I Explain Everything

If your head is spinning at the state of the world, fear not: I explain the entire ghastly plan.

[A NOTE: this is a lengthy post filled with wild speculation. I’m not saying I’m right, but what am I saying is the blueprint I lay out here makes perfect, twisted sense.]

Step into my paranoia for a moment. Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, I’ve been trying to connect dots which may or may not actually be connected. After yesterday’s Venezuela invasion and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s warnings that Cuba’s leadership should “be concerned” about their own hold on power, I’m going to indulge my paranoia and connect those dots.

Instead of Venezuela, I’d like to begin with Greenland. When the new administration began, Trump began making bizarre noises about this massive island nation. “We have to have it,” he’s said, although he’s given no particular explanation as to why. Something about defending the homeland, I guess, despite the fact that no nation has invaded the American mainland since 1812. Forgive me, but I have a hard time swallowing that particular pill. So, if it’s not self-defense from a nation that poses, literally, no danger to us, what is it?

Greenland offers large amounts of neodymium, dysprosium, and lanthanum, rare earth materials used in an array of electronics and military hardware. The US is desperate to get their hands on these materials in order to position ourselves more firmly against China, the world’s Wal-Mart of rare earth. If we can reduce our dependence on China, we’re in a far better position to confront them if and when we decide to do that. Greenland also has something else, which I will get to in a moment.

Putting a pin in Greenland, let’s move to Canada. Why was Trump making noises about annexing our northern neighbor, as preposterous an idea as England re-annexing us? Canada is vast and mostly uninhabited. It, too, has large deposits of rare earth minerals, oil, and lumber. It, too, has something else, which I will get to in a moment.

Now let’s talk about Florida, home state of our current Commander-in-Chief. Mar-A-Lago is located at 1100 South Ocean Blvd., just down the road from Jeffrey Epstein’s former estate, in the tony enclave of Palm Beach. On October 27^th of this year, Palm Beach set a record for highest-recorded 24-hour rainfall, prompting the city to issue a rare warning of “considerable” flash flooding. Such warnings have become more common in recent decades owing to manmade climate change, which our president pretends he does not believe in. He’s lying.

Moving over for a moment to the worlds of Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, and Tucker Carlson. What do these men have in common? Aside from each of them possessing an unusual mutation known as “anti-charisma,” they also share a belief in Christian white supremacy. (The Christian part is important, as I’ll explain later.) I see no reason to lay out the evidence for this charge, but it’s plentiful. White supremacy might appear, at first, to be a detour. Well, not in my paranoiac fantasy it isn’t!

One more dot to tack to the cork board before I break out the red string: Putin.

Everybody’s favorite Judo master remains a persistent, confounding presence in what remains of the jelly donut behind Trump’s ears. Why? Their KGB president and our STD president appear to have some sort of invisible understanding. What is it? Although it’s impossible to know what Putin is promising Trump, we can make a pretty good guess: money, flattery, girls who pee on command (I’m kidding about the last one, I think).

But I wonder if those in Trump’s orbit like JD Vance, and by extension the entire Peter Thiel network, see a larger opportunity rooted in Trump’s love affair with Russia. A much larger opportunity.

Let’s return to climate change for a moment. Despite what they say, those most vociferously denying its anthropocentric origin know the planet is fucked. And they know why. And they don’t care because they know they’ll be dead by the time Mar-A-Lago goes the way of Atlantis. They also figure, because of course they do, that somebody else will figure it out. Not their problem.

Just to lay out the issues again:

• Climate change is going to make American agriculture more difficult, costlier, and will create additional strains on our water supply. That problem will not go away.

• Energy and rare earth materials: as we continue rushing headlong into our international AI arms race, a race whose winner could dominate the world in ways we’ve never seen before. Whoever first controls AGI (artificial general intelligence), followed by ASI (artificial super intelligence) will be able to create a power imbalance unmatched by any technological advancement in human history. That is, if we can first make it work and then control it. Neither of which are, by any means, certain.

