Welcome to 2026, a year that feels less like a progression of history and more like a fever dream written by a bored teenager playing 'Risk' with a bag of Cheetos. Donald Trump, a man who views the world not as a collection of sovereign states but as a series of distressed assets, has decided that the Arctic is the new Mar-a-Lago. According to the latest reports, the United States is currently engaged in a geopolitical tantrum so loud it’s rattling the teeth of every diplomat from Reykjavik to Vladivostok. The centerpiece of this latest spasm of imperial ego? Greenland. Because why deal with the crumbling infrastructure of Cleveland when you can buy a giant, melting ice cube and call it progress?

Trump’s second term has kicked off with the subtlety of a flashbang in a library. We’ve already seen the hits: strikes in Syria against Islamic State remnants, because nothing says 'consistency' like returning to the sandbox you claimed to have cleaned up years ago. Then there was the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro—a move so cartoonishly blunt it makes the CIA’s Cold War efforts look like a masterclass in nuance. Maduro’s disappearance is treated by the American Right as a triumphant 'Gotcha!' moment, ignoring the fact that turning international law into a game of 'Where in the World is the Dictator' effectively dissolves the thin veneer of civilization we all pretend to enjoy. The Left, naturally, is busy drafting strongly worded tweets and planning protests that will have the cumulative impact of a wet napkin hitting a tank, weeping about 'sovereignty' as if they haven't spent the last decade cheering for their own brand of interventionist nonsense.

But the pièce de résistance is the Arctic buildup. Trump has declared that the U.S. will take control of Greenland 'by hook or by crook.' It is the ultimate real estate flex. Greenland, a self-governing territory that has repeatedly told Washington to take its checkbook and shove it, is now the target of a 'massive military buildup.' It’s a move born of a desperate, flailing desire for 'dominance' in a region that is literally liquefying under our feet. We are watching the military-industrial complex pivot its heavy machinery onto permafrost that is no longer permanent. It’s the kind of peak-human stupidity that only our species could manage: building multi-billion dollar airbases on slush so we can protect the shipping lanes that only exist because we’ve burned enough carbon to melt the ice in the first place.

The logic—if we dare call it that—is transparently cynical. The Right views Greenland as a treasure chest of rare earth minerals and a strategic balcony from which to scream at Russia. They don’t care about the people living there, nor do they care about the ecological catastrophe. To them, the Arctic is just a fresh canvas for a new generation of defense contractors to draw up invoices. The Left, conversely, will frame this as a 'threat to global democracy,' conveniently forgetting that their own paragons of virtue have spent years drooling over the same resources under the guise of 'green energy transitions.' It’s a beautiful circle of hypocrisy: we must colonize the north to save the planet, or we must colonize the north to beat the communists. Either way, the Greenlanders get a front-row seat to their own erasure.

Then there are the threats against Iran. Because apparently, the menu of global instability wasn't quite full enough. It’s the same tired script, performed by different actors with the same hollow eyes. We are told these 'interventions' are necessary for 'security,' a word that has lost all meaning in a world where the primary source of insecurity is the very government promising to fix it. Trump is in a hurry, we are told. He wants to 'dominate the narrative.' And what a narrative it is: a story of a bloated empire trying to mask its internal decay by snatching land from a NATO ally and snatching presidents from foreign palaces.

There is no 'good' side here. There is only the spectacle. On one hand, you have a populist administration that treats the globe like a Monopoly board where they’ve lost the instructions; on the other, you have a globalist establishment that is horrified not by the actions, but by the lack of decorum with which they are performed. They would prefer their Arctic colonization to be done with 'partnerships' and 'consultations' rather than 'hooks and crooks.' The result is the same: the militarization of the last quiet places on Earth.

As the military buildup centers on Greenland, we should take a moment to appreciate the sheer irony of the situation. We are witnessing the final stage of the human project: a frantic scramble for the top of the world as the bottom falls out. Trump isn't the cause of this rot; he is simply the most honest expression of it. He doesn't bother with the flowery language of 'liberation' or 'global stability.' He just wants the ice. And while the world watches in a mixture of horror and boredom, the glaciers will continue to slide into the sea, indifferent to who claims to own the water they’re turning into. In the end, we won’t need a military to defend Greenland; we’ll need a fleet of rowboats and a very long apology to the whales.