Why Greenland? Why Now?

Why Greenland? Why now?

It can seem, at first glance, a strange and incongruous new obsession, akin to Lex Luthor's desire for Australia.

It's entirely reasonable to suggest that there's no reason the United States needed to stop at fifty states, or to argue that adding another territory is somehow unacceptable as a topic of discussion.   That's only true, mind you, if that's a free and uncoerced choice of the inhabitants of that region.  If America economically bullies a people into submission, or...far worse...uses military force?  Then we are tyrants and monsters and morally bankrupt.  Those things need to be off the table, period, or we are no longer a nation where republican virtue matters.

But the principle of adding to the United States is not inherently invalid.  It's just, again, why Greenland?  Why now?

The geopolitical situation has changed since the Cold War.  It's not 1975.  It's 2025.

Most of the 20th century proxy struggles between the United States and those powers occurred in the Global South, but in 2025, all eyes are on the Arctic.  In 1975, the Arctic was just a desolate, inhospitable frozen waste, one where access to mineral and fossil fuel resources was immensely challenging.  The only reason to keep an eye on it was because that's where the Soviet ICBMs might be flying over on their way to pay us a visit. 

That old geopolitical reality isn't the reason for our new interest in Greenland.  In fact, the reason we pulled back from Greenland, and have fewer troops there than we did at the height of the Cold War?  It's because we're not toe-to-toe with the Soviets there anymore.  That changed.

But other things have changed.  

It's not missiles we're expecting, but ships, because Northern shipping routes are opening up.  Resources that were formerly out of reach are suddenly potentially available, particularly to American oil companies.

Greenland and the newly open waters around it are of much more interest now, economically, than they were fifty years ago.

But...why is this an emergent reality?  I mean, there's a reason.  A single, glaring, significant, obvious reason.  There's a term for that reason, but you're increasingly unlikely to find that term in the mouths of our leaders or on the recently censored websites of our government agencies.

It's climate change.  We want Greenland because of climate change.

I mean, duh.  Less ice means more shipping.  Less ice means deep sea drilling for crude and natural gas becomes a logistical possibility.

In the context of the melting of Arctic sea ice, there's a definite logic to Greenland as a focus.  It's not nuts at all.  Selfishly grasping, crassly profiteering and catastrophically short-sighted, perhaps, but there's a definitive internal logic to it.

But this is only true if anthropogenic, fossil-fuel-driven climate change is actually happening.

Which it is.  

Meaning there's a cynical and implicit acknowledgement on the part of this administration, running all the way to the top.  America's sudden hunger for Greenland exists now only because the increasing pace of climate change makes the control of that region suddenly far, far more lucrative to the oil interests who helped bankroll the current regime.

So.  How does Trump say "climate change is real" without using those words?  

"I want Greenland."  That's how he says it.

On Being "Taken into Custody"

My family has a history of getting nabbed at the border.

My Dad was, back in the early 1970s.  The border in question was the Ugandan border.  To be more specific, it was the international airport at Entebbe, as he arrived to report on a story.  When he landed, there were a half dozen soldiers waiting for the plane as it arrived at the gate.  "I wondered who they might be waiting for," Dad would recall.

They were waiting for him.  As he walked from the plane with the other passengers, the soldiers approached.  One of them pointed at Dad, and signaled him to leave the group.  "Me?" Dad mouthed, incredulous.  "You," said the soldier, grinning.  It was not a nice smile, as Dad recounted it.

My mom, who was back in Nairobi with three year old me and my infant brother, got the news that he had been taken into custody.  The US had been recently and publicly critical of the regime of Ugandan dictator General Idi Amin, and as a reprisal, the soldiers had been instructed to detain the first American journalist to enter the country.

So Dad just...disappeared.  Ugandan authorities weren't responsive to queries about his location or the reason for his detention.  

Eventually, Dad was deported, and the next word from him came after he was dumped off at a US consulate in Sudan.

