If the 21st century were a horse, any merciful owner would have shot it by now. Instead, we are forced to watch it limp through the geopolitical mud, spurred on by leaders with the intellectual depth of a cereal box and 'satirists' whose wit is as sharp as a stick of butter. The latest episode in this long-running burlesque features a Danish petition to purchase California from Donald Trump. It is a response, of course, to Trump’s earlier, equally moronic suggestion that the United States should simply buy Greenland, as if the world’s largest island were a fixer-upper with good 'natural light' and a motivated seller.

Let’s begin with the American side of this transactional psychosis. Donald Trump, a man whose entire worldview is filtered through the lens of a 1980s Atlantic City casino developer, looked at a map of the Arctic and saw a missed development opportunity. To him, Greenland isn’t a sovereign territory of the Kingdom of Denmark inhabited by actual human beings with a history and a culture; it’s a massive, frozen parking lot waiting for a 'Trump North' sign. His bid to buy the island was the ultimate expression of the American right-wing ethos: if it exists, it can be appraised, and if it can be appraised, it can be leveraged. It’s a vision of the world where people are merely the annoying biological matter that comes with the deed.

But the Danish response—the 'let’s buy California' petition—is equally nauseating. It is the definitive proof that we have reached the heat death of human creativity. This is the kind of smug, performative 'wit' that defines the modern European intellectual class. They think they’ve landed a devastating blow by suggesting they could take California off America’s hands for a pittance. They haven’t. They’ve merely revealed their own delusions of adequacy. They want California? Do they have any idea what that entails? California is a sprawling, sun-drenched fever dream of systemic failure. It’s a place where you can find the world’s wealthiest men living three blocks away from a medieval-level sanitation crisis. It is a state that is simultaneously the fifth-largest economy in the world and a bankrupt tinderbox that loses its mind every time a transformer sparks in the wind.

The Danes, in their infinite Nordic wisdom, seem to think California is just Hollywood glitz and Silicon Valley disruption. They envision a social-democratic utopia of tech innovation and progressive policy. In reality, they’d be buying a debt-laden bureaucracy that makes the European Union’s red tape look like a casual suggestion. They’d be inheriting a population of influencers who believe the sun revolves around their ring lights and tech moguls who are currently spending billions trying to upload their consciousness into a cloud that will inevitably be hacked by a teenager in a basement. The 'satire' here isn't that they want to buy it; the satire is that they think they could manage it without their precious 'Hygge' philosophy collapsing the moment they encounter a Los Angeles freeway during rush hour.

This entire exchange is a microcosm of our collective descent into irrelevance. On one hand, you have the American Right, led by a man who treats the planet like a bargain bin at a real estate auction. On the other, you have the European Left, who treat international diplomacy like a clever Twitter thread. Neither group is actually interested in governance; they are interested in 'winning' the news cycle. They are both trading in the currency of nonsense.

Greenland, for its part, must be looking at this entire spectacle with the weary detachment of an elder watching two children fight over a broken toy. The people living there aren't 'assets' to be moved on a balance sheet, but in the eyes of the modern political class, everything is an asset. Humans are just data points; land is just a line item. If Trump actually bought Greenland, he’d be bored within a week when he realized you can’t build a gold-plated golf course on a glacier without it melting into an expensive slushie. If the Danes bought California, they’d realize within twenty minutes that their high-tax, high-trust model is no match for the sheer, unbridled chaos of the American psyche.

This is the reality we inhabit. We are trapped on a rock hurtling through space, governed by people who think 'Monopoly' is a training manual and critiqued by people who think 'irony' is a substitute for action. The petition has gathered signatures, the headlines have been generated, and the intellectual vacuum of our era has expanded just a little bit more. We aren’t seeing a diplomatic dispute; we’re seeing a global talent show for the mediocre. Congratulations to everyone involved. You’ve successfully proven that no matter how much land you buy or sell, you can’t purchase a single ounce of dignity.