Thinking the Unthinkable

The Free World without the US. Civil war. Coups.

One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable. — Salman Rushdie

As the president heads to a diplomatic clusterfuq in Davos, let’s take a moment to ponder one of the latest scenes from occupied Minneapolis.

Reuters captured images of ICE forcing an elderly man, ChongLy Scott Thao, out of his house into the freezing weather, wearing only his underwear. As it turned out, he was a US citizen who had committed no crime and had no record at all. No apologies followed, but the story calls for our attention.

In a Sunday Facebook post, [the man’s sister-in-law] Louansee Moua claimed that ICE broke down the door of her brother-in-law’s Minneapolis apartment.

The officers “trashed the place, handcuffed him, and put a gun to his daughter-in-law’s head. They did not allow him to put on proper clothing and forced him outside in freezing weather,” Moua wrote.

[A later family statement added: “ICE agents did not present A warrant did not ask for identification, and nevertheless forcibly entered the home with weapons drawn. Mr. Thao went willingly with ICE, despite knowing he had done nothing wrong.

“During the operation, Mr. Thao was removed from his home wearing only underwear in approximately 12-degree weather, in full view of his family and neighbors. He suffers from severe psoriasis, a serious medical condition that is exacerbated by extreme cold and stress. This treatment was unnecessary. Degrading, and deeply traumatizing.]

“ICE drove him around for nearly an hour, questioned him, and fingerprinted him. Only after all of that did they realize he had no criminal history and no reason to be detained. They then dropped him back off at his apartment like nothing happened,” she stated. “No family should experience this. No child should witness this. And no U.S. citizen should be treated this way.”¹

The scene took place only days after 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent, amid the invasion of Minneapolis by thousands of federal agents.

By now we have become accustomed to seeing the unthinkable on an almost daily basis. So perhaps it is time to confront several other previously unthinkable thoughts.

First a caveat and a plea: All of this is, admittedly, speculative, and I would very much like it if you could persuade me that the scenarios are unlikely and/or implausible and that this cup shall pass from us.

But, for the moment, I think it is naive not to begin thinking about these three unthinkable possibilities: (1) That Trump’s unhinged saber-rattling over Greenland will lead to a Western Alliance without the United States; (2) That the military occupation of American cities will break into a cold (?) Civil War, and (3) That Trump will use the Insurrection Act or other “emergency” powers to attempt a second attempted election-related coup.

Convince me it won’t happen.

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Imagining the Unimaginable

(1) The Free World Minus the United States

It is now conceivable that Trump’s unhinged saber-rattling over Greenland could lead to a European “coalition of the willing” that replaces NATO, as the rest of the free World forms an alliance that does not include the United States. “Trump’s Greenland threats push Europe toward divorcing America” – POLITICO

Canada has already pivoted toward China (at least on trade), a move that was previously unthinkable. But now, European leaders are openly musing about a deeper and more lasting divorce from their American ally:

[For] many European governments, including America’s longest-standing and most loyal allies, Trump’s threat of punitive tariffs against anyone who tries to stop him taking Greenland was the final straw. Divorce, they believe, is now inevitable.

In private, dismayed European officials describe Trump’s rush to annex the sovereign Danish territory as “crazy” and “mad,” asking if he is caught up in his “warrior mode” after his Venezuela adventure — and saying he deserves Europe’s toughest retaliation for what many see as a clear and unprovoked “attack” against allies on the other side of the Atlantic.

Increasingly, they are saying this out loud. Listen to the Belgian PM, Bart De Wever:

He says that “Europe is at a crossroads” and it has to decide what it’s policy will be.

“Until now, we tried to appease the new president in the White House. We were very lenient, also with the tariffs. We were lenient hoping to get his support for the Ukraine war. … But now so many red lines are being crossed that you have the choice between your self-respect. Being a happy vassal is one thing. Being a miserable slave is something else.

