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Brad discusses the implications of Donald Trump's rhetoric on Greenland, NATO, and the potential repeal of 20th-century policies. He dissects the historical significance of NATO, its formation, and the threat posed by Trump's remarks and also revisits his previous conversation on RFK's controversial views on vaccines and food regulation, emphasizing the dangers of disregarding the scientific basis of public health policies. The episode concludes with a detailed response to a listener's email about raw milk and the broader ramifications of repealing existing regulations.
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I don't know that Denmark has any right title and interest, and we're going to find that.
But I can tell you, you saw the clips that were released.
The people of Greenland would love to become a state of the United States of America.
We were greeted with tremendous love and affection and respect.
The people would like to be a part of the United States.
Now, Denmark maybe doesn't like it, but then...
We can't be too happy with Denmark, and maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs.
Because they have to do this, I think, for the free world.
We need that to protect the free world.
is very important.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
Brad Onisha here.
Great to be with you on this Monday.
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Today I want to talk more about the idea that I introduced last week.
That idea is the desire to repeal the 20th century.
I talked about repealing the 20th century in relationship to RFK's approach to vaccines and Mark Andreessen, the tech magnate's goal of rolling back all kinds of For bonus content today,
I want to respond to just a really fantastic listener email about last week's episode in RFK, about vaccines, about our food system, and about the ways that we might think about those things going forward.
They want to repeal the 20th century.
The thesis that I've had in my head for months now is that we now live in a system that was largely built by our grandparents' or great-grandparents' generation, depending on how old you are.
We live in a system that was not really even built by our parents.
So I will just say, I am in my 40s.
My father was born in 1948. I would say that the system we're living in was put in place starting in the 30s, going to the 40s, and that by the time he was in college in the 60s, we were seeing that system change and grow.
And obviously him and his generation had an integral part in that, whether it was the 60s, whether it was the Vietnam War and those who were for and against and on all sides, whether it was fights for...
Protection of interracial marriage or no-fault divorce or women's rights in the workplace, whether it was queer representation or Reagan's economics, I could go on down the line.
But here's the thesis.
That my dad's generation is getting older.
They're in their 70s.
They're in their 80s.
And they were kind of 20 years old at a time when the system we're living in was, in many ways, already constructed.
And you're thinking, Brad, what are you talking about?
And I tried to go over this last week.
It could be child labor laws.
It could be Social Security.
It could be unions.
It could be the 40-hour work week.
It could be taxpayer-funded public school for everybody.
It could be fire departments paid for by tax dollars.
It could be all kinds of things.
And a lot of those things got rolling at a time when...
Many of us who are now adults and making decisions in the world were not even close to being born yet.
Last week I talked about that in terms of vaccines.
I talked about that in terms of the FDA and our approaches to health and food and all kinds of stuff.
Today I want to talk about that in relationship to NATO because Donald Trump is now threatening to invade Greenland, to take back...
What he thinks is the, or take back or take the Panama Canal.
And why not?
Let's throw Canada in there, too.
I want to be clear that I don't think this is the highest priority right now.
I don't think that you should be staying up at night right now, losing sleep, that he's going to actually try this.
I don't think this is the thing that is the most pressing danger.
Don't get me wrong, as I'm going to explain today, I think it is a danger.
I think it's a problem.
But I don't think it's the thing that is most immediate.
I think what is more important, and I think other commentators have pointed this out in better ways than me, if we're talking about Denmark and Greenland, if we're talking about the Panama Canal, we're not talking about Pete Hexeth, we're not talking about RFK, We're not talking about any of these nominees like Kash Patel that we should be pressing at every second, that we should be calling our senators about, calling our representatives about, trying to raise alarms about, and so on.
We're not thinking about immigration and families that will be separated or people who will be put in camps because of the Trump administration's draconian measures.
So why talk about it today?
I want to talk about it today because I think it is a really important example of how the world is changing and the system that was built is now seen as the enemy.
And the shifting tides in the state of global politics and the American landscape.
So, I think we all know by now that Trump has talked about Greenland a couple times.
He did it when he was president before.
He's now doing it again.
I want to focus on Greenland for one major reason today, and that's NATO. So, you can get to the Panama Canal, can talk about Canada.
But I want to talk about...
Greenland.
I mean, Canada's in there too.
I took Trump's comments about Canada to be truly distracting.
I mean, there was no...
I really put those there.
The fascination with Greenland, though, it feels more serious to me.
He's talked about it for a long time.
His attention's been on it for a long time.
And he thinks he can buy it.
It wouldn't be an invasion.
He thinks he can buy Greenland, like he's conducting a real estate deal.
And I said Friday that I think part of this obsession with Greenland and with expansion is because this is the Trump Tower of his presidency.
He can't just build a building and put his name on it, although I'm sure he's already dreaming up of all the memorials, and perhaps some Trump memorials will be put up before he's out of office.
