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But maybe this is all necessary [1]
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Date: 2025-04-06
THAT SAME DARK, misty, and evil-feeling November night when the outcome of the American elections became clear, I fell violently ill. I’m still not sure if it was because of the election results or because I had eaten too many pumpkin seeds. It took me weeks to recover. Half of the time I was couch ridden, staring up at the ceiling, the other half, I sat in cafes peering out of windows while strangers tried to engage me about politics. All of November passed by like that in a half dream. I was numb and I felt at that time that something had broken or had died. Something had vanished. But for all eternity? What the hell was going on?
November has become the line though, the line between before and after. It’s only recently that I have understood that everything that has happened since is mirroring what came before. Everything that has happened after has happened before, but in other ways. We’ve just forgotten about these things, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t happen. Why we now have to relive them is lost on me, but maybe this is all necessary. Maybe we have to relive this.
As I write this now it’s a bright March morning. The daylight is streaming through the curtains and the coffee has come to a sumptuous boil. The alarm clock told me that it was six when I woke but the news has informed me that I must be still dreaming, because the news is absurd. Trump’s envoy to Moscow Mr. Witkoff says that Putin is a wonderful person. Maybe he would like to say that to my neighbors who fled a bombarded Kharkiv three years ago? Vice President Vance’s wife Usha and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz are en route to Greenland where Usha will take in a dog-sledding event and Waltz will visit a military base. The new Greenlandic prime minister has already called this a provocation. He’s from there. Greenland is his land. So why do these Americans then say that they have the right to take his home away?
By now, I don’t remember how many times Trump has said that Canada could be America’s 51st state. They could keep their national anthem. The American president has promised them at least that. He’s such a generous man that he would even allow them to keep their flag too. America would cherish its 51st state in the same way that it would cherish its Gaza hotels and casinos, he has said. For Trump, Canada is an illogical political entity. For him, the Canadian and American border was drawn at random “decades and decades ago,” as he said recently in the White House. In reality, the border was fixed in 1846 between Great Britain and the US. In reality, the US received its independence from Great Britain in 1783. It was not Canada that drew that line, because Canada did not have its own prime minister until 1867. The math tells me that this all happened 180 years ago. Eighteen of those many “decades and decades.”
That was all in reality, but reality is no match for Trump. He also said that a Dane once sailed to Greenland 200 years ago and that’s why Denmark doesn’t have a legitimate claim to Greenland. But the Scandinavians were living there in the Viking era, and those who remained joined the Inuit. That Danish ship sailed 300, not 200 years ago. Why do I even waste my time arguing, I wonder. Everyone knows that reality doesn’t matter. Trump said in his March speech that we will get Greenland one way or another, and the Republicans only stood and applauded. Trump even has his own explainers and supporters in Estonia who appear each day on social media to explain to the Estonian people why the Orange One is always correct. It’s been strange to witness how they do this and they do it with such enthusiasm. Maybe they had nothing better to do than to hand over their souls in exchange for nothing. A shame, because America was in its bloody moments of birth against authoritarianism, or so I was taught.
When you read Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, it’s all well explained. Americans no longer wished to live under a hereditary monarchy, Paine wrote. Their desire was liberty. “Give me liberty or give me death,” were the words of the Virginian Patrick Henry in 1775. Henry also said, “There is no retreat but in submission and slavery.” But some Americans want to be slaves. They wish to share their slave joy with their Canadian and Greenlandic brethren. Even when they don’t want to be Americans, they shouldn’t have the right to decide on the matter. Rather, they should be the competent, loyal slaves of their spiritual master. This is their logic.
The same logic also underpins Russian foreign policy. The Ukrainians have forgotten how wonderful it is to be the slaves of Moscow. One day they will forget who they are and they will only think the thoughts of their tsar and speak in the language of their tsar too. This is how the Russians think, but can the people who think in such a way really be Americans? America isn’t just flags, eagles, guns, and money. America is, or was, an idea of the Enlightenment. Just as Estonians still live in part in the 1920s with their land reforms, bowties, black cars and state officials, because that is when their country was created, Americans have one foot in the end of the 18th century when debates raged over the Rights of Man. I must admit, I am starting to understand the tumult of that era more. The old questions are resurfacing. We have been here before, haven’t we? We’ve just forgotten all about those days, but we are remembering them.