If you back down now you’re going to lose your dignity. And that’s probably the most precious thing you can have in a democracy.”

He says he will meet with Trump on Wednesday, accompanied by the Belgian monarch Philippe.

“But it will have a different character than we had planned.

It will probably be the message that we have to send: you’re crossing red lines here.

We either stand together or we will stand divided, and if we are divided, there is the end of an era, of 80 years of atlanticism, really drawing to a close.

And you know, as Gramsci said, ‘if the old is dying and the new is not yet born, you live in a time of monsters,’ and it’s up to him to decide if he wants to be a monster – yes or no.”

Ooooooof.

In yesterday’s Atlantic, Anne Applebaum noted that “Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him.”

And she asks us to imagine this unthinkable scenario:

Think about where this is leading. One possibility, anticipated this morning by financial markets, is a damaging trade war. Another is an American military occupation of Greenland. Try to imagine it:

The U.S. Marines arrive in Nuuk, the island’s capital. Perhaps they kill some Danes; perhaps some American soldiers die too. And then what?

If the invaders were Russians, they would arrest all of the politicians, put gangsters in charge, shoot people on the street for speaking Danish, change school curricula, and carry out a fake referendum to rubber-stamp the conquest. Is that the American plan too? If not, then what is it? This would not be the occupation of Iraq, which was difficult enough. U.S. troops would need to force Greenlanders, citizens of a treaty ally, to become American against their will.

**

Speaking of unthinkable, Tom Nichols writes: The Military Is Being Forced to Plan for an Unthinkable Betrayal

American officers know what Trump is planning—the world knows it, because Trump won’t stop saying it—and their minds will rebel at directives to take everything they’ve prepared to do for years and apply it backwards, against the people they have trained to work with and protect. The president, in other words, will be ordering them to do something they have been trained never to do….

In the end, however, if senior officers—starting with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the heads of each service—follow Trump down this dark road, the officers and enlisted people below them will likely obey the chain of command. Such an outcome would be a tragedy, and potentially a global catastrophe.

BONUS: British Conservative Daniel Hannan warns:

It is impossible to exaggerate how high the stakes are. If Putin had put an agent in the White House, what would he be doing differently?

We are talking about the survival of the Western way of life, about the world order of which the United States is the chief exemplar and beneficiary. That, surely, matters more than “liberal tears”. Doesn’t it? Because if it doesn’t, we are all damned.

Nota Bene: The End of Appeasement?

Francis Fukuyama writes, “Don’t Back Down, Europe”

As an American, I have one thing to say to my many European friends: Do not back down in this confrontation. Up to now, both the EU and the major European powers have sought to appease Trump by offering him concessions, flattery, personal gifts, and other forms of tribute. This strategy has not worked and should be abandoned immediately.

Donald Trump is fundamentally a bully who wants to dominate everyone around him. Trying to placate him with concessions is a fool’s errand: he despises weakness and those who display it

An American Civil War?

To be clear, I don’t think anything like a Civil War is likely. But I’ve been haunted by something Nick Catoggio wrote a few weeks back in the Dispatch. In the wake of the murder of Nicole Good, he described the violent ethos underlying the Trump Administration’s message in that case. Trump/Vance/Noem/Miller et al have decisively aligned themselves with “two core right-wing takes”:

One: If you interfere with the police, particularly Donald Trump’s secret police, they should be entitled to kill you, full stop. At one point, Vance went as far as to assert that the ICE agent had “absolute immunity” for the shooting, which for obvious reasons is not a thing that does or should exist in America for state agents who wield deadly weapons.

And two: If you’re affiliated in any way with the left, you’re effectively a lawful combatant in a hot culture war in which, again, the good guys are entitled to kill you.

Consider that a sort of fallback rationalization for Republicans who watched the videos and found themselves struggling to justify what happened. Whether Good tried to “ram” the ICE agent or not ultimately isn’t important. What’s important is that she was part of a “left-wing network.” For many right-wingers, that’s justification enough.