Dad would tell this story on regular occasion, and it was always one of those things that I understood to be a marker of the difference between the United States of America and the authoritarian regimes of African strongmen.

That changed a little bit when I had the pleasure of being taken into custody at the American border.  

This was a couple of years after 9/11, after the creation of the Department for Homeland Security.  I, my wife, and my two sons were coming back from a visit with my brother in Montreal.  

When we arrived at American customs, we handed over our identification.  The agent scanned my wife's first.  Then he scanned mine.  Mine set off an audible klaxon at his station.  He looked at me, and stepped back and away from his computer.  As he did so, four more customs agents showed up in a hurry.  All had their guns out.  

I was told to exit our minivan, which I did.  I was then cuffed and frogmarched to a holding cell, where I was cuffed to a table.  I was told nothing about the reason for my arrest.  I was also not read my rights, or permitted any contact with my wife or with counsel. 

I mean sure, I was handcuffed and forcibly detained by agents with guns drawn, but it wasn't an "arrest."  I was just being "taken into custody."  Totally different thing.

After about fifteen minutes, I was released, with apologies.  Following review by an officer in charge, there'd been a misidentification, as the system they were using had incorrectly informed them that I was an armed and dangerous felon.  Oopsie doopsie.

After the agents who were tearing apart our van searching for contraband were stopped midway through their task were stopped, we were sent on our way. 

Impersonal and imperfect systems make mistakes.

As they can make mistakes now.  DHS and ICE aren't constrained to attend to your rights.  Maybe you're a citizen.  Maybe you're in the country legally.  Maybe not.  Not their problem.  They follow orders, and if sometimes innocent people are swept up, well, so what?  What does it matter if there's some collateral damage or bycatch?

ICE agents are already making mistakes, and acting on incorrect information.  Citizens in my area have been stopped and forcibly detained, and ICE agents are completely unaccountable for their actions towards those citizens. 

If you happen to have left your wallet at home that day, what happens?  If you don't always carry your papers with you, how could you prove anything, particularly if the agents in question are either overzealous or, you know, actually a little malicious?

As a soul with anarcholibertarian inclinations, I'm viscerally distrustful of systems of power and control.  The point of a Republic is to check those systems, to force those systems to be accountable for their behavior towards persons, to govern them round about with restraints that prevent them from becoming a tool for repression.  This is the dark paradox of the police state: In a police state, the law provides no protection.

ICE agents are already arresting people who have broken no laws, and whose only crime was to speak in ways the regime finds unacceptable.  For them, the law has become shifting sand.  You were here legally, but we've decided to revoke your legal status, so now you're breaking the law.   

It's as brazen as the corrupt and unaccountable cop in a dismal hollow of a town, the one who smashes your taillight, then tickets you for driving with a broken taillight, and should you be fool enough to protest, will arrest you for resisting arrest.

In such a system, all of our rights are in jeopardy.

The Voice Falls Silent

The Voice of America was one of those things that rose from the height of America's greatness as a nation.

Most Americans are unaware of it, by design.  Unlike the BBC or Deutsche Welle, America's publicly funded news service was never permitted to broadcast here in the United States.  To prevent state-funded media from becoming a tool of a would-be despot, it couldn't operate here.  Overseas, though, it served a significant function.  That function was not propaganda or boosterism, but reliable information.  The idea, from the height of American power, was that being a trustworthy source was the best way to spread the message of American values.

Established by an Act of Congress in the era of shortwave radio, it was always meant to stand apart from the aspirations of any given Administration or party.  

I know this, personally and deeply, from dinner table conversations growing up.  

Mom and Dad met at the Voice.  Like pretty much every DC resident, they weren't from here.  Mom was a Georgia girl, raised in Athens.  Dad was a preacher's kid from Queens.   He noticed her, invited her to a party, and, well.  Without the Voice of America, I wouldn't exist. 

After serving at the Africa desk as an editor, Dad got an assignment to East Africa, which is why my very first memories are of Nairobi.  After that, it was back stateside for a few years, then to London, where he was bureau chief.  From that, back to the US, where he eventually became the head of the Africa division.