• White American population decline. In a few years, white people will become an American minority. Still the dominant minority, but a minority just the same. If nothing changes, America in 2100 will look browner than it does today, with a much greater percentage of Hispanic, Asian, and mixed-race populations. Terrifyingly, food may get to start get spicier.

Now let’s put it together:

America is getting warmer. Although we remain the largest oil producer in the world, oil is on its way out. Renewables are already cheaper in many parts of the world than fossil fuels, a trend that will continue as we transition away from fossil fuels. That transition will take time more than it should, owing to American oil companies hoping to shovel as many trillions into their pockets as they can before the party ends.

Manmade climate change is going to wend its way through the American heartland, making it more difficult for the nation to feed itself. In 100 years, Minneapolis will have the same climate as Kansas City. So what will Kansas City be like? Hot. Very fucking hot.

It follows that Americans will be migrating north. So will people from further south. Large swaths of Mexico, Central, and South America will become increasingly unlivable. Southern Mexico, for example, is expected to have Sahara-like temperatures in 100 years. Plus humidity. Having lived in Savannah for the last four years, I can tell you that it’s not the 90 degree temps that do you in, it’s the 90% humidity.

Millions and millions of people will find themselves struggling to survive. Many of them will abandon their homelands. Where will all those millions of people be heading? The only direction that offers them the possibility of reprieve: north. America’s ability to control its southern border will become ever-more important. Trump’s wall, I’m guessing, will start to resemble something like the DMZ between North and South Korea, sponsored by Dunkin’ Donuts.

American citizens will also cast their eyes to the north. And guess what? Amazingly, there’s a magical, mostly uninhabited land directly to our north whose forests are just itching to be clearcut, sold, and converted to farmland. In 100 years, Mar-A-Lago will be in the sea, but Canada’s north will resemble our American Midwest. All of that delicious oil and rare earth currently entombed under Arctic permafrost will become available to whoever’s got the biggest drill. And Trump loves a big drill.

Can I interest you in a slightly damp social club.

Greenland starts to make more sense now, does it not? And here’s what ties Greenland and Canada together: the Arctic Circle, which the Arctic Institute described as a “critical focus for security, resource access, and control over emerging shipping routes.” The US Geological Institute issued a 2009 report which “estimated the Arctic held 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of the world’s natural gas (italics mine).”

As the Earth warms, the Arctic’s importance will only rise. While Alaska offers the US some direct land access to the Arctic Circle, the area’s coastline is dominated by Canada, Greenland, and Russia (with cameos by Finland and Norway). The other player making a go at the Arctic is China, a “near-Arctic state,” a nonsense designation it bestowed upon itself to justify its beefed-up Arctic presence. Whoever controls the Arctic Circle controls vast shipping lanes and resources. China wants in; so does Russia and the US.

Annexing Canada and Greenland would give the US a dominant presence in the Arctic Circle, with our only real competitors Russia and China. Which brings me back to Putin.

What is Putin’s strategic goal? Perhaps his most famous quote tells us everything we need to know about the man. Early in his 2005 Station of the Nation address, he stated, “First of all, it should be acknowledged, and I have spoken of this before, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Everything he has done since has been about restoring the old Soviet Union. Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine. All of it about returning Mother Russia to her former glory. A major obstacle to that goal is NATO, the alliance specifically created to counter Russian aggression. Who else famously harbors antipathy towards NATO? You guessed it. Our own Burger King.

Imagine that you’re Vladimir Putin looking around the globe. Seated behind the Resolute Desk is an American president enthralled with you for reasons nobody (aside from Putin, perhaps) fully understands. You whisper poison in his ear about NATO. You tell him NATO is ripping him off. You tell him that their values are aligned, that the world is made by strong men willing to do tough things. You flatter him and you dangle a prize: the Arctic Circle.

What if - I’m just saying - what if Vladimir Putin presents to Trump a new vision of the world, a vision which has the US and Russia entering into a new military and economic alliance. Yes, that would mean an American withdrawal from NATO, something Trump has already threatened to do.

