Day 22: Foreign Land Grabs

The Long-term Effect of Trump's Lies and Absurdities

Day 22 — December 22, 2024

Still a private citizen, Donald Trump staked claims on the territory of two sovereign nations. After the President of Panama rebuffed Trump’s suggestion that the US should reclaim the Panama Canal from Panama, Trump replied: “we’ll see about that!”

Early this morning, Trump staked another claim—this time declaring that the United States should seize Greenland from Denmark:

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In a different context, from a different source, such saber-rattling would spark international crises.

But it’s Trump, so most of the nation and world—his own allies included—dismiss these comments. But even when shrugged off, his “fire hose” of lies and absurdities serve a broader anti-democratic purpose, as Anne Applebaum captures in her latest book:

“A ‘firehouse of falsehoods’ produces not outrage but nihilism. Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you can never know? If you can’t understand what is going on around you, then you are not going to join a great movement for democracy, or follow a truth-telling leader, or listen when anyone speaks about positive political change. Instead, you will avoid politics altogether. Autocrats have an enormous incentive to spread that hopelessness and cynicism, not only in their one countries, but around the world.”

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“[M]any of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., have learned from the mistakes of the 20th century. They don’t offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and they don’t inspire them to build a better world. Instead they teach people to be cynical and passive, because there is no better world to build. Their goal is to persuade people to mind their own business, stay out of politics, and never hope for a democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too.

You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.”