If we are as ruthless and self-serving as the bad guys, who are we?

As a baby boomer I grew up under the narrative that we, the United States of America, were the good guys. The Soviet Union was the main aggressor, attempting to control the whole world, dominating it with its totalitarian form of government. And that narrative survived, even though I learned that sometimes we were not so good, in that we at times behind the scenes supported brutal dictators because they served our own economic interests. Still, with a little rationalization one could still be assured that we were the good guys. When we did pursue our military adventures, those actions were described as good against evil, and in support of freedom.

But now. We have a leader who simply says, we have the power, we will take what we want, or is it, what he wants?

Anyway, I never would have foreseen that a president of the United States would threaten to invade an ally, Greenland, one who has always cooperated with us, for no other imaginable reason than he must be mad with power. Yes, he claims that Greenland, a large island in the North Atlantic and autonomous region under the protection of the Kingdom of Denmark, with its tiny population (under 60,000) could not withstand an invasion from Russia or China, and neither could Denmark help. He seems to overlook that all the countries involved are part of the military defense establishment known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, one that the United States instituted.

And then of course there is the Venezuela adventure. It kind of reminds me of the era in which the United States toyed with the notion of invading Cuba because it had been taken over by a dictator who had gone communist (I say, had gone because some accounts claim that Fidel Castro was not communist until the resistance from the United States turned him that way). As I understand it, the Eisenhower administration set up the convert operation that eventually resulted in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion that humiliated President Kennedy. Both the Republican Eisenhower, and the Democrat Kennedy subscribed to the domino theory that we must fight communism where we can lest it take over the world, with nation by nation falling like a row of dominoes. But they thought we had to sometimes, such as in Cuba, do it on the sly, lest we look like aggressors who want to decide for others what kind of government they would have in their own countries. We did the sly thing in Iran in 1953 and paid for it in 1981 with the taking of American hostages there. Now along comes our present leader and he says: why be sneaky about it? We want another country’s oil and mineral deposits, so we’ll just take control.

I do admire the openness, if not the actions themselves.

But I also lament that it has come to this.

I want us to be the good guys again.

It’s hard to know whether there is a tipping point in which The Republican Party decides its own guy must go and decides to go the impeachment route or do like it did to Nixon and suggest he step down before he is removed via the impeachment process. Greenland could be it. I mean invading Greenland is nonsensical and would surely dismantle NATO. Some European NATO members have already sent troops to Greenland in that Island’s support against the United States –however, last report I read indicates a token force if you could even call it that — I mean like 50, yeah, 5 zero, so far.

At any rate, our president is threatening tariff hikes to any nation opposing his proposed takeover of Greenland.

If we are as ruthless and uncaring or self-serving as our enemies, what have we left to believe in?