Dad fiercely internalized the core mission of the Voice, as a patriotic Kennedy-era Republican.   Not that he voted for Kennedy, of course.  Dad was a Nixon man, and Lord help me, would he tell you about it.

Republican though he was, Dad literally put his life on the line for that mission.  He disappeared for a long while into a Ugandan prison, seized by the regime of dictator Idi Amin.  He spent time on the streets of Belfast during the Troubles.  During the Iranian Revolution, he was called in to replace a correspondent who had been injured fleeing a mob.  While there, he lay flat on his belly in the International hotel in Tehran, filing a report while Khomeni's Revolutionary Guards sprayed it with small arms fire.

This is a little more dramatic than my small church pastoring.

There were always pressures from the executive, particularly when coverage wasn't Pollyannaish about the actions of any given president.  There was strong pressure during the Reagan years to "be more positive" about America, which meant constant pushback against efforts to water down journalistic neutrality.  Those efforts soured Dad on the Republican party.   Dad would dish at the dinner table about United States Information Agency director Gene Pell, or about efforts to get his successor Dick Carlson on board with the mission.  

The Voice, like all state-funded news services, had to adapt to the realities of the internet age.  Shortwave radio wasn't the future, eh?  But it rolled with the times, and stuck with the mission, showing the world the face of America...which looked a whole bunch like the face of the world.  Its journalistic ranks were often filled by those who had come to this country drawn by the promise that things here were different.

But the mission of the Voice is not the mission of Trumpism.  

For the Trumpist, media exists to praise Dear Leader and to attack those who oppose him.  Any media that does not do this will be attacked and slandered.  Because the Voice was publicly funded, Trump has ordered it closed.  Even though it's funded by Congress, and its closure isn't constitutional, that means nothing now.  Trump installed a sycophant as head of the agency, and she's obedient to him above all else.  Why close it?  It's "corrupt."  It's a "hubris-filled rogue operation filled with leftist bias."  

"Leftist?"  Oh, c'mon.  Actual leftists were always attacking the VOA as capitalist propaganda.  These were and are lies, of course, but the folks who are in thrall to Trump wouldn't know this, if they even noticed.  They live within the false and fawning information ecosystem of Fox News, which is precisely the sort of party-line support-the-regime media that the Voice was created to oppose.  They believe what they read on their X and Facebook feeds, even if much of that comes from Russian and Chinese troll farms.

And so, today, the broadcasts are silenced.  The beacon goes dark.  The America that the world once knew no longer speaks.

In its place, something else has arisen.  Something ignoble and self-serving.  Something crass and brutal and cynical.

The Voice that spoke out against the world's despots and authoritarians is no longer ours.

With Hands in the Soil

Out in my front yard, my garden is stirring after an erratic but wintery winter.

In the two eight by eight beds that flank my driveway, the green shoots of garlic that overwintered are getting perky again.  The asparagus has started to offer up its first tentative shoots, which means I've got about a month of early spring harvest ahead of me.

The budding seed potatoes that were starting to get out of hand in the darkness of a cupboard have found their way into half-barrels filled with compost and leaves.  Those taters were getting desperate, flailing out long dead-white tendrils that made their section of the cupboard look like something out of a John Carpenter film.

I've been clearing out all nine of my raised beds, pulling old weeds and removing excess leaf-fall.  With the beds prepped, I've brought wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of compost from my slightly disappointing compost yield for this year.  Even though that new earth isn't quite ready, it's still got plenty of wriggly waking worms mixed in, who'll help continue to break down the soil now that it's been mingled with the earth of the beds.

All of it means that I've got my hands in the dirt now, and it's a good feeling.  It is, rather literally, grounding.

