There was a time when the idea of an American president “taking” Greenland belonged to the category of late-night jokes, novelty coffee mugs, or cocktail-napkin geopolitics. That time has passed. What was once absurd is now merely familiar, and what is familiar has become operational.

Greenland is not the story. Greenland is the tell.

A tell, in poker, is not the big move. It is the unconscious gesture that reveals the hand. And Donald Trump’s repeated fixation on Greenland—revived, escalated, tariff-backed, and delivered with all the seriousness of a zoning dispute—is not a strategy. It is a habit. A habit that reveals how he understands the world: not as a system of sovereign nations, obligations, and constraints, but as a collection of assets, inconveniences, and scenes that ought to move faster when he snaps his fingers.

🎧 Listen to the narrated version of The World is Not a Real Estate Listing (9 minutes, 57 seconds).

At some point, calm analysis stops clarifying and starts obscuring. We are past that point.

What we are watching is not the collapse of a rules-based international order through ideology or even aggression. It is something smaller, and therefore more dangerous: the reduction of sovereignty to inconvenience. The world is not resisting Trump, in his telling; it is merely cramping his scene.

That line—“I hope I’m not cramping your scene”—belongs to Shirley MacLaine in the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In context, it is polite, almost apologetic. In this context, it becomes diagnostic. Trump does not experience other nations as equals or adversaries. He experiences them as obstacles—polite ones, rude ones, stubborn ones—but obstacles, nonetheless. Their primary offense is not opposition; it is refusal to cooperate with his momentum.

Greenland is an obstacle with minerals.

Panama is an obstacle with a toll booth.

Cuba is an obstacle that has overstayed its welcome.

Venezuela is an obstacle sitting on oil.

Different geographies. Same mental model.

This misdiagnosis is why treating Trump’s foreign policy as incoherent misses the point. It is not incoherent. It is improvised. It is a worldview assembled from grievance, appetite, and performance, unburdened by the idea that seriousness is required simply because power is absolute.

The fixation on Greenland looks unserious until you place it alongside Trump’s recurring threats to “retake” the Panama Canal. Then it stops looking random. The canal is not a marvel of international cooperation or a symbol of post-colonial sovereignty in Trump’s imagination. It is a revenue grievance. A toll booth America once controlled and, in his view, foolishly relinquished. That Panama exists as a sovereign nation in this story is incidental. The canal is the point; the country is merely scenery.

Cuba, meanwhile, is not treated as a nation at all, but as an irritation. A stubborn remnant that refuses to clear the frame. The message is not ideological—there is no serious engagement with socialism, communism, or post-Cold War reality. The message is practical and petulant: Why is this still here? Why does it keep complicating the picture? Why won’t its leaders pack up and move on?

And then there is Venezuela—the Rosetta Stone of the entire enterprise.

Strip away the rhetoric—drugs, disorder, democracy, security—and a hierarchy emerges. Oil sits at the top. Everything else functions as narrative scaffolding. This is not a quotation; it is an interpretation drawn from repetition, emphasis, and policy sequencing. Venezuela is discussed as oil first. The rest is garnish. Chasing drug runners, invoking humanitarian concern, gesturing toward regional stability—these are not false, exactly. They are secondary. They are how Trump’s appetite dresses itself when it needs a justification.

Once you see that, Greenland no longer feels bizarre. It feels inevitable.

This is where satire becomes necessary—not because the situation is funny, but because literal language starts to lie. Straightforward policy analysis implies deliberation. What we are watching is closer to vaudeville: diplomacy as performance, treaties as props, and international crises as set-ups for dominance theater.

This buffoonery is not an accident. Performance is not a byproduct of Trump’s foreign policy. It is the method.

Allies are mocked not to extract concessions, but to assert hierarchy. Tariffs are announced not to rebalance trade, but to demonstrate the capacity to disrupt. Threats are issued not because they will be carried out, but because the act of issuing them is itself the point. The message is not do this or else. The message is I can do this.

In this sense, Trump’s foreign policy resembles what might be called the Groucho Marx school of diplomacy: contradiction elevated to style, seriousness treated as weakness, and the club constantly being run by someone who insists he would never join it—except as its owner.

The difference, of course, is that Groucho’s antics ended in laughter. These do not.

What makes this moment genuinely dangerous is not that Trump misunderstands geopolitics. Many presidents have. It is that he does not believe geopolitics requires understanding. He believes it requires leverage, volume, and the willingness to make others uncomfortable. Expertise becomes an encumbrance. History becomes optional. Constraint becomes an insult.

And this is where Latin America is not an add-on to the story, but its proof.

For much of the region, this logic is not novel. It is familiar. It has worn different costumes—anti-communism, counter-narcotics, development assistance—but the underlying posture is recognizable: sovereignty respected until it interferes with extraction, access, or control. When that happens, moral language is summoned, urgency is declared, and the inconvenience is framed as a necessity.

