00:00:24 Hello, and welcome to this campfire edition of the Civic Flame. For those of you new here (welcome!), the Civic Flame is a podcast where we take a deep dive into the US constitution and explore how it isÑand is notÑworking in the US government today. Campfires are when special topics come up that we step outside the specifics of legal issues and into the more socio-political legal culture. For those of you whoÕve been riding with us for a while, welcome back and IÕm happy to have you here. 00:00:44 WhatÕs going on with the US and Greenland? Today, weÕre going to start our two (or more) part discussion on Greenland. For those of you interested in maternal health issues related to Greenland, my previous show Birthzillas does one of those, which you can check out. For those of you watching the news and wondering if the US has lost its darn mind and how bad this can possibly this oneÕs for you. Grab your crash helmet and security blankets, and letÕs go. (transition) 00:01:24 As a reminder, while I studied a lot of human rights and international law in graduate school, I am not a lawyer. Fortunately, that means I do know a lot of people who know a ton about international policy. One of those should be joining us next week to look specifically at legal and human rights issues. We wanted to push that one out a bit because the situation is moving so fast, we donÕt want to be obsolete by the time we publish. 00:01:54 Trump Claims Greenland LetÕs talk about what we do know. Donald Trump has doubled-down on his claims that we ÒneedÓ Greenland for Ònational securityÓ and that has put our allies abroad and a lot of us here at home in high anxiety mode. 00:02:13 How is Greenland connected to Minnesota A few things to keep in mind: one, this is an economics issue, this is a national security issue (but not the way Trump is framing it), and this related directly to what is going on in Minnesota. LetÕs take these things one at a time. Economics. 00:02:37 Political Economy means follow the money Whenever you see a policy that looks bonkers or seems to come out of nowhere, follow the money. In this case, the money comes from the tech-bro billionaires. I want to be clear that if you are not a billionaire, you cannot comprehend the pathological greed in that group. IÕm not being hyperbolic either, I believe that sometime in the future billionaires will be diagnosed as hoarders and studied for the sheer level of their supremacy. If you go to the TED talk blog and look for Òsix studies on how money affects the brain,Ó youÕll be able to access a lot of the information in detail that I am summarizing for you now. One is that being wealthy literally changes your brain to be less compassionate. Now, IÕm not talking about doctors, lawyers, or even actors and the kind of normal-super wealthy celebrity folks. IÕm talking about people who have multiple billions of dollars. ItÕs important to know this because Americans have a really poor understanding about order of magnitude of wealth inequality. 00:03:46 What wealth inequality and a billion dollars looks like If I gave you $3000 every day of the year, you would have $1 million dollars by the end of the year. To get to one billion dollars, I would give you a little less than $3,000,000 a day. Literally, if you have $100,000 per day since Jesus was born, you would not have a billion dollars. I checked the math: 365 days per year, times 2026 years, times $100,000. If you want to check. 00:04:30 Wealth Supremacy Why does this matter? Because there are thousands of billionaires, and they control the money. This is the issue with the study that shows the lack of empathy. And what they want, is more. It is, at this point hoarding. Capital mobility, the movement of money, rather than capital hoarding, the storage of money, is a sign of economic health. But that is not happening right now. What weÕre seeing is the hoarding (or consolidating if you want to use the non-clinical term). These same folks are building bunkers and trying to figure out how to live in space because they are preparing the The EventÑsomething that will make life on earth unlivable. Why? Because they are literally prepared to destroy the actual planet in order to make more money. 00:05:39 AI, your utility bills, and the tech bros who want Greenland And this is where AI enters the chat. AI needs massive data storage that relies on natural resources. This is why electricity and water bills are going up around the country. Data centers are moving in, their fancy lawyers are getting them tax breaks, and theyÕre using our water and our electrical grid to produce a product that takes our entry level jobs. Some of this could be solved by mandating that all data centers be net-neutral (making them have solar panels over their parking lots, one their buildings, etc). There is still the problem with water use, but youÕll have to find a better expert than me on that. 00:06:24 Minnesota, Greenland, and Resources This insatiable need for water is one of the reasons that Trump has put Minnesota under siege. Minnesota has access to massive amounts of fresh water in the US through the Great Lakes, but also lots of resources in its state forests and parks. Those resources have been heavily protected by the state governments. But, their governorÕs seat is up for election this year, their state house is pretty split between parties, and their federal representatives are also up for re-election. This is one reason why Trump is targeting the Somali communities and threatening to denaturalize, or take away their rights. 00:07:06 Minesota and Greenland are Natural resources grab So, this is a natural resources grab, whether in Greenland or in Minnesota. But itÕs also got that underlying white/western supremacy ideology of Òwe want it and indigenous people arenÕt ÒusingÓ their resources properly.Ó Properly, in this case, means for the benefit of rich white folks in an extractive and exploitative way. Colonizers gonna colonize. ItÕs the real ABC in US foreign policy: always be colonizing. 