I was down on my muddied knees weeding one of my four by four beds on a warm afternoon when a neighbor walked by.  This happens regularly, and it's a way for overly-introverted-me to be stirred to conversation with the souls who live nearby.  I'll hear their own stories of planting and soil, or tell them about something I'm excited to be growing.  It's part of what makes gardening such a pleasurable thing.

This neighbor was, as it happened, one who had recently yelled at me as I walked my dog past his property.  Twice.

Ah, thought I.  It's That Guy.

As he strode up the sidewalk, eyes forward, I suppose I could have ignored him.  Just kept my head down, busily paying attention to anything but the human being who was crossing in front of my property.

But the day was bright and lovely, and spring was in the air, and my hands were in the warm earth.  Gardening has me in the habit of offering gracious words to passers-by, and I was in no mood to be anything other than neighborly.  

"It's a beautiful day to be out in the world," I piped up, trowel in hand.

He looked over, a little startled.  "It really is a great day," he replied.  Not a hint of animosity in his voice, not even a whisper of the snarl that had last soured it.  He offered up a gentle smile of genuine pleasure at a shared and glorious afternoon.

"Enjoy your walk," I said.

"I will," he said, and continued on up the street.

It's good to get your hands in the earth.  It really is.

Megachurches and Authoritarianism

So here's a completely non-controversial take:

Megachurches have primed Christian America for authoritarian rule, and have contributed to the collapse of republican virtues.

My church is very much not a megachurch.  We're a little community church, and thriving as a small church pastor requires letting go of the idea that you have more authority than your lay leadership.  Formal authority is meaningless in the little church.  What matters is care, relationship, and a willingness to be discipled by the Christians around you...and that includes pastors actually listening to and learning from the gifts and witnesses of their co-workers in Christ.

My church is also Presbyterian.  Being Presbyterian means a bunch of different things, but on a practical and functional level, it means that the beating heart of the church is lay leadership.  The Elders who are elected into leadership of a Presbyterian congregation make that church what it is.  My task, as a pastor and Presbyterian Teaching Elder, is to proclaim the Word, administer sacraments, and support my fellow Elders as they guide the church.  I am, to use the small "c" catholic ideal for the soul in the leadership, a servus servorum dei -- a servant of the servants of God.

I ain't the one in charge. That's not to say my role isn't important to the well-being of the congregation.  But I am not the "unitary executive" of my congregation.   

That has always been the Presbyterian vision.  It was so fiercely a part of Presbyterian identity that was a potent source of radically antimonarchist sentiment.  Presbyterians, back when we were a significant force in American life, were always the foes of kings and tyrants, those who would deny power to the people and claim it all for themselves.

There's a reason the American Revolution was called "The Presbyterian Rebellion" by the supporters of King George.  For Presbyterian pastors who forget this truth, and imagine they can rule their churches like a king or CEO, well, you're gonna get reminded of that real danged quick. 

But the Presbyterian age is waning.  

Our numbers are in decline, and not just in my withering branch of the tradition.  Taken as a whole, the Presbyterian tide has ebbed in America.  Taken all together, liberal and conservative flavors combined, we are less than half of the four million total souls who considered themselves Presbyterian at the midpoint of the last century.  

In our place have risen nondenominational corporate churches, ones where the pastor is conceptualized a a CEO.  Those leaders are explicitly entrepreneurial, and they quickly become the central focus of the life and the mission of their churches.

Many of these churches do the good work that their scale enables, and many of those pastors work hard to maintain a humble servant heart.

But.

But many do not, and following the Face on the Jumbotron can become profoundly dangerous to the soul of the church.  Driven by the More is More ethic, Pastors devolve into celebrity influencers, chasing more and more followers and more and more influence.  They become the sole authority, the whole power, and the source of all truth.  They choose their staff and their board.  Congregants in such gatherings become pastor-focused, not Christ focused, trapped in a parasocial relationship with a single charismatic authority.

