Donald Trump is a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur like Putin. But despite his apparent ability to connect with less-educated Americans (he won white voters without a college education) 66-32), he is also very stupid.
And that perhaps lies at the root of his obsession with Greenland (and to a lesser extent Canada).
Everything about Trump’s life the biggest, maximum, maximum. He is clearly focused on his historical legacy, and no president is remembered for that. Tax cuts for millionaires. He wants something that will cement his place in the history books, and geographic expansion suits that.
In his first term, Trump proposed: Swap Puerto Rico for GreenlandMany interpret this as his usual racism: exchanging brown Puerto Ricans for white Greenlanders. But there is another plausible explanation. size.
Look how big Greenland is. Imagine slapping Ol’ Glory. Who can’t look at a map and think, “Thank you, sir?” TRUMP” while pantomiming and giving a patriotic salute!
The problem is, that map that we all have deeply etched in our brains is a lie. This is a bald-faced lie that not only provides a distorted view of the world, but also continues a long tradition of minimizing the Southern Hemisphere.
This map is called Mercator projection. In order to maintain a uniform square grid, the size of the landmass is distorted as you move away from the equator. This was useful for navigation in the 18th century.
The northern hemisphere is farther from the equator than the southern hemisphere, so north appears exaggerated.
Look at Russia. It looks really big! Can you believe that all of Russia actually fits within Africa? Let’s look at the actual area of the country.
The United States, Alaska, Canada, Europe, China, Scandinavia, and Russia are all much smaller than the Mercator projection would lead you to believe. Real Russia seems comically mean. Although Africa and Brazil appear small in comparison, they appear accurately in the Mercator projection. You might think that Canada is much larger than the United States, but in reality, Canada is about the same. Canada has an area of 3.855 million square miles, while the United States has an area of 3.81 million square miles. Crazy, right?
And while Greenland is legitimately a vast piece of real estate, it is far from the kind of map-dominating terrain that President Trump salivates at for conquest and glory.
Of course, none of this really matters. Trump didn’t get Greenland. But this was a good excuse to write about a topic that I’ve always been fascinated by and that most people don’t know about (Mercator projection). And it’s interesting to me that Trump’s megalomania may be fueled by distorted maps.
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