Pull back from the specifics of the Nicole Good case. If Catoggio is right (and he is), we are seeing the groundwork laid not merely for random violence, but for war against anyone deemed to be a “combatant in a hot culture war.”

So how surprised should be to see this escalating this way?

**

The NYT’s Lydia Polgreen writes: “In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War.”

Minnesota is under siege. It might not yet be a civil war, but what the White House has called Operation Metro Surge is definitely not just — or even primarily — an immigration enforcement operation. It is an occupation designed to punish and terrorize anyone who dares defy this incursion and, by extension, Trump’s power to wield limitless force against any enemy he wishes….

She describes one random incident when an ICE agent slips and falls, dropping his magazine of ammunition.

Dan Engelhart, one of the city’s parks commissioners, was standing nearby. He grabbed the magazine and turned it over in his hands.

“Well, we’re fucking close to civil war,” he told me.

As a longtime foreign correspondent, I have covered civil wars in countries across the globe. Not so long ago, I would have rolled my eyes at the notion that one could erupt anywhere in America, much less in my once placid home state of Minnesota. And yet there I was, eyes stinging and throat burning as tear gas wafted over me, watching heavily armed agents of the federal government invade a quiet residential neighborhood five miles as the crow flies from the suburb where I went to middle school.

**

And what about a second coup attempt? (I think we’ve had enough for one day, don’t you?)

Lessons learned? It’s unclear

Via Axios: “Dems' potential 2028 contenders cautious on trans rights”

Democrats weighing bids for president are struggling for footing on transgender issues, dodging questions on the topic more than a year after President Trump's "Kamala is for they/them" ad was widely seen as one of his most effective attacks in the 2024 campaign.

Axios quizzed nearly 20 Democrats viewed as possible 2028 contenders. Most didn’t want to talk about trans rights.

• We asked: Should transgender girls be able to participate in girls’ sports? Do you believe transgender youths under age 18 should be able to be placed on puberty blockers and hormones? And what is your response to the question: “Can a man become a woman?”

• Former Vice President Harris, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, California Rep. Ro Khanna and Newsom were among those declining to comment or not responding.

Only one potential candidate had a clear answer:

Emanuel said his positions hadn’t changed since he was interviewed recently by conservative commentator Megyn Kelly, who asked whether “boys should be able to play in girls’ sports” and “can a man become a woman?”

• Emanuel said “no” to both. He also said parents should make decisions about whether transgender minors are able to access hormones.

BONUS: Want some tough love? It’s hard to overstate how profoundly stupid and counter-produtice this was: “Protesters disrupt Minneapolis church service where ICE field director is pastor.”

Today’s podcast

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Tuesday dogs

On a frigid January Day, the boys are dreaming of better days. (As are we all.)

1. On Monday, the family issued a statement strongly disputing DHS’s attempt to spin the horror. ICE claimed that it was pursuing known sex-offenders who it claimed lived in the house. The family says that the DHS story is utterly false.

Mr. Thao is a United States citizen with no criminal record. He does not live with, nor has he ever lived with, the individual’s DHS claimed were targets of this Operation. The only people residing at the home are Mr. Thao, his son, his daughter-in-law and his young grandson. They do not know the individual’s DHS references.

ICE agents did not present A warrant did not ask for identification, and nevertheless forcibly entered the home with weapons drawn. Mr. Thao went willingly with ICE, despite knowing he had done nothing wrong.

During the operation, Mr. Thao was removed from his home wearing only underwear in approximately 12-degree weather, in full view of his family and neighbors. He suffers from severe psoriasis, a serious medical condition that is exacerbated by extreme cold and stress. This treatment was unnecessary. Degrading, and deeply traumatizing.

Strongly objects to DHS’s attempt to publicly justify this conduct with false and misleading claims. These statements have caused additional harm to a family already struggling to recover from a terrifying and unjustified encounter.