Posted on January 12, 2026
Falling Down Over Denmark
This thuggery has got to stop
by
Daniel Clark
In the
1993 movie Falling Down, William Foster, the character played by Michael
Douglas, became enraged that a Korean shop owner charged him 85 cents for a can
of Coke. So he threatened the man and
his store with a bat until the man agreed to sell him the Coke for 50 cents. Did he do anything wrong, or was he simply
making a shrewd business decision?
President Trump says U.S. ownership
of Greenland is "an absolute necessity."
It is unclear why he believes this to be so, since that island is owned
by our loyal friend and ally Denmark, which has been totally cooperative in
letting us use it for purposes of national defense. "I would like to make a deal, you know, the
easy way, but if we don't do it the easy way, we're going to do it the hard
way," he said, in a reiteration of his statement that he won't take the
military option off the table.
Not to
worry, says Omnisecretary Marco Rubio, who assures us that his boss has no
intention of attacking the Danes, but only means to purchase the territory from
them. But isn't he contradicting the
president? And hasn't the Danish
government already stated unequivocally that Greenland is not for sale? Perhaps Stephen Miller can explain.
Miller is officially the Deputy
White House Chief of Staff, although his true position in the administration is
apparently a secret. Even though making
foreign policy pronouncements does not fit his job description, there he stood
admonishing the president's critics as if he were scolding a child for coloring
outside the lines, which is something he probably does in his spare time. Making an argument that Vladimir Putin would find
validating, he said America is the rightful owner of Greenland for the simple
reason that we have the power to take it, and that "nobody is going to fight
the United States militarily over the future of Greenland." In his view, Trump and Rubio are both right. Trump is keeping the military option open,
but he won't have to opt for it because the Danes will acquiesce. The president will wave his big stick, and
they will sell him the Coke for 50 cents.
That's not
a commercial transaction; it's a mugging.
Even worse, it's a blindside attack on a country that has been America's
friend ever since the two signed a "Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and
Navigation" exactly 200 years ago, and which has materially supported
American-led military efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Iraq. Might doesn't make it right, and neither can
anything else. Denmark doesn't deserve
this kind of treatment, but the injury it would do to that country cannot
compare with what it would do to our own.
Whatever the Trump administration
thinks "America first" means at this point, it must not mean navigating the
geopolitical waters like a shark, attacking some objects and not others on the
sheer basis of instinct. Our founding
fathers did not create a morally vacuous nation dedicated to nothing more than
perpetuating itself. The republic they
gave us does not have an amoral constitution, and it should not have an amoral
foreign policy.
It should
go without saying that no country is perfect, all of them being comprised of
fallible human beings, but any fair accounting of all the pluses and minuses
would have to conclude that the United States of America has been a blessing to
the world. Name another nation that, had
it gone a decade as the world's only atomic power, would have spent its energy
and resources rebuilding allies and defeated foes alike, rather than going on
an imperialistic romp the likes of which would make Queen Victoria cringe.
America
has a long and consistent history of helping others defend themselves against
aggressors and tyrants, such that the goodness of our nation has always been
evident from the identities of its enemies.
What does it say about us now, that the people of such a small, benign
country are now having to live in fear of unprovoked hostilities from our
president?
Our
leaders are engaging in an act of outright thuggery against a friendly
nation, just because they want what it has, and it lacks the wherewithal to
resist. We must put a stop to this
before it goes a single step farther. If
we don't, we risk winding up asking ourselves, as a dazed William Foster did
upon being arrested, "I'm the bad guy?
How did that happen?"
The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press