Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Trump has pulled lots of ICE out of Maine to help a Republican win her senate race there. If this is about the deep need to get illegals out and protect Americans from illegals, then politics shouldn’t get in the way of rational law enforcement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biwxp15Zh_w
American Olympians were asked what they thought of Trump’s policies. They said they didn’t agree with a lot of what’s going on but they are still here to compete for their friends and family. Trump and some Republicans attacked them viciously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEBn_sDc9dA
“Even small changes such as moving into an apartment building, moving down the block, or changing party affiliation are considered voter registration updates. Under the SAVE Act, Americans would have to go in person to their election office and present original or certified documentation to make any voter registration change.
This would make civic participation much more difficult for tens of millions of citizens every election cycle and would outright disenfranchise millions more. The policies of the SAVE Act would also be in addition to state voter ID laws that require voters to show identification at the polls
…
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require all American citizens registering to vote or updating their registration information to present documentary proof of citizenship in person. For the vast majority of Americans, this would be a passport or birth certificate.”
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-save-act-overview-and-facts/
What the US needs in Greenland is access. The US already had that and any additional access could have been negotiated for without threatening war.
Countries like Denmark and the US have already agreed to not solve differences between them with force. The US breaking that by threatening war to take territory from Denmark is a huge violation that damages American soft power.
Trump claimed that Denmark has a weak claim to Greenland because all they did is send some boats there and the US did this too. This is false or misleading because the Danes colonized Greenland before the US existed. It also further violates norms and damages relations with many countries because the US is breaking agreements it has made in the past where it acknowledged Danish control over Greenland.
Other countries know that if the US uses force, or the threat of force, to steal territory from Denmark, the US may do it to them.
The US has claimed that because Greenland can’t defend itself, the US has the right to take it. Under that logic, any stronger country can conquer many weaker countries because a lot of weak countries cannot defend themselves against stronger countries, and having that territory would give the stronger country a more forward defense against other strong countries.
For a long time, the US has dealt with this problem by having weaker countries band together in some sort of treaty organization so that they can help each other defend against a strong country and not need to invade each other for the sake of defending themselves against the bigger country.
Russia and China are not a short term threat to Greenland. Getting to Greenland with a large force would be very hard and require supply chains by US, and European territory. The US didn’t seem to see Greenland as a short term concern because the US voluntarily pulled out most of its troops and equipment and kept most of them gone.
The US also already had commercial access to Greenland, and could negotiate for mining without threatening war.
Using hard power is expensive, unreliable, and often only working while you are still willing and able to use it. Soft power can create more long run influence.
The Trump administration and Republican Congressmen have been dismissive of American allies to the point of being offensively insulting and lying about these countries and their people.
Trump is just as aggressive toward good allies as bad allies. Targeting good allies who have been good and loyal, makes those countries less likely to support you in the future.
The European allies are democracies, and the European peoples do not like Trump threatening to use military force to steal territory from a European country. This will not help get pro-American leaders elected in European countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx0W0FuKg18
Some Trump supporters don’t like the lack of due process, lack of professionalism, and lack of targeting of Trump’s deportation operations.
Others are cool with it, or maybe not aware of some of the rule of law and rights violations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA7HpyIVhaQ
Speaker Johnson made bad Biblical arguments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM5ueJA3p1w
A year ago, Rauch said Trump is not a Fascist, he’s a patrimonialist. Patrimonialist governments don’t follow the rule of law and bend the rules to enrich and empower the leader. They are not ideological. Later, Rauch concluded that Trump was doing too many things associated with Fascism, so decided he is best labeled as a Fascist.
He doesn’t think Fascists will fully take over the US like they did in Germany, so that should limit the extremes, but nevertheless, the actions of the administration fit Fascism. The government isn’t fully Fascist yet, but it has a Fascist leader.
There’s no one true definition of Fascism.
Trump’s demolition of norms about civility is a classic Fascist action.
Trump glorifies violence in his rhetoric. When agents of the state hurt or kill US citizens, he and his supporters make fun of the injured and killed, and lie about them and what happened. His communications revel in the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug smugglers.
Rauch discusses 16 more Fascist actions in his article.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zq9Zh8DjZo
“Washington already has tremendous access to Greenland under past agreements with Denmark; U.S. troops already operate in Greenland and Washington can send more. Trump’s demand that Denmark grant the territory to the U.S. is a body blow to U.S. relations with its European allies. It also hurts NATO, a military alliance that includes the U.S. and Denmark — and which would defend Greenland should an adversarial power threaten it.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/01/21/mag-toosi-greenland-00740006
“Bovino’s coat may not be a Hitlerian symbol, but it is a symbol for something else: the increasing militarization of immigration enforcement.
Uniforms perform three important roles: They reveal what an institution believes itself to be; they shape how the public sees service members; and they affect how service members see themselves.
…
By dressing immigration enforcement officials in battle-ready attire, the agency encourages agents to understand themselves not as civil servants carrying out administrative law, but as frontline combatants operating in hostile terrain. That shift in self-conception may help partially explain the aggressive tactics ICE officers have deployed in Minneapolis”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/01/24/the-problem-with-greg-bovinos-overcoat-isnt-what-you-think-00745516
“One of the issues here is that in the press, everything is conflated as being ICE. But Border Patrol had a big presence here, and, you know, Border Patrol are trained differently. They’re trained for operation at ports of entry, and it’s a different use of force policy, it is a different method of training. It’s a different environment totally. And I noticed Bovino himself came from the border patrol. He was acting like just a cowboy.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/02/02/jmart-napolitano-homeland-security-q-a-00758973