That's what autocrats do.
They put up statues of themselves even when they're alive.
So that may happen.
But I think Trump territory is what he's after.
He wants to be the president who added to the territory of the United States, and he feels like he has a right to do it if he wants to, and so on and so forth.
Greenland is a territory of Denmark, and I want to talk about this in relation to my thesis, repealing the 20th century and having a system that is largely forgotten as to why it was built a certain way.
Have you ever come across this?
And let me use an example, right?
You ever look at...
A home that was built in the 50s or 60s, or even the 70s.
Maybe you're house hunting, maybe you're buying a house, maybe you go into someone's house and it's old.
Up until a couple years ago, I lived in a house that was built in 1905, and that house had a water tower.
And in this very strange period of my life, my office was in the old water tower.
So literally...
Every day when I would go to my office in our house, this is before we had kids, I would climb up a vertical ladder in our bedroom about 15 feet and then go up on this water tower, this old water tower platform that was turned into a little room and that's where I would work.
Now in some ways it was super romantic and cool.
I had a tower and I went up there and it was neat and it was kind of fun.
In other words, it was super annoying.
Like, you know, I spilled coffee about 300 times trying to, like, get up and down there.
You know, had to go up and down every time I needed to use the restroom or whatever else.
And, yeah, it was just not convenient by any stretch of the imagination.
Well, why would you have a tower in your house?
Well, because at some point there was no public water and needed water.
And so you had a water tower.
Could be the same thing with other houses, right?
They have pass-throughs.
Lazy Susan.
I mean, there's just all kinds of stuff.
And what you realize when you go into a house like that is that there were different needs, different threats, different inconveniences, different concerns.
And so it was built a certain way.
And if you don't remember why it was built, then you can't remember why you need that stuff.
And maybe you don't and all that.
Well, what I'm trying to get across here...
Is that we have a lot of things that were put in place that are either forgotten as to why they were, or they're taken for granted.
There are things that we assume are just part of life, and it's kind of unimaginable to think that they would actually go away.
Like, would Elon Musk and Donald Trump actually just get rid of Social Security?
Are we really going to tell Americans who are retired, sorry, you have no more Social Security?
No more Medicare?
Is that actually something someone would do?
Does that make any sense?
Would we go down a road where we don't have free public education in this country?
Would we get rid of the Department of Education and then somehow that leads?
And I'm not saying this is going to happen.
There's no public education?
Would we get rid of the FDA altogether?
And I'm going to get to the FDA later today and I know there's a billion problems with it.
But would that just go away such that we don't really know in terms of regulation?
And policy and rules about food safety and expiration dates and processing and all that.
A lot of what was built is what they're trying to take down because they think that is what will solve the perceived problems and threats of our world.
I think that's misguided in many ways.
Now, as soon as I say that, I want to say our system is not and never has been perfect.
This is not me Being an institutionalist.
This is not me defending the great American society that I wish people would stop attacking because it's so great and it works perfectly and it's the best.
Nope.
I am perfectly aware that we need, in many ways, a system that is revamped and transformed.
And I think if you think back to politicians who inspired hope over the last two decades, you think about Bernie Sanders.
You think about Bernie Sanders as a guy who felt to so many tens of millions of Americans, like he saw that our system was not working and not built for everybody.
That when it came to healthcare, when it came to wages, when it came to costs for housing and basic human needs, that it was just built for capitalists, built for the few, not built for the many.
Like Bernie felt like somebody who was not in it for the politics or the power, but for somebody who actually was and remained connected to everyday people.
Thank you.
And I think a lot of folks saw in Bernie, and still do, a pathway to something like a system that was actually built for more of us, a super majority of us, people that are not millionaires or billionaires.
And the system needs to be transformed and revamped in so many ways, whether that is healthcare, whether that is food safety, whether that is lobbying, Whether that is money and politics.
Whether that is the ways that our politicians get rich and that is Democrats and Republicans.
The ways that Nancy Pelosi loves insider trading.
Sorry.
It's corrupt.
It's not okay.
It is not okay that when you become a congressperson, you have a pathway to insider trading because you know things not everyone else knows.
It reminds me of Jimmy Carter and his blind trust for his peanut farm.
That's how it should work.
We need to revamp everything from the bottom Whether that is education, whether that is incarceration, whether that is policing.
However, those who want to take the system down and destroy it are not those who are thinking about the many and the ways that a system that might retain certain elements and innovate or replace other elements would serve.
The 99%.
They're thinking about the 1%.
They're thinking about power.
They're thinking about dominance.
They're thinking about the ways that they can take and take and take.
If you want to repeal the 20th century as a person in power, whether that is as an oligarch, whether that is as a monarch, an autocrat, whether that is as Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, Donald Trump, Mark Andreessen.
It is because you can never have enough.
