Faster than a speeding bullet

You may have heard that our President sent a letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister complaining of not having received the Nobel Peace Prize and announcing his intention of taking Greenland. The text of that letter is now available. It is contained in a message sent to foreign ambassadors of several countries in Washington according to Nick Schifrin (@nickschifrin), who posted it on X on January 18, 2026:

<<Dear Ambassador:

<<President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]

<<“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”>>

President DJT’s thoughts, like all our thoughts, are as fast as the electrochemical neural circuits allow, and that is very fast indeed as all of us experience in our moments of monkey brain activity. If we assume that this text represents as immediately as possible the movement of the writer’s thoughts, what is remarkable about this text is its associative leaps which substitute for rational thought processes to arrive at a declaration which pretends to be the conclusion of deliberative thought.

The sequence’s prelude is the emotion of hurt, the pain of pride unfulfilled: reality has failed to support the writer’s estimation of himself. This gap between his ego and reality creates a second emotion: an anger which fills that gap. But these precedent emotions are covered up by the writer’s sense of social decorum. By habit and long practice, he likes friendly, buddy-type social communication. It informs his own sense of himself as a socially open, nice guy. And so, the letter begins with a first name address to the person he emotionally blames for his hurt. That the Norwegian prime minister has something to do with the Nobel prize (which he doesn’t) is President DJT’s first dramatic leap of irrational association, a sign of his divorce from facts and reality.

So, the letter begins in something like this chain of association: peace prize>Norway>Jonas. And the meaning shifts from hurt to anger to friendly complaint. But consciously, as a conscious writer, he is still mulling his idea of peace. Thus, the next item again begins with peace and its association with war. And war associates with defense. So, the letter turns to national interests and defense, and he articulates that shift in his associations as national foreign policy.

Here two different associations join. Norway is a Scandinavian country, a country somewhere in the north of Europe. So is Denmark. So, what joins Denmark to present national foreign policy issues? Greenland, of course. Notice that Greenland is so deep and automatic, so thoughtless, an association that it isn’t even named:  “that land.” But perhaps this associative shift from Norway to Denmark gives the writer too much credit. Perhaps, the writer simply thinks (erroneously) at this point that the Nobel Prize is given in Denmark and Jonas is the head (president, prime minister, or whatever) of Denmark. In either case, he has gotten to Greenland, the buried center of his musings.

What makes Greenland important? It is the only large landmass located in the shortest direct path between Russia and China and the Americas. Our President is no flat earther. He thinks of globes. He is no climate change denier. He thinks of Artic melts. Greenland is strategically located for America’s defense. Here, there is almost a rational argument, a part of something he has heard in briefings, but it never reaches the level of thinking because it is immediately shuffled out of mind by the next association.

Denmark, Greenland? How come Greenland, which is on this continent, is a part of Denmark, which is on another continent? He remembers his fifth grade schooling: Europeans discovered America and, landing their boats, claimed land for themselves. Perhaps he had a fleeting mental image of John Vanderlyn’s painting in the Rotunda of the Capital building, depicting Columbus’s landing and his planting of the flag. He thinks that something like that must have happened in Greenland, but since he doesn’t remember anything about it, his mind flashes on the absence of documentation.

Stripped of his knowledge that the European clams on America happened long ago, the image of ships landing brings his next association: we land ship there too; so, we have a claim too.

America’s claim (notice that throughout this sequence, there is a confounding between America the nation and America the continent; beneath his conscious thoughts, our President thinks they are one), that claim leads to Europe’s claim, and Europe to NATO (never mind the differences between a generalized geography and a treaty organization). NATO is conceived as a good-ole-boy partner (though structurally the United States is commanding partner in the treaty organization).

NATO gives us Greenland (never mind that Greenland is not NATO’s to give), and the world is secure. Thus, we conclude, thoughtlessly but pleased, with the American policy statement projecting the image of a great world power securing peace for everyone: make the world great again.

If this text does represent President DJT’s thinking, if it is not a clever artifice for PR purposes, if it is not a secretive but ironic put-down of what the writer believes is commonplace thinking, if our foreign policy is indeed made this way, we are up shit’s creek.

The monkey brain is fast, and if you worry that Greenland so quickly replaced Venezuela in government indirection, forget about Greenland and focus on our President’s declaration of himself as permanent, life-long chairman of the Board of Peace, to which he has invited over 60 nations, a world business with himself as chairman of the board. This is better than a third term.  In fact, since this is not a governmental organization but a side-business, the $3 billion permanent membership fee can bring him a top of $180 billion to spend.

Having watched too much Star Wars, he confusedly thinks of himself as both Darth Vader and Luke. In reality, he is the Emperor pretending to being a Republican, though I doubt those Galactic Senators would acknowledge this associative thinking as the way to make Galactic laws and policies.