This cultic enthrallment is dangerous for personal discipleship, and is just as dangerous for the spiritual integrity of the Pastor in the High Pulpit.  As Karl Vaters put it in his excellent DESIZING THE CHURCH,

You cannot build your brand and develop your spiritual maturity at the same time.  They are heading in different directions.  That doesn't mean you can't promote your church, an event, or a ministry.  But promoting ministry for the betterment of others is very different from promoting your identity for the glorification of self.  (DESIZING, p. 84)

From that, it's not hard to see how this now dominant model of church life has impacted the political predilections of American Christians.  We have been trained to see authority as vested in a single figure, one who is centered as the source of all authority.   

And just as the power of bishops and cardinals once affirmed the divine right of kings, so now the power of the CEO pastor and the Christian celebrity influencer "blesses" a new breed of authoritarian. 

With that expectation reinforced from the heart of a politically compromised faith, the people cry for a king, and AmeriChrist, Inc. is all too happy to oblige.

Tesla is a Metaphor

I've always loved cars, so I have opinions about Tesla.

It's a success story, without question.  The Model S has aged, but it's still a handsome and powerful large hatchback, which is the ideal form factor for a car.  Tesla Model 3s (the affordable sedan) and Tesla Model Ys (the tall ute-ish hatchback version of the 3) are the most common electric cars around.  There are five of them on my block.  

The Model X is...well...a little goofy.  Those "Falcon doors" could not be more overcomplex, brah, and even my 2012 Odyssey has middle row seats that recline.  The Cybertruck is simply preposterous, with form so defiant of function that it makes a Hummer EV look like a logical purchase.  And the Roadster?   Only Elon's ever going to have one of those.  That said, I understand why one would own a Tesla, or lease a Tesla.  

But there are elements of the Tesla experience that aren't front and center to most Americans.

First, that Tesla is now more of a Chinese company than an American company.  We don't get their Chinese market cars, but the Gigafactories Musk has built in mainland China produce more cars there than Tesla produces here.  Those Chinese cars are the ones that get exported to the rest of the world, as they cost about 20% less to manufacture than the US cars.  Anecdotally, they're also of higher quality, because the Chinese EV market is fiercely competitive.  I have no beef with this, but it's a wee bit more... er... "globalist" than most 'Muricans grasp.

Second, that Tesla's all-screen all-the-time approach to telematics is an ergonomic abomination.   Yeah, their UI is good.  But using a single touchscreen for every function isn't "revolutionary."  It's a maladaptive mutation.  I don't want to swipe to shift.  I don't want every control to require me to look way from the road.  But then again, it's not a "control."  The goal of Tesla, clearly stated, is to take the ability to drive away from drivers.  Full Self Driving, they proclaim!  It's coming!  Let it drive for you!  This, as someone who likes to drive, is precisely what I don't want.  

Third, Teslas have a legendary issue with braking.  They're "fast," but only in a straight line.  But there's an issue when it comes to...stopping.   Like, say, in the Annual Car and Driver Lightning Lap competition.  Every year for the last 18 years, C&D has taken the fastest cars from manufacturers, and ripped 'em around Virginia International Raceway.  Tesla has offered up a vehicle...never.  Only once, back in 2016, was a stock Model S run hard around the VIR, and it...failed.   It was a P85D, the fastest of the Teslas at the time, and it went real fast down the first straight, at which point its brakes failed, and it gimped around the rest of the track in a reduced power mode, and then a suspension failure alert.  That was ten years ago.  But a similar recent track test of the Model 3 Performance resulted in the same basic failure.  The latest Tesla Model S Plaid has the same problem.  Can those flaws be remedied?  Sure.  You can pay Tesla $27,000 more dollars for an upgraded brake package.  You can improve the brakes in the aftermarket.  

Teslas are great at going real fast, once.  But when pushed hard, their stock brakes are a significant and lingering weakness.  As is changing direction abruptly.  

Both of which only matter if you are, you know, driving.

So, to summarize, the primary systemic Tesla flaws are twofold:

1) They're dangerously prone to going faster than they can safely manage;

2) They're increasingly designed to take our personal agency away.

