thefederalist.com - Trumps greenland deal makes the world more secure and makes the media less relevant than ever

he Trump administration has announced a security deal with Denmark over Greenland, surprising no one except the entire foreign policy establishment and a bunch of slogan-chanting journalists who surrendered their capacity for independent thought at least 10 years ago. This is why you don’t take legacy media seriously, and the same goes for listening to the professional brow-furrowers at the think tanks. Remember what they were saying at the beginning of the year:

Like everyone else in the dinosaur media, the toddlers at The New York Times spent January wetting their diapers over the whole thing. Trump was getting ready to attack all of Europe, starting the bloody meal with Greenland as a mere appetizer. The Times compared Trump to, you’ll never guess, Adolf Hitler, with a headline about how Nazis have always yearned to control Greenland. Trump, the leading Democrat newsletter declared, was announcing his violent intentions with regard to Greenland as a way of communicating his intent to exercise unlimited power everywhere. The world would be soaked in blood as the terrifying fascist brutally invaded Greenland, obviously.

and

Acknowledging the difference between Trump’s intent and his deal-shaping public rhetoric, NPR reported on September 19 that the agreement “came after officials from U.S., Greenland and Denmark quietly negotiated for months behind the scenes.” This is becoming the new normal: hysterical public clamor that covers calm private discussion. Apply this observation widely.

Salena Zito told us all of this a long time ago. As the headline put it at the time, Trump should be taken seriously, but not literally. The man who summed up his approach in a book called The Art of the Deal uses inflated and dramatic language to push people to the table for negotiation. Selling panic as a product, the legacy media can’t seem to allow themselves to figure this out.

Oh, they know. But they also know their audience WANTS the panic and WANTS to be told the world is about to end. Given these people have been fed a steady diet of white supremacists behind every tree, COVID-spreading MAGA antivaxxers under every bed and planet-killing global warming boiling the oceans and starving the world of plant life (or something) it's no wonder that they've developed an addiction to panic and chaos: to them, it's normal.

This week it's code violations that probably aren't occurring. Next week it will be 'Trump wants to continue marching across the North Atlantic and will forcibly invade Iceland so as to forcibly convert the population to Rastafarianism. And exploit their vast natural resources'. Or something. It doesn't have to make sense; it just has to make a bunch of people who literally can't function without the endorphins produced by panic experience more of it.

Junkies.