Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

Well, but a majority voted for these people. Twice.

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.

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.

> 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.

Realistic suicide plan, maybe. No US state gets as much federal funding per capita as Greenland do from Denmark (and that funding doesn't include police, jails, courts, hospitals, etc. as that's paid by Denmark directly). Voting to become part of the US is like voting that you want less freedom, less money, less healthcare, and so on. It won't ever happen. Greenland isn't full of people that believe the US fairytale of "The Worlds Best XYZ".

Ameerikkamiuunianngilagut=American trucking company

> they desire to own the people who are speaking

No.

People are not their government.

No.

But a president voted into office twice is the voice of everyone who voted for him.

> 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.

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