00:07:37 US Policy ABCs: Always Be Colonizing In the face the reality of global climate change already lives, Greenlanders have done remarkable work protecting their land and their resources from extractive practices. Indigenous folks around the world have long histories of resource management that works with the land they live on, and itÕs something colonizer nations have never cared forÑbecause colonizer nations see land and resources as money-making products rather than something to be protected and passed on. 00:08:07 The bro-ligarchs who bought the media So, there is the Peter Theil, Elon Musk, Russel Vought, Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, crew that are so desperate to get their hands on this that they have literally bought the information sphere in the United States to try and convince us itÕs a good idea. Remember, billionaire Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook and Instagram, billionaire Peter Theil own Palantir the global surveillance company, billionaire Sam Altman is a huge player in the development of generative AI that requires these data centers, billionaire Russel Vought works through the Heritage Foundation and now for Donald Trump to gut the government agencies responsible for stopping this overreach, Elon Musk owns social media platform Twitter/X, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, Larry Ellison helped Musk buy that platform and now owns part of the US version of TikTok and his family has the controlling share in Skydance which allowed him to take control of CBS news through his puppet Bari Weis, and his son is angling to buy Warner Brothers to add to his collection which includes Paramount. 00:09:38 Rich People DonÕt Manage their own money Now, youÕd think with all this money on the line, these people would favor global economic stability. But there are two thigs here: rich people donÕt know how money works because they donÕt manage their own money. Wealth managers do this job to protect dynastic wealth. For more on this I recommend Brooke HarringtonÕs Capital Without Borders. 00:10:04 Cryptocurrency allows them to hide But also, a lot of these guys, including Donald Trump, have invested heavily in cryptocurrency. This should tip you off that they know they are destabilizing the economic order? Why? 00:10:18 The threat to the reserve currency, the US dollar Because the US dollar is the largest reserve currency in the world. What this means is that countries around the world that engage in international finance, keep a quantity of another countryÕs money on hand. They pick a currency that is typically stable, has a predictable exchange rate, and so on. This is the reserve currency. Having the US dollar used so widely in global finance has helped create stability for our money, mitigating inflation, even when the tariffs have caused it to rise. If you check out InvestopediaÕs web page on reserve currency, itÕll give you some more history and details. For what you need to know right now, is that despite some downsides to it, having the US dollar as a reserve currency has allowed US businesses some serious latitude on the global stage. 00:11:10 NATO and Greenland If we attack NATOÑof which Greenland is a part through DenmarkÑEuropean countries and Canada may stop using the US dollar as reserve currency. Remember that after the US-bankers led Global Financial Crisis in 2008, a lot of rich people got richer and a lot of poor and middle class people lost everything. Not just in the US. And this led to some questions about changing the reserve currency. But there was not a viable option at the time, so political economists, even ones I like, said not to worry about it. It helped that the world liked Obama. But today, there are options, and it could lead the diminishing the US dollar. Meaning that everyone would feel this. 00:12:02 Billionaires make a lot of money on war and poverty I wanted this to be a shorter episode, and it isnÕt, so I apologize for that. But, the economic impacts of this will ricochet around the world. The billionaire class makes a lot of money on war (remember, Eric Prince owner of Blackwater and his own private Navy went from a million dollar company to a billion dollar company at the start of the second war in Iraq, for more on that, check out the Behind the Bastards podcast episodes on him). 00:12:39 Republicans Threatening Trump over the Money not the Morals The reason that Republicans in the US House of Representatives are threatening to impeach Trump if he invades Greenland has nothing to do with their sovereignty. Those same Republicans are letting Trump illegally kidnap the Venezuelan president and declare the US in a position of leadership over them. Follow the money. (transition) 00:13:44 Why this is George W BushÕs fault I usually donÕt take such a hard line on issues in my podcast, because when itÕs a matter of opinion, what you think about something is your business, not mine. But the reality is that attacking our allyÑGreenlandÑwill be catastrophic for US economic, security, and moral reasons. I donÕt want to point fingers here, but this is all George W. BushÕs fault. Or more precisely the fault of every world leader who didnÕt call for George W. Bush to be tried on the international stage for illegally invading Iraq in 2003. The entire Bush Administration should have faced legal consequences in the US and abroad for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The failure to do this, left the door open for Putin to invade Chechnya, Georgia, and eventually Ukraine. ObamaÕs action in Libya and Syria are also related here. Trump thinks he can use the military as the strong arm of US international economic policy because no one has stopped or punished a US president for doing so. 00:14:45 The US is following the decline of other empires The United States has done what empire throughout history do: they have turned their tactics of oppression on their people at home, and continued to expand for the oligarchic class in a way that will stretch the empire to collapse. The billionaires are already preparing to buy their way out of this crisis and leave the rest of us holding the bill: the same way they did in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, during the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and every other time. 00:15:14 Stand with Greenland and Minnesota We must stand with the sovereign people of Greenland and our allies around the world against this illegal, unwarranted, and unjust invasion. It is the moral choice. It is the ethical choice. And at the end of the day, it is the only choice that will give the United States a shot at a secure future. Take care out there, and add a few more dried beans to your prepper supplies because things might start getting wild. 00:15:41 Conclusion Until next time, keep the civic flame burning bright, even if you have to set some things on fire. (outro) This campfire edition of the civic flame is a collaboration of the Dr Fun Sponge media group with creator Amber Vayo and sound producer Matt Munyon. Thanks for listening.