Which, now, seems just the weensiest bit...metaphoric.

I Feel It in The Earth

This Monday, my plan had been to begin my spring planting indoors.  I've got two grow-spaces cobbled together in my laundry room, as I took the reflective bubble-wrap from several packages and a pair of inexpensive grow-lights and created creches for my seedlings.  Basil and tomato are the plan, and all of those saved seeds from last year were to go into the soil from my compost piles.

That compost dates back from the leaf-fall the year before last, augmented with twelve months worth of coffee grounds and kitchen leavings, and then mingled up with all of the nitrogen-rich clippings from a long season of mowing.

Every year for the last decade, I've composted, and after two years of adding to it and turning it, that compost has always been...at this point in the season...a dark rich perfection.

But this year, the soil isn't soil.  It's close, but it's not completely broken down.  Large fragments of partially decomposed leaf and grass matter remained undigested by both microorganism and worm, and the resultant looser, mulchy, hay-like substrate isn't likely to work for seed starts.

It seems well enough suited to starting potatoes, and to amend some of my raised beds.  If I leave it for another four or five months, the remainder will likely have fully broken down.  But it's not there yet.

The "why" of that seems simple enough.  As I compost out in the open, rather than in a contained barrel, the historic drought that plagued this region last summer is the most likely culprit.  Though in shade and regularly pitchforked, the pile is exposed to air, and that air was devoid of moisture.  Bone-dry leaves and clippings aren't a happy home for the detritivores on whom the process relies, and so it just didn't quite happen.

I was aware of this likelihood, and probably should have soaked the pile a few times over the summer, but when a region is in drought, "I'm watering my dirt" seems an odd choice, particularly as I tend to leave my ground cover to fend for itself.

Still and all, it's yet another reminder that the systems upon which we rely for life are becoming something rather less amenable to us.  

"For the world," said Treebeard to Galadriel, "is changing."  

And though I am a short-lived human, and not a near-immortal Ent, I can feel it in the earth nonetheless.

Personal Liberties and Free Markets

American "libertarianism" has, at the heart of it, one single catastrophic flaw.  That flaw is this: the assumption that personal liberty and free markets are not in tension with one another.

Completely free markets...meaning societies in which there are no boundaries imposed on capital or the marketplace...are conducive only to the concentration of capital.  Capital, as a social proxy for power, acts precisely the same way all social power operates.  It is drawn to itself, as those with power are empowered to amass more power.  This is true politically, and it is also true economically. 

The two spheres are and have always been interwoven, as wealth supports the state, and the state protects wealth.  

What neither inherently protects is your personal liberty.  Without the clear boundaries established by disciplined adherence to constitutional law, the state can easily become a monster.  Without a constitutionally ordered state to counterbalance its unfettered venality and avarice, the market is no less dangerous.  Slavery and indenture are both, after all, the state of being owned, and that's economic.

In a market unresponsive to any purpose higher than itself, there is no motivation other than profit maximization, and profit maximization ultimately enslaves us all.  This is particularly true as the marketplace seizes control of information ecosystems, because then capital can create not just products and services, but our desire for those products and services.  

"Marketing," after all, is no different from propaganda.  Both seek to shape the minds of a malleable populace, because it's often easier to make people want your product than to make a product people want.

And Lord, do we now "want" some strange things.

Like, say, thousand dollar phones.  Or sixty thousand dollar SUVs.  Or health care that is cripplingly, overwhelmingly, inhumanly expensive.  We placidly accept the expectation that life must be spent forever in debt, that debt is the norm, that paying interest to a corporation for the privilege of buying groceries is just the way things work.

These assumptions are imposed because they are a profitable imposition.  They are also markers of a disordered market, where enlightened self-interest has been intentionally blinded.  

An unregulated and disordered market is the collective equivalent of an unregulated and disordered mind.  If driven by solipsistic self-interest alone, it is no more free than a soul trapped in megalomania or paranoid delusion.  

And we are trapped in that cage with it.