Ice age
Will the bears and walruses save Greenland? Who will save us?
Temps across northern Ohio are plunging. It was 1 degree Fahrenheit when I got up yesterday morning. Snow squalls blast across Lake Erie: one minute the weather is calm, with drifting flakes and a pale sun peering through heavy overcast. Then the winds roar and within seconds the world turns white. Roads and sidewalks are slick with black ice.
I’ve been thinking lately about ice, and ICE. Masked enforcers with automatic weapons roam the nation’s cities, seizing nonwhite people and people with accents and dragging them away. One of those rounded up was Ramon Menera, a US citizen, whom Border Patrol agents zip-tied and detained “because of your accent” outside his suburban Minneapolis home. There are countless others like him.
Protesters in the Twin Cities, swathed against the frigid weather, spiky crampons on their boots, are blowing whistles, shouting at agents, and lobbing water balloons. In response, 1,500 troops from the Army’s 11th Airborne Division are being readied for deployment to Minnesota. The division is based in Alaska and is trained to operate in extreme cold. For the first time, the US military may be turned against Americans on domestic soil (or in this case, domestic ice).
On to Greenland
Even as he prepares to invade Minnesota, the president is ginning up a war against Europe. In a letter to Norway’s prime minister, Trump insisted that the United States must have “Complete and Total Control” of Greenland (or, as he repeatedly called it at Davos, “Iceland”).
While national security was the first rationale offered, the president’s letter suggests the real reason he’s willing to start a trade war or even a shooting war against our allies is that he didn’t get a prize he wanted. History is replete with wars started for bad reasons, but this one surely tops all. My father, a proud World War Two veteran, once told me he didn’t mind fighting necessary wars but “I sure as hell hate the unnecessary ones.” I’m glad he was spared seeing this.
It seems unlikely that Trump would actually invade Greenland, but that’s not the point. The point is humiliation, forcing others to grovel, bonus points if they’re world leaders. Canada’s Carney, at least, is not playing along.
I try not to circulate memes, but these stressful times call for some dark humor. Demon Flying Fox is a Berlin-based digital creator who makes AI-generated music videos. He’s not a Greenlander, and I can’t vouch for the cultural authenticity of the work. Certainly, penguins don’t live in the Arctic. But it scarcely matters. Somehow, he’s captured the moment.
Who’ll stop the madness?
Not Congress. They’ll dither and cower as long as we let them. The Republicans who control the House and Senate answer only to Trump’s base, and that base isn’t going anywhere, never mind the hopeful pundits who imagine “cracks in the MAGA coalition.” But die-hard Trump loyalists are a third of the electorate – at most. What’s up with the rest of us?
Not to discourage you further, but this recent article in The Atlantic is one of the most depressing things I’ve read. According to journalist Ashley Parker, the country is suffering from “Trump exhaustion syndrome.” She quotes Trump ally Steve Bannon: “He’s driving deep. Remember, our strategy [is] a maximalist strategy. You have to take it however deep you can take it and, quite frankly, until you meet resistance. And we haven’t met any resistance.”
Parker continues:
“We haven’t met any resistance” is overstating the case, but it is astonishing just how far Trump has pushed the country over the past year. […] Already, many Americans have grown accustomed to bands of National Guard troops patrolling their cities; the United States bombing other countries without congressional approval (or even notification); white-nationalist rhetoric filling government social-media feeds; federal funding disappearing from elite universities that are viewed as too “woke” and hostile to Trump’s movement; hundreds of thousands of immigrants being arrested and deported, often with extreme force; the once-independent Justice Department taking orders from the White House; conservative influencers masquerading as journalists; government data losing their reliability; museums quietly whitewashing history; and the White House being physically and symbolically demolished and rebuilt in Trump’s image.
She concludes:
Trump Derangement Syndrome, in many ways, has been replaced by Trump Exhaustion Syndrome: The populace notes the latest indignity, and then returns to business as usual.
It’s a harsh assessment, but not wrong, and I’m as guilty as anyone. Fifty years ago I might have made my way to the Twin Cities to join the throngs in the streets. But now? Ice would make short work of me. ICE wouldn’t have to do a thing. About all I can do is call my Ohio senators and congressman and rant at the hapless 23-year-olds tasked with answering the phones.
A moment of grace
Amid the ugliness, there’s a glimpse of redemption in my life: a moment of kindness, of grace.
I’ve started volunteering in a local food pantry once or twice a week. It’s not much of a contribution in the grand scheme of things. My job, restocking shelves, requires few skills beyond showing up. It doesn’t change the government, or its policies, or the viciously unequal society we live in. Indeed it lays bare the inequities. Why do so many people need donated surplus food to survive while I, and most people I know, lack for nothing? I think about this as I unpack cartons, chatting with shoppers as they fill their carts.
They come from across this county and many look worn down, but some look just like me. The volunteer coordinator says that in addition to low-paid workers and those who are jobless, the food bank’s clients increasingly include middle-class people who have fallen down the ladder. In this economy, they can no longer make ends meet.
Some might suggest the clients are cheating, like Reagan’s welfare queens. Really? Would you drive miles over rural roads in a snowstorm to score canned peas, instant oatmeal, and “meat-flavored” pasta sauce that contains no meat? (To be fair, the food pantry also offers meat, eggs, bread, and fresh vegetables, though not always of the quality I like to buy.) Let there be no doubt: the need is real and growing.
On to the midterms
I don’t talk politics with the food pantry clients. It wouldn’t be appropriate, and anyway I don’t want to know. It wouldn’t surprise me if many still trust Trump. It would surprise me a lot, though, if they cared more about annexing Greenland than about feeding their families. That should give Democrats their cue.
The GOP-controlled Congress is a key enabler of Trump, so flipping at least one chamber in November is imperative. State legislatures matter too. They control redistricting and the electoral machinery in most states, determining who can and can’t vote. We have some excellent candidates running statewide in Ohio and in this district specifically. They’ll be talking about work, wages, and the cost of living. I hope to be out there supporting them, maybe even going door to door. But not until the ice melts and it stops snowing.
Staying involved and persisting are important at this point. Other opportunities will arise.
Thank You for the post.
Excellent synopsis, Cathy. Chaos rewards MAGA since the public follows the new atrocity. Epstein files, anyone?