I knew supporting President Trump would be unpopular here in my adopted country of Denmark, but that was before he made his recent Greenland remarks and the public relations visit of his son to Greenland.
Since then I have been on full defense mode as my Danish friends are rediscovering their roots in the Denmark/Greenland relationship and finding their patriotism for the commonwealth of the realm or as it is in Danish, rigsfællesskab. There is nothing like questioning another’s motives to get in touch with one’s own deeply embedded but long neglected feelings.
That said, back in August I wrote an article on why Americans would prefer Trump as their choice for president. I got quite a few comments from the hardcore nay-sayers here after an article I wrote was published in a popular U.S. website and then picked up and spread throughout the Internet.
That made me realize that I was on to something, because whenever the haters come out, you know you’ve touched a nerve or stumbled on to the truth. As the months wore on, the criticism subsided, probably because of the Left’s confidence that their candidate was going to trounce Trump in November. No matter the reason, I was pretty much left alone to write more introspective think pieces, some of which I translated into Danish and made their way into the Danish papers. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that the hardcore critics have only intensified their criticism of Trump.
As we move ever closer to inauguration day, the political SWAT teams which include most of America’s media have re-grouped and are busy hatching their plans to take Trump down. We know their playbook, well. It includes character assassination complete with lying, exaggeration and planting stories on social media, protesting in the streets, doxxing Trump appointees and opposing their nominations in the Senate hearings and, of course, a full-scale mobilization of the Deep State (entrenched civil servants whose modus operandi has been to slow walk regulations they consider antithetical to their beliefs).
Regrettably, such is the state of American politics today. It is eat or be eaten, strike first and hard and rally the troops around you.. and, of course, get them to donate massive amounts of money to the cause of toppling Trump and winning back the House in 2026.
Now that the shock of losing the White House and both houses of Congress has settled in, the Left and their Praetorian Guard the progressives have emerged from their profound state of grief and sadness and are joining forces to fight the “orange man” in Churchillian fashion (“We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea; we shall fight him in the air, until with God’s help, we have rid the Earth of his shadow and liberated its people from his yoke.”). Obviously, Churchill was referring to Hitler, but since America’s Left views Trump as Adolf’s reincarnation, it will apply.
In a few short days, Donald J. Trump will take the oath of office for the second time, but before he does he has seen fit to thrown down a few gauntlets and in the process anger a few allies.
Among them are the Danish people and many European leaders who have come out and questioned the president-elect’s motives and his rationality when it comes to the “Greenland question.” I’m not going to defend either Trump’s actions or those of European leaders or their citizenry. However, given the extreme importance of the current state of affairs with the soon-to-be 47th president’s pronouncements on Greenland and the Panama Canal, I felt it right to pen a few words about just why Americans elected him in order to build on my earlier article about why Americans liked him.
I think the reasons can be broken down into seven basic ones.
Reason one is, quite simply, the American people’s unshakable sense of self-preservation. Eight years of Barack Obama’s largely do-nothing blathering and four years of Joe Biden’s ideological meddling made Americans realize deep down in the marrow of their bones that it was time for a strong leader who spoke directly if not always with a firm grip on the facts. Every tribe, whether primitive or highly advanced, knows that it must choose strong leaders who have their best interests at heart and who will protect them when threatened. Americans are well aware of the concept after throwing off British rule by revolution.
Reason two is loss of faith in Americans’ institutions and a firm belief that the Left has been abusing the Right’s willingness to give the Obama and Biden administrations the “benefit of the doubt” regarding their professed love of country as they proceeded to try to reshape the country’s very culture with forced DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and critical race theory, allowing men in women’s sports, radical multi-genderism, etc.
Reason three is growing secularism. While it is true that membership in organized religion is waning in America, faith in God or a higher power is not. Trump knows that and he also knows that because the U.S. is largely a Christian nation, that he will be forgiven for his many transgressions (hate the sin, love the sinner). Americans saw the persecution of their religious brothers and sisters under both Obama and Biden administrations. Remember the Little Sisters of the Poor and how the Obama government pursued them and threatened them with $70 million in fines for their religious refusal to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives? And many Americans remember how parishioners’ participation in religious services were opposed by elements of the biden Administration and by certain states’ governors during the COVID lockdowns.
Reason four is the economy. Inflation robbed many Americans of their buying power and the Biden administration did little to correct the situation which they, themselves, helped create. Just a few hours after being sworn in Joe Biden cancelled government support for the Keystone XL pipeline, an action which resulted in a surge in transportation costs which were passed along to American consumers throughout the supply chain.
Reason five is something I wrote about in my book, “Culture held hostage” which describes a full-on frontal assault on traditional American values and a manufactured phony race accusation that stated that “America is systemically racist,” something that the majority of Americans knew to be false but kept hearing from Biden officials and the Left in general, not to mention the media and academia.
Reason six is something that even the Left is slowly beginning to acknowledge, and that is that the country’s borders were purposely left open to immigrants who claimed political asylum at unofficial crossing points and were allowed to remain in the U.S. instead of being sent back across the southern border. The system of protecting Americans was jettisoned and replaced with one that put immigrants first. Americans had simply had enough and demanded their border be secured by a new president.
Reason seven is probably the least important on many Americans’ minds, but I would wager that it existed in many of them, even if farther down the list. I’m speaking of foreign policy and the rejection of the Left’s belief that America should be global first and domestic, second, something most Americans know cannot happen because of our constitutional obligation to protect America’s interests at home and abroad.
Now we come to the problem of today. Will the U.S. and the Trump administration succumb to a desire to pursue a policy of “new territorialism” ahead of its own domestic security? Can the new administration walk that fine line of separating what looks like imperialism from a position of shoring up democracy and protecting an area of the world that is now on everybody’s radar? I’m speaking of course of the relationship between Denmark, the U.S. and the Greenlandic people, a front-burner issue here in Denmark.
Granted this is not the Cuban Missile Crisis, nor is it the bifurcation of East and West Germany. Neither is it the Louisiana Purchase nor the sale of the Danish West Indies. The Greenland and Panama Canal issue is, however, a major test for the Trump administration and will determine what America’s true global ambitions are and will show the world how it will deal with allies as well as tyrants. Now is the time for clear heads, outstretched hands and earnest diplomacy.
Stephen Helgesen is a retired career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in 30 countries for 25 years during the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush Administrations. He is the author of fourteen books, seven of which are on American politics and has written over 1,400 articles on politics, economics and social trends. He can be reached at: stephenhelgesen@gmail.com
Image: Wikimedia Commons, via Picryl // public domain
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