But to each his own. Civ 4 was the first one that really, really hooked me.

I expect this to be struck down.

The first clue will be a version of the Xbox running an OS with this model.

Even in his infamous 70 minute speech on the day of (which by the way was still going when most of the protestors were already at the capitol) where he called on people to “fight like hell” he called for peaceful demonstration.

“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

He did not call any senators. He called McCarthy and had a very heated conversation and when McCarthy told him to call off the protestors immediately the President barked back that he believed Antifa breached the capital, not his supporters (not true but that’s what the President believed at the time).

If your country was as large as the US or China it too would likely be a “bully.”

France is still a bully in Africa when it wants to be.

I also bought into all our cultural exports as a child and believed we were going to war for freedom and Democracy. As I get older I see the truth. It was all geopolitics.

Freedom and Democracy were just icing on the cake if we managed to preserve it wherever we were sending our kids to die.

If you start believing you can’t get along then society just turns into a rush to slam the Overton window shut on your opposition. Don’t give up hope.

The US is unified with one military, one economy, one budget, one State Department, etc. Europe is not. Internal division here is not the same as internal division in Europe.

UK, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, etc. will not substantively move away from the US even if they are hopping mad about Greenland.

Russia wouldn’t try because we are too strong. If the EU were strong we wouldn’t be trying to take Greenland.

That’s the whole point - if there is a race for control of the arctic with China and Russia the EU couldn’t do anything. You’d depend on the US to police the arctic for you and to enforce whatever treaties are signed with China and Russia. Better deal for us to do it ourselves.

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes, but they were morons

No, not without an amendment allowing a third term, but even if there were an amendment probably still a No because he is too old and his very blunt and impolitic manner is not sustainable long-term in national leadership.

According to the WSJ, thr President has lost about 8% of his voters, so he should make some adjustments.

WSJ POLL: 92% of people who voted for Trump in 2024 are giving him a positive job rating today, including 70% who “strongly approve”

If anything this is a wake up call for Europe to come to grips with how ineffectual they have become.

Any kind of financial maneuver any country would try against the US would mostly hurt them more.

France and Spain are probably the most independent of the US economically but the other member states not so much.

Any economic reaction would by symbolic or very short lived.

Governments protect themselves not the people. All those government employees need tax revenue.

All the rich people who run the world behind the scenes don’t want their assets to deflate.

The EU could fracture over any kind of major retaliation.

Estonia, Latvia, and Poland will want the US to stay in NATO at all costs with Putin next door.

Germany is dependent on exports. Their entire economy could collapse without US trade.

Don’t you feel the pantomime of it all? The leaders in Europe are saying what they absolutely have to say. Having the meetings they have to have.

There will probably be some kind of deal reached eventually so the leaders of the Europe can appear to have done something slightly better than giving Greenland away.

We do not own the world, but we do own the worlds reserve currency, largest economy, are the guarantors of safe naval passage for most of the world, are the defenders of North America, Europe, and to a lesser extent Japan and South Korea. We send re-usable rockets to space. We are amazing.

Does any of this give us a direct claim to Greenland? No, but what claim did Denmark have over the native people when they invaded?

Roosevelt honestly thought the Soviets would be good partners post-war. He was wrong. Very wrong.

If we build a Rammstein- sized base the US would already outnumber the native population.

Would the Danes or French open fire on us while the US is setting up shop? Highly unlikely.

Trump is pushing a total takeover but I suspect he would rather leave a small pocket of southern Greenland to the Danes to continue supporting the indigenous people, and then taking the bulk of the rest for mineral rights, arctic sea lanes, and defense.

Why did you single mine out? Oh yeah, the default instinct to censor different ideas.

I support the US assuming control of Greenland because it would be incredibly economically beneficial to the US, militarily beneficial to the US, we’d be on the hook for defending it in case of a war as the EU hardly has any expeditionary force left, and we’ve propped up Europe for 70 years.

It could greatly delay the collapse of the American empire that I love and enjoy living in.

We haven’t been a humble republic since the close of WW2, maybe even WW1.

People have become more anti-Vax because the Covid vaccines were at best ineffective and as you said anything contra-narrative is buried or ignored.

If you push a shitty product and force people to take it to keep their jobs it’s going to turn them into skeptics of all vaccines, even the very effective ones.

More harm than good was done there. The government should have approved them for voluntary use so the fallout would not have been so bad.

Allowing the debate to be shut down is undemocratic and unscientific (science without question is nothing more than religion).

Not allowing people to come to different conclusions from the same data is tyranny.