Egregoros

I don't know, but I imagine they took it by force - during the previous period of Hard Times.

Now it will be taken from them in the next.

I don't really blame Trump for this, he's doing what Putin is doing - recognizing that international laws, customs and norms have been discarded.

Who discarded them? Bush when he legitimized torture. Everyone when they threw rule of law overboard because muh covid. Democrats when they decided that stuffing ballot boxes was okay because "it's weally weally impowtant the good guy wins"...

Weak men make hard times is a global cultural phenomenon, it's not confined to one person.

@magicalthinking @cjd @Merc @alf Denmark colonised Greenland in the 18th century when missionary Hans Egede arrived in 1721,
In 1916, the United States bought the Danish West Indies - now the U.S. Virgin Islands - for $25 million in gold.
As part of that treaty, Woodrow Wilson said the US would not object to the Danish government extending its "political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland", formally recognising Danish sovereignty.
Greenland was inhabited by Inuit peoples from Asia and North America intermittently from around 2,500 BC. Around 985 AD, Vikings led by Erik the Red settled in southern Greenland, farming and building churches. Around the same time, ancestors of today's Inuit arrived, living as hunters and gatherers. They became the dominant culture, pushing out Viking settlers around 1400. Inuit still live in Greenland.

@cjd @alf @magicalthinking I guess you gotta hope that you'll end up with people who have the ability to use force, will be willing to be principled and defend these principles, and these principles are good.

I guess that's why I like the US and really hope for their success, they seem like the only ones who may be capable of holding and defending good principles. Everyone else is weak and so comes across as hypocritical when their laws are violated, holds bad laws, or just uses force and doesn't bother with consistency.

The problem is the US doesn't have principles either anymore. That's why we're here.

Rule by force selects for those most capable of projecting violence. This is at least eugenic because it "capable of projecting violence" implies organization, cleverness, and general evolutionary fitness. The weak are pushed back into the margins and the failed genetic mutants get wiped out.

But then the powerful come up against each other, and this is when they recognize that in perpetual war, everybody loses. This is the point at which they lay down some rules & norms, and they agree to abide by them, because they know war and they would rather restrain themselves than end up in it.

But in a world where everyone restrains themselves, being a little bit less restrained confers significant advantage. So people will always aim to cheat, first a little, then a lot, and then the rules and norms themselves become meaningless.

That's the "coyote ran off the cliff" moment, when everybody is still pretending the rules are important even though everyone is cheating in one way or another and nobody is really motivated to enforce them.

It has been argued that Putin is an Übermensch, because he is able to place himself outside of the paradigm and change the course of history. What is clear is that he was unique in having recognized early the collapse of international norms and The Countries On The Map Are Free, You Can Take Them Home With You. That is to say, you can just do things and nobody is going to be motivated enough to really fight to stop you.