When Trump speaks about Canada, I am reminded of General Benedict Arnold’s ill-fated expedition to the north in 1775. It was the desire of the Americans that Quebec would join in their cause against the British. Two armies were sent to Canada the summer before American independence was declared. One army went north from New York. This was the army of Richard Montgomery. Arnold’s army went through the wilderness of New England. At first it must have seemed simple. If you look at a map, it looks that way. But the route was treacherous and there were a lot of waterfalls. Arnold’s forces carried small boats along the way, with the hope they could use them upstream. A third of his army deserted him. The others fell ill and were starving. In the end, just half of his army made it to Canada. In the pitched battle at Quebec City, Richard Montgomery was slain and Arnold was wounded.
The Americans had to retreat back home.
I don’t know why this one event stands out in my mind. Most experts are talking about Germany and the 1930s these days. In London, there are even signs on the Tube that show Elon Musk giving the Roman salute and which proclaim his Teslas can accelerate from “0 to 1939 in 3 seconds.” People look at Elon Musk and think about Adolf Hitler. I listen to Donald Trump and think about Benedict Arnold’s futile march through the wilderness into Canada. Some thought the Canadians would be on the side of the Americans, but it was all an illusion. They were deceived by their fantasies. The Americans did control Montreal for some time and the French disliked them because their administration of the city was poorly organized. When Trump now talks about how Canada could become the 51st state, I wonder if he has even read any history? Of course not. He will continue to tell us his tall tales. We must sit uncomfortably on the couch, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio during the infamous meeting with Zelenskyy, looking for a way to hide ourselves inside of the furniture. Surely this current discomfort will pass. Surely our generals will realize that it was foolish to invade Canada.
By now, you might have figured out that I have read a little too much about the American Revolution. But the Revolution has always fascinated me since I was a little boy. All of that bloody drama and all of those three-cornered hats. All of those bayonets and buxom ladies in poofy dresses. At that time, I probably wanted to live through such a momentous period of time. As I write this, I’m not so sure that was such a good thing to wish for anymore. I am often asked as an American here what I think and I have to answer that all of the uncomfortable questions about the American project are now resurfacing. All of the old ghosts have been stirred and are restless. We are starting to sense these ghosts and to understand them.
The greatest question raised by these restless ghosts concerns America. Because, while we talk about the right of Canada to exist, the right of Greenland to exist, the right of Ukraine or Taiwan to exist, one also wonders what right the United States has to exist. An America true to the ideas of its founding exists as an idea, and therefore as a kind of country. An America denuded of its basic premises, one that deports people without due process, just as the British Empire removed the French from Nova Scotia, is no longer its old self, but just a bunch of territories patched together, where the president is something like the owner of a large estate. It loses the qualities that distinguish it as a country and so it becomes cosmetic, the kind of fake country that Putin railed against in his mad rambling treatise on Russians and Ukrainians.
Without its ideas, America is just the land it took from its indigenous peoples. No matter how many nuclear warheads it has, or how many people it deports, or how many federal workers it lays off, no matter how many dissidents are jailed, this truth cannot be ignored. Here I am reminded of an interview I heard not long ago with Joe Stahlman, a scholar and researcher of Tuscarora descent, who remarked on the attempts of his ancestors to create peace with the restless Europeans who had turned up on their shores. They called these Europeans “younger brothers,” because they were the newest peoples to live on Turtle Island. In the belief systems of the Natives, it was believed that the Earth existed on the back of a turtle and that this giant turtle was swimming through space. “They tried to educate their younger brothers on how to conduct themselves on Turtle Island,” he said, without remarking on whether or not this attempt had been successful. Probably not. Perhaps someday. It is hard for me to watch America without thinking of that troubled younger brother who couldn’t be reasoned with.
They tried to teach their younger brother how to behave, but he just didn’t listen.
[END]
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