Buck Valor here, once again forced to stare into the abyss of human collective stupidity, only to find the abyss is wearing a polyester-blend baseball cap. If you haven’t been paying attention—and I envy your blissful ignorance if so—the current occupant of the White House, a man who views the world as a glorified Atlantic City foreclosure auction, recently decided he wanted to purchase Greenland. Yes, the entire landmass. Presumably, he thinks it’s a giant, untapped source of vanilla ice cream or a very large parking lot for his ego. In response, the people of Greenland, joined by the perpetually aggrieved inhabitants of the internet, have birthed a new trend: red hats emblazoned with the words 'Make America Go Away.' It is the perfect synthesis of our modern era: an absurd, imperialist delusion met with a performative, consumerist protest. We have officially reached the event horizon of irony. The 'MAGA' acronym has been hijacked and inverted, creating a feedback loop of stupidity that threatens to swallow the entire North Atlantic.

Let’s start with the American side of this transactional fever dream. The idea that one can simply 'buy' a sovereign territory in the 21st century is the ultimate expression of the American Right’s particular brand of moronic greed. It is Manifest Destiny reimagined by a man who thinks 'the art of the deal' involves yelling at the help until they give him a discount on a ham sandwich. It treats the planet not as a biosphere or a home for actual human beings, but as a series of line items on a balance sheet. The Right doesn't see a landscape of glaciers and indigenous culture; they see a strategic 'asset' with 'untapped mineral wealth'—which is just code for 'more stuff to dig up and burn so we can stay comfortably numb in our air-conditioned bunkers.' It is greed so pure it has become a form of mental illness, a pathological need to own everything that isn't nailed down, and then buy the nails. To them, the world is not a place to live, but a ledger to be balanced in favor of the loudest bully at the table.

But don’t mistake my disdain for the American Right as an endorsement of the 'resistance' and their latest fashion statement. The 'Make America Go Away' hat is the quintessential weapon of the modern Left: a low-effort, high-visibility symbol that changes absolutely nothing while providing a warm, fuzzy glow of moral superiority. It is the commodification of dissent. To 'protest' a billionaire real estate mogul by buying a mass-produced hat—likely made in a factory by people who earn less in a year than the hat costs—is the kind of irony that would make a Victorian satirist weep. The Left loves this because it requires no actual sacrifice. You don’t have to engage in complex geopolitical negotiations or understand the nuances of Danish-Greenlandic relations. You just need a credit card and a shipping address. It’s revolution for people who find the idea of a general strike too disruptive to their brunch schedule. They are not fighting the system; they are buying the system’s latest merchandise.

And then there are the Danes, the 'owners' of Greenland, standing on their high horses of European civility. They react with 'shock' and 'offense' at the suggestion that their territory is for sale, as if their own history isn’t a blood-soaked ledger of colonial acquisitions and resource extraction. They pretend to be the adults in the room, but they’re just another set of managers in the global mall, annoyed that a louder, crasser manager is trying to stage a hostile takeover of their department. Their outrage is as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny—shiny on the outside, but utterly empty within. They speak of sovereignty as a sacred principle, yet they remain tethered to the same global systems that value property over people.

The Greenlanders themselves, caught in the middle of this diplomatic slap-fight, have opted for the only sane response: mockery. But even mockery has been poisoned by the medium. By adopting the aesthetic of the very thing they hate, they are feeding the beast. The 'Make America Go Away' hat isn't an exit ramp from American cultural hegemony; it’s a toll booth on the highway. It acknowledges that the American narrative is the only one that matters, even when that narrative is a farce. We are all living in a world defined by the loudest, most obnoxious kid in the class, and our only rebellion is to write 'I hate you' on the back of his jacket. It is a pathetic state of affairs when our highest form of political engagement is a parody of a grifter’s campaign merchandise.

The truth is that 'Make America Go Away' isn’t just a slogan for Greenland; it’s a global prayer that will never be answered. America won't go away. It’s too big, too loud, and too deeply embedded in our collective psyche like a malignant tumor that also happens to provide 24/7 streaming entertainment. We are trapped in this cycle of greed and performance, watching the ice melt while we argue over the color of our headwear. The hats are red, the ice is white, and our future is a dull, depressing grey. As the permafrost thaws and the 'strategic assets' beneath the ice become accessible to the highest bidder, we will likely see more of these hats. Maybe next time they’ll be made of recycled plastic pulled from the very oceans we’re choking. That would be the final, perfect touch. A symbol of our 'awareness' of the end of the world, sold to us by the people causing it, worn by people who think a hashtag is a barricade. I’m tired. We’re all tired. But at least we’ll look consistent in the group photos of our extinction.