Why would Trump do such a thing? Consider it from his point of view. He’s already incredibly leery of the Europeans with their froufrou manners, their tolerant societies, their free healthcare, the growing Muslim populations in some of their countries. He views NATO (and the United Nations) as a bunch of dickering ninnies too busy arguing amongst themselves to conduct the tough work of world domination.

How often has Trump praised autocrats like Xi, Putin, and Kim Jong-un for their ability to snap their fingers and get things done under pain of death? He’s doing everything in his power to reshape the American presidency in Putin’s image. Thanks to the Supreme Court, he’s been largely successful doing so. An alliance with Russia might start to make some sense, not only because it’d be fun to be on the same team as his bestie, but because a Russia/US alliance would accomplish a few things that neither nation could do on its own.

First, it would create a bulwark against China and its own territorial ambitions. Sure, they can have Taiwan, but that’s it. Second, it would weaken NATO so badly as to render the alliance toothless. That, in turn, would fracture the EU, the world’s 2^nd largest economy after the US, which would simultaneously strengthen the US’s position in the world and weaken our allies. The bank shot would be that it also strengthens Russia who will finally be freed from American sanctions. A strategic military alliance between the US and Russia – American engineering and Russia’s commitment to killing its own young men through conscription - would utterly dominate the planet.

What else does Russia have? A strong Orthodox church and lots and lots of white people. (Canada also has a bunch of whities, but they don’t have the orthodox tradition of the Russians.) When one looks at the trend of religiosity in the US, orthodox Christianity has been having a pretty good run. Just a few weeks ago, the New York Times published a story by Ruth Graham entitled, “Orthodox Church Pews are Overflowing With Converts.” But not just any converts. She writes:

Across the country, the ancient tradition of Orthodox Christianity is attracting energetic new adherents, especially among conservative young men. They are drawn to what they describe as a more demanding, even difficult, practice of Christianity. Echoing some of the rhetoric of the so-called manosphere, new waves of young converts say Orthodoxy offers them hard truths and affirms their masculinity.

In other words, MAGA is becoming more like Russia. This is by design.

And so the vision starts to become clear. A 21^st century with a very different global ordering than the 20^th, with the full flowering of democracy being replaced by a conglomeration of authoritarians carving up the inhabitable world.

Russia gets to rebuild their territories and establish themselves, with America’s backing, as a preeminent power on the European continent. The EU will remain powerful but fractious. China gets Taiwan. The Middle East and Africa remain up for grabs, with Russia and the US continuing to squabble over their various pet nations. America gets the Western Hemisphere. And I mean the entire West.

In my (again, paranoic) interpretation of the week’s events, America invaded Venezuela because we are in the early stages of establishing a new network of American vassal states in Central and South America, not dissimilar from the Soviets’ relationships with their own Cold War territories.

These countries will remain independent in name only. Nations south of our border will provide us with cheap labor, open markets, and resource rights. In return, we promise to make a small number of compliant strongmen extremely wealthy and we promise not to kill them. Whatever they do to keep their own people in line to hold up their end of the bargain will not be our concern.

Now look at this image of Trump posted by the “Trump War Room” Twitter account, in which Trump’s legs straddle the hemisphere from Alaska to the southern tip of South America.

The stated intent of the original Monroe Doctrine, whatever you think of it (and I do not have an opinion because I haven’t really studied it), was to protect these nations from European colonization and exploitation. The “Donroe Doctrine” essentially turns it up to 11, claiming the right to do whatever the hell they want to whomever the hell they want for any ol’ reason they gin up. You want to know why Marco Rubio is warning Cuba?

That’s why.

There are surely plenty of reasons why you might look at this post and go, “pshaw.” Too paranoid. Too outsized. And I might agree with you. But ask yourself this: would Stephen Miller agree with these ideas? Would JD Vance? Elon? Who in the Trump orbit would actually say “no” to such a strategy, one which creates what would be a dominant super-super power that would solidify continued American hegemony for at least the next hundred years? If such power comes at the expense of democracy and human rights, so be it.

To put it more plainly: they’re trying to destroy the United States of America and remake it in their own image. The image they appear to have in mind should be familiar. In fact, the last time we teamed up with Russia, it was to prevent such an image from becoming reality.