Here we go again. The collective IQ of the planet drops another ten points as the orange-hued herald of chaos returns to his favorite pastime: economic arson. This time, the weapon of choice is the tariff—a blunt-force trauma tool that politicians love because it sounds like 'making the foreigners pay,' when in reality, it’s just a fancy way of making you, the average American consumer, pay five dollars for a head of lettuce and ten for a mediocre baguette. But even in the annals of Trumpian absurdity, his latest decree manages to reach a level of slapstick comedy that would be funny if it weren’t so pathetically stupid.

Among the list of targets for a 25% across-the-board tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico—and a 10% spite-tax on China—is a tiny, fog-drenched rock in the North Atlantic called Saint Pierre and Miquelon. For those of you whose education was provided by the American public school system, Saint Pierre and Miquelon is a self-governing overseas collectivity of France. It has a population of about 6,000 people, most of whom spend their time fishing, speaking French, and trying to stay warm. It is, for all intents and purposes, a rounding error on a global map. Yet, because these islands sit off the coast of Newfoundland, the incoming administration’s trade geniuses have decided that these 6,000 people are a mortal threat to the American economy.

The logic, if you can call the frantic firing of synapses in the MAGA brain ‘logic,’ is that if it’s in North America and it isn’t the USA, it needs to be punished. The Right will tell you this is a masterstroke of geopolitical leverage—a bold move to stop fentanyl and illegal migration. Yes, because as we all know, the primary route for drug cartels is via a French-speaking fishing village in the subarctic Atlantic. I can see it now: El Chapo’s successors trading kilos of cocaine for salted cod and berets, then smuggling them into Maine via a flotilla of puffins. It’s a narrative so moronic that only a base fueled by lead paint and Facebook memes could swallow it.

Meanwhile, the Left is performing its usual choreographed dance of pearl-clutching and moral superiority. They’ll talk about ‘international norms’ and ‘diplomatic bridges,’ as if the world order they built wasn’t already a rotting corpse held together by hypocrisy and cheap plastic. They pretend to care about the inhabitants of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, but they couldn’t find the islands with a GPS and a magnifying glass. Their only real concern is that their favorite brand of artisanal French butter might increase in price, or that their neoliberal fantasy of a borderless world is being interrupted by a man who treats a map of the world like a coloring book.

The reality is that we are witnessing the final, sputtering gasps of a coherent foreign policy. Slapping a 25% tariff on a French territory because you’re mad at Canada is like burning down your neighbor’s shed because you’re annoyed with the mailman. It is performative cruelty designed to satisfy a domestic audience that craves the appearance of ‘winning’ without ever understanding the cost. These tariffs won’t stop fentanyl. They won’t stop migration. They will, however, ensure that the cost of living continues its upward trajectory toward the stratosphere, leaving the same people who voted for this mess wondering why their paychecks are vanishing into the pockets of the federal government.

But let’s talk about the victim here: Saint Pierre and Miquelon. This tiny archipelago is now a pawn in a game played by a man who likely thinks ‘Miquelon’ is a type of expensive steak. It is the perfect metaphor for the 21st century: a small, defenseless entity being crushed by the tectonic plates of two massive, incompetent political ideologies. The Right wants to build walls out of taxes, and the Left wants to build walls out of ‘correct’ opinions, and everyone in the middle gets flattened. The people of Saint Pierre will survive; they’ve survived centuries of Atlantic gales and French bureaucracy. But America? We are the ones who have to live in the fallout of this intellectual wasteland. We are the ones who think that taxing a puffin-infested rock is a victory for the working class. We deserve every bit of the economic misery we are so eagerly voting for. Congratulations, everyone. We’ve reached the peak of human achievement: making it too expensive to import fish from a place we didn’t even know existed yesterday.