You're now thinking, what more can I get?
I'm Donald Trump.
I've been president twice.
I've made how much money off of the presidency?
What else could I get?
Well, instead of the Louisiana purchase, I'll have the Trump purchase and we'll get Greenland.
I'll make Canada the 51st state.
Why not?
What else can I get?
It is never enough.
These are hungry ghosts.
You cannot So, that brings me to Greenland and to NATO. We are now in a place where if, if, if, if, if Donald Trump ever decided he was actually going to act on this long-held fixation on Greenland, he would be threatening Denmark.
Denmark is an original member of NATO. Now, a lot of folks out there know what NATO is, but your 16-year-old kid, your 22-year-old kid, or your retired dad or someone else in your life may just not know much about NATO. It's something that we hear about, but what is it?
A lot of you listening do know, but let me just give you some very basic facts.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949. This is four years after the end of World War II. Why was it created?
It was created to protect European countries, Central European, Eastern European, and others, from Soviet incursion and power.
Who comes out of World War II looking good economically and socially?
The United States and the Soviet Union.
Europe, including France, is not well financially, is not well socially, is fatigued and destroyed by war, by invasion.
The United States and the Soviet Union become these world powers.
And so NATO becomes a way of banding together in order to protect European countries from Soviet aggression.
The UN was becoming a kind of dead fish or deadlocked because of Russia's place on the Security Council.
In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea.
This all precipitated the Korean War and so on.
But here we have the catalyst for forming NATO. For the United States showing that it would not allow for Soviet expansion in Europe.
The original members, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United.
A few years later, Greece, Turkey, West Germany, and even later into the 80s, Spain, and then in the 90s, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and on down the line.
Now, we often hear about Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, or the Washington Treaty.
An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.
And consequently, they agree that if such an armed attack occurs, So NATO was constructed to
to protect against Soviet expansion and threat in Central and Eastern Europe.
The countries that sign up are the United States and a bunch of mainly Western European countries, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, and so on, Portugal, and then you have Canada, you have Iceland, and then you have Canada, you have Iceland, etc.
But the threat is coming from the Soviet Union.
And the promise in Article 5 is that if one is attacked, they will all come to defend.
The only time Article 5 has been invoked is in 2001, after the September 11 attacks.
After those attacks, Article 5 was invoked such that all of the member nations agreed to help defend the United States and maintain its security and the security of the North Atlantic area.
Now, I bring all this up, and I apologize if some of you know this history in and out, but it's worth going over it.
Why?
Because now that Trump is threatening Denmark, he's threatening an original member of NATO. He's threatening a country that signed up for a treaty and an initiative that was led by the emerging superpower of the United States, which...
After World War II became the dominant force in global politics.
Led by Dwight Eisenhower, the famed military leader, the famed first leader of NATO and then president of the United States and so on and so forth.
Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican.
So if Trump actually threatened and took any action against Greenland and Denmark.
The rest of NATO would be required to respond under Article 5. And that would mean that the United States would have to respond to itself or, less paradoxically, it would mean that the United States was attacking a fellow NATO country and thus NATO was defunct and no longer operable.
How can you have NATO if you are going to have one member of NATO trying to make a geographical aggressive act of war against another member?
At that point, NATO really doesn't work anymore.
Who does this help?
I said on Friday that Trump's rhetoric surrounding geo-global expansion helps Putin.
And I know that Putin and Russia have sent certain kind of missives about this whole Greenland business.
That's an issue.
I do think that there is a clear line here that if the United States is going to be in the business of threatening other countries with military aggression in the name of expansion, then everything that came out of World War II, that NATO and the desire to protect against not only Soviet incursion and not only against the spread of communism, which was, of course, a huge obsession in the Cold War and the years after.
But against authoritarianism, against non-democratic forms of government.
If you think about NATO as the many banning together in order to protect themselves against the incursion of one strongman leader, whether that was Mussolini or Hitler, whether that was Stalin, whether that was anyone across the world.
It was saying, together, if you attack one of us, you attack all of us.
And so, democracy is the name of the game.
And we won't accept autocracy, totalitarianism.
We won't accept communism.
We are here to protect democratic forms of government.
Now, I know, so much corruption, so many problems with the democracies of all these countries involved, and I'm highly aware.
The system is...
A mess.
Great.
Bear with me, though.
If we've arrived at a place now where the American president is saying, you need to think about giving us Greenland, we've arrived at a place where we have the dismantling of the system that was built after World War II. We're dismantling a key aspect of geopolitical politics because we are in a place now Where the American president is siding with the Russian president,
Russia being the, of course, foundation of the former Soviet Union, in the name of non-democratic forms of governance and action.
We have a place where the United States has switched from that leader of creating an alliance that protects democracy across the globe, that works together to band other countries.
In a treaty, in an alliance that will not allow for the tragedies of World War II to happen again.