What is new is not the impulse, but the lack of disguise.

Previous administrations, for all their failures, felt compelled to pretend. To explain. To justify. To cloak appetite in doctrine. Trump dispenses with that. He does not deny that he wants what he wants; he simply rejects the premise that wanting requires explanation.

This absolutism is why allies recalibrate quietly rather than react loudly. Not because they are untroubled, but because they understand something fundamental has shifted. American seriousness—once assumed even when policy was flawed—can no longer be taken for granted. Planning now includes contingencies for Trump’s impulses. Diplomacy now includes translation of Trump’s mood.

The damage here is not primarily economic or military. It is foundational. It erodes the shared assumption that words issued by the United States are anchored to process, constraint, and continuity. As that assumption collapses, everything downstream becomes harder: alliances fray, deterrence blurs, and smaller nations learn that the safest posture is to minimize visibility rather than assert principle.

This is not leadership. It is inconvenience management at scale.

And it is worth saying plainly: the danger is not that Trump wants things he cannot have. The danger is that he believes the world owes him an explanation for why he cannot have them.

That belief turns sovereignty into clutter and calls it decisiveness. It treats history as a bad lease and calls it renewal. It mistakes appetite for realism and calls it strength.

At some point, the world stops laughing at the absurdity and starts planning around the absence of seriousness. We are at that point now.

Greenland will remain where it is. Panama will remain Panama. Cuba will persist in its inconvenient existence. Venezuela’s oil will not magically transform grievance into governance.

But the pattern has been revealed, and it will not un-reveal itself.

The world is not a real estate listing. It is not a scene to be managed, a property to be flipped, or an obstacle to be removed for momentum’s sake. When power forgets that—when it treats sovereignty as something that exists only until it becomes annoying—it does not just destabilize others.

It disqualifies itself.

The damage here is not primarily economic or military. It is foundational. It erodes the shared assumption that words issued by the United States are anchored to process, constraint, and continuity—that they emerge from institutions rather than impulse, from deliberation rather than appetite. As foreign leaders begin to treat American statements as provisional, transactional, or theatrical, they do not adjust their policies; they adjust their expectations. And that, more than any tariff or threat, is the lasting damage of this moment: not that America is feared, but that seriousness was never the hallmark of Trump’s leadership.

~Dunneagin

There was a time when the idea of an American president “taking” Greenland belonged to the category of late-night jokes, novelty coffee mugs, or cocktail-napkin geopolitics. That time has passed. What was once absurd is now merely familiar, and what is familiar has become operational.

Greenland is not the story. Greenland is the tell.

A tell, in poker, is not the big move. It is the unconscious gesture that reveals the hand. And Donald Trump’s repeated fixation on Greenland—revived, escalated, tariff-backed, and delivered with all the seriousness of a zoning dispute—is not a strategy. It is a habit. A habit that reveals how he understands the world: not as a system of sovereign nations, obligations, and constraints, but as a collection of assets, inconveniences, and scenes that ought to move faster when he snaps his fingers.

🎧 Listen to the narrated version of The World is Not a Real Estate Listing (9 minutes, 57 seconds).

At some point, calm analysis stops clarifying and starts obscuring. We are past that point.

What we are watching is not the collapse of a rules-based international order through ideology or even aggression. It is something smaller, and therefore more dangerous: the reduction of sovereignty to inconvenience. The world is not resisting Trump, in his telling; it is merely cramping his scene.

That line—“I hope I’m not cramping your scene”—belongs to Shirley MacLaine in the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In context, it is polite, almost apologetic. In this context, it becomes diagnostic. Trump does not experience other nations as equals or adversaries. He experiences them as obstacles—polite ones, rude ones, stubborn ones—but obstacles, nonetheless. Their primary offense is not opposition; it is refusal to cooperate with his momentum.

Greenland is an obstacle with minerals.

Panama is an obstacle with a toll booth.

Cuba is an obstacle that has overstayed its welcome.

Venezuela is an obstacle sitting on oil.

Different geographies. Same mental model.

This misdiagnosis is why treating Trump’s foreign policy as incoherent misses the point. It is not incoherent. It is improvised. It is a worldview assembled from grievance, appetite, and performance, unburdened by the idea that seriousness is required simply because power is absolute.

The fixation on Greenland looks unserious until you place it alongside Trump’s recurring threats to “retake” the Panama Canal. Then it stops looking random. The canal is not a marvel of international cooperation or a symbol of post-colonial sovereignty in Trump’s imagination. It is a revenue grievance. A toll booth America once controlled and, in his view, foolishly relinquished. That Panama exists as a sovereign nation in this story is incidental. The canal is the point; the country is merely scenery.

