid about.
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of jerks. They had their chance to be hospitable to Mrs. Vance and talk dogs. They decided to be rude. Now they get a visit from J.D. to a Greenlandic U.S. military base and can only wonder what he is talking about up there.
Next time the second lady comes to town for a visit, maybe they ought to treat her with respect and decency.
They can now wonder what he talked about given their bad treatment of sweet-tempered Mrs. Vance. They wanted to be paranoid about something, J.D. Vance just gave them something to be paranoid about. They can just deal with it as the result of their own fecklessness.
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