That will not allow for the cruelties of Stalin to spread across the globe.
Nope, we're not doing that.
So let's get with Canada and Belgium.
Let's get with Denmark and the UK. Let's make sure that World War II, that Auschwitz, that all of those things, So this is repealing the 20th century.
Or in other words, it's repealing a key aspect of 20th century politics and American democratic leadership in the world in order to open the pathway for the worst aspects of the 20th century.
To open up the pathways for the kinds of totalitarianism, the kinds of authoritarianism that...
We're part of mid-20th century global affairs, Mussolini and Hitler, and so on and so on.
Now, Europe has already taken notice, and it's not news to them that something new might be needed.
Going all the way back to 2018 and 2019, Macron and Merkel were talking about a European army.
Just recently, Emmanuel Macron has talked about Creating a European army that does not rely on the United States in order to defend Europe against Russia.
He's basically saying there was a threat in 1949, and the United States stepped up to the plate as a leader to form an alliance that helped protect Europe from that threat, the Soviet Union.
Well, that threat is still there in the form of Russia and Putin.
Russia has shown its...
At least Putin has shown his willingness to invade other countries.
There are many in Europe, especially Northern Europe, who are feeling quite shaky about what Putin's next move might be.
Now would be the time for global American leadership.
We've seen some of that with the Biden administration.
I don't want to go into the details there.
There's problems, there's issues.
But there has been support for Ukraine and so on.
There has been a reaffirmation.
Of the United States' support for NATO and for its European allies.
But if Trump is talking like a madman about annexing Greenland, Macron is right to recall this idea of a European army that essentially functions as NATO without the United States.
In the past, the UK and other countries have been quite reluctant because this would end NATO. This would be...
Also, a missive sent across the bow of the United States.
Hey, we get it.
You're no longer with us.
We're no longer with you.
That's how it works.
This would be a formal sign of the breakup of the post-war alliance.
Repealing the 20th century means taking away the protections, the infrastructure, the regulation.
That in many ways has helped protect the many against the few or the one.
Whether that is what I talked about last week in the ways that medicine or food regulation is designed to help as many as possible through vaccines and other forms of medical care.
Now I know there's issues there and I'm going to get to those in the bonus content today.
Whether that though is just things that we don't even think about.
At least not most people.
Things like, and I said this at the top today, child labor loss.
Like, think about the existence of children in 1905, 1910, working 12 hours a day in a factory.
Think about factory workers fighting to get a 56-hour workweek rather than a 40-hour workweek, as my colleague reminded me this week.
Think about women fighting for equal pay.
Women fighting to not be sexually harassed in the workplace.
Think about fighting for paid time off in any form.
A lot of those protections are still not afforded to Amazon workers and others.
But repealing the 20th century is repealing the things that prevented the few from exploiting the many any way they could.
NATO is that on a global scale.
It's a group of nations banding together to say, we're not going to allow strong men to enact horrific human tragedies across the European continent or anywhere else, so we're going to band together.
When you repeal that, you start peeling away a system that was in many ways successful.
Now, set it at the top, say it again.
A system that has never included anyone, everyone, that has become totally problematic and totally something that needs dramatic renovation.
And my very general mantra on that is this.
We need to take the system and we need to create something that will allow as many human beings to flourish as possible.
We need to create a situation.
We have that chance now because it's been forced upon us.
Donald Trump wants to repeal the 20th century just like all the people around him.
He's picking people that will help him do it.
Whether we want to or not, now is the time to envision.
Not just how to resist, but what is the system we want?
What is the society we want?
How could it be better?
What are the things to preserve?
What are the things that we will not go back on?
I don't know, like child labor laws.
What are the things that need to be implemented for the first time?
Like, I don't know, universal health care in this country.
How can we have for the first time a democracy that works for everybody?
Whether you're a black person.
An immigrant, whether you're an indigenous person, a woman, whether you're trans or non-binary, whether you are gay or straight, bi, poly, and so on.
How can we have a democracy?
How can we have a we the people for the first time?
Those are the generative kinds of discussions that engender creativity and hope and desire.
And hope and desire are what lead us to resist and try.
Instead of just trying to hold in place the parts that are being thrown away, we have to dream and envision what we want next and then fight for that.
So when I think about Greenland and I think about NATO, I don't stay awake at night, at least right now, thinking that that's a real possibility.
But I think about the rhetoric, and if you think the rhetoric doesn't matter, then tell me why the French president is calling for a European army.
He understands.
I've lived abroad.
I know how Americans get stuck in an American-centric understanding of things.
I can tell you, and I know I don't have to tell all of you because most of you know this, that our friends, whether they are in Denmark or the UK or Korea or New Zealand, already understand what is happening in this country and the ways that what happened in World War II and NATO and the decades ensuing.
are now being repealed.
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