Cuba, meanwhile, is not treated as a nation at all, but as an irritation. A stubborn remnant that refuses to clear the frame. The message is not ideological—there is no serious engagement with socialism, communism, or post-Cold War reality. The message is practical and petulant: Why is this still here? Why does it keep complicating the picture? Why won’t its leaders pack up and move on?

And then there is Venezuela—the Rosetta Stone of the entire enterprise.

Strip away the rhetoric—drugs, disorder, democracy, security—and a hierarchy emerges. Oil sits at the top. Everything else functions as narrative scaffolding. This is not a quotation; it is an interpretation drawn from repetition, emphasis, and policy sequencing. Venezuela is discussed as oil first. The rest is garnish. Chasing drug runners, invoking humanitarian concern, gesturing toward regional stability—these are not false, exactly. They are secondary. They are how Trump’s appetite dresses itself when it needs a justification.

Once you see that, Greenland no longer feels bizarre. It feels inevitable.

This is where satire becomes necessary—not because the situation is funny, but because literal language starts to lie. Straightforward policy analysis implies deliberation. What we are watching is closer to vaudeville: diplomacy as performance, treaties as props, and international crises as set-ups for dominance theater.

This buffoonery is not an accident. Performance is not a byproduct of Trump’s foreign policy. It is the method.

Allies are mocked not to extract concessions, but to assert hierarchy. Tariffs are announced not to rebalance trade, but to demonstrate the capacity to disrupt. Threats are issued not because they will be carried out, but because the act of issuing them is itself the point. The message is not do this or else. The message is I can do this.

In this sense, Trump’s foreign policy resembles what might be called the Groucho Marx school of diplomacy: contradiction elevated to style, seriousness treated as weakness, and the club constantly being run by someone who insists he would never join it—except as its owner.

The difference, of course, is that Groucho’s antics ended in laughter. These do not.

What makes this moment genuinely dangerous is not that Trump misunderstands geopolitics. Many presidents have. It is that he does not believe geopolitics requires understanding. He believes it requires leverage, volume, and the willingness to make others uncomfortable. Expertise becomes an encumbrance. History becomes optional. Constraint becomes an insult.

And this is where Latin America is not an add-on to the story, but its proof.

For much of the region, this logic is not novel. It is familiar. It has worn different costumes—anti-communism, counter-narcotics, development assistance—but the underlying posture is recognizable: sovereignty respected until it interferes with extraction, access, or control. When that happens, moral language is summoned, urgency is declared, and the inconvenience is framed as a necessity.

What is new is not the impulse, but the lack of disguise.

Previous administrations, for all their failures, felt compelled to pretend. To explain. To justify. To cloak appetite in doctrine. Trump dispenses with that. He does not deny that he wants what he wants; he simply rejects the premise that wanting requires explanation.

This absolutism is why allies recalibrate quietly rather than react loudly. Not because they are untroubled, but because they understand something fundamental has shifted. American seriousness—once assumed even when policy was flawed—can no longer be taken for granted. Planning now includes contingencies for Trump’s impulses. Diplomacy now includes translation of Trump’s mood.

The damage here is not primarily economic or military. It is foundational. It erodes the shared assumption that words issued by the United States are anchored to process, constraint, and continuity. As that assumption collapses, everything downstream becomes harder: alliances fray, deterrence blurs, and smaller nations learn that the safest posture is to minimize visibility rather than assert principle.

This is not leadership. It is inconvenience management at scale.

And it is worth saying plainly: the danger is not that Trump wants things he cannot have. The danger is that he believes the world owes him an explanation for why he cannot have them.

That belief turns sovereignty into clutter and calls it decisiveness. It treats history as a bad lease and calls it renewal. It mistakes appetite for realism and calls it strength.

At some point, the world stops laughing at the absurdity and starts planning around the absence of seriousness. We are at that point now.

Greenland will remain where it is. Panama will remain Panama. Cuba will persist in its inconvenient existence. Venezuela’s oil will not magically transform grievance into governance.

But the pattern has been revealed, and it will not un-reveal itself.

The world is not a real estate listing. It is not a scene to be managed, a property to be flipped, or an obstacle to be removed for momentum’s sake. When power forgets that—when it treats sovereignty as something that exists only until it becomes annoying—it does not just destabilize others.

It disqualifies itself.

The damage here is not primarily economic or military. It is foundational. It erodes the shared assumption that words issued by the United States are anchored to process, constraint, and continuity—that they emerge from institutions rather than impulse, from deliberation rather than appetite. As foreign leaders begin to treat American statements as provisional, transactional, or theatrical, they do not adjust their policies; they adjust their expectations. And that, more than any tariff or threat, is the lasting damage of this moment: not that America is feared, but that seriousness was never the hallmark of Trump’s leadership.

~Dunneagin