In the latest episode of 'The World is a Dumpster Fire and We are the Flies,' we find ourselves revisiting the 2019 fever dream where the United States—a country currently struggling to maintain its own crumbling bridges—attempted to purchase Greenland. While the rest of the sentient world treated the proposal with the weary sigh one reserves for a toddler demanding to buy the moon with a handful of sticky nickels, a former chief economic adviser has emerged from the mahogany shadows to assure us it was all a 'negotiating tactic.' Of course it was. Because in the vacuum of modern political discourse, there is no such thing as an impulsive, ego-driven brain fart; there are only 4D chess moves that the rest of us plebeians are too dim-witted to comprehend.

Let’s dissect this particular brand of intellectual rot. The notion that Greenland 'will stay Greenland' is presented to us as a profound geopolitical revelation rather than a basic geographical fact. We are expected to applaud the restraint of an administration that ultimately decided not to manifest destiny its way across the North Atlantic for a giant block of ice that is currently liquefying at a rate that would make a popsicle in a furnace look stable. The adviser’s insistence that this was a 'tactic' is the ultimate gaslight. It is the rhetorical equivalent of tripping down a flight of stairs and, while bleeding from the forehead, looking at the horrified onlookers and whispering, 'I was simply testing the structural integrity of the floorboards.' It is a pathetic attempt to retroactively apply a veneer of strategic brilliance to what was, in reality, the bored whim of a man who views the entire planet as a series of underperforming golf courses.

On the one side, we have the Right, whose sycophants must spend eighteen hours a day stretching their cognitive muscles to justify why wanting to buy a sovereign territory belonging to a NATO ally isn't a sign of early-onset geopolitical dementia. They drape themselves in the flag of 'national interest,' claiming we need the rare earth minerals and the strategic positioning for the inevitable resource wars. It’s a charmingly nihilistic worldview: the planet is dying, so let’s make sure we own the prettiest grave. On the other side, we have the Left, whose performative outrage over the 'colonialist undertones' of the proposal was as predictable as it was useless. They spent weeks clutching their collective pearls, tweeting about the sanctity of Danish sovereignty while ignoring the fact that their own policy platforms are usually just as disconnected from reality, only with better grammar and more scarves.

Greenland, for its part, must be looking at the United States the way a sane person looks at a neighbor who keeps asking to buy their backyard so they can build a shrine to their own reflection. The Danes, usually so polite and beige, were forced to find creative ways to say 'get lost' without triggering a trade war with a superpower led by a man who thinks the 'Art of the Deal' is a holy text rather than a ghostwritten monument to narcissism. The tragedy here isn't just the absurdity of the offer; it’s the normalization of the 'negotiating tactic' defense. If everything is a tactic, then nothing is true. A threat to withdraw from a treaty? Tactic. A bizarre rant about windmills? Tactic. A global pandemic handled with the grace of a greased pig in a ballroom? You guessed it: a masterclass in strategic maneuvering.

We live in an era where the gatekeepers of our economy—men who have never had to worry about the price of a gallon of milk—sit in plush chairs and spin tales of 'tactical positioning' to cover for the fact that they are essentially serving at the pleasure of a chaos engine. The adviser’s comments are a reminder that the people in charge don't actually care about the outcome; they care about the narrative. They want us to believe that there is a plan, even if that plan involves treating the Arctic Circle like a foreclosed condo in Boca Raton. It’s a comforting lie for a terrified public. It’s much easier to believe your leaders are calculating villains than it is to accept that they are just as confused, petty, and bored as everyone else, only with access to nuclear codes and a megaphone.

So, Greenland stays Greenland. For now. It will continue to melt, the sea levels will continue to rise, and the politicians will continue to argue over who gets to own the water. We are witnessing the final, pathetic gasps of an empire that has run out of things to build and has resorted to trying to buy things that aren't for sale. It’s a farce, a tragedy, and a bored shrug all wrapped into one. If this is the peak of human negotiation, then the ice can’t melt fast enough. We deserve the flood.