Last week, I wrote about Greenland and President Donald Trump’s efforts to buy it from Denmark. By now, we’ve all heard about that. For a minute there, it seemed as though Trump was ready to use force to gain the island, in the name of national security. Well, now use of force is off the table. But he will still press forward with his effort to purchase something useless.
Rather than buying Greenland, I propose a trade. Given that Greenland is pretty much useless to us despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, we have something that’s definitely useless. So let’s make a trade, shall we, Denmark? I’m talking about Puerto Rico! Apart from Puerto Rican girls, especially when their DNA involves both that and Mexico, being absolutely stunning, the territory does nothing for us. Cute girls aren’t enough.
It’s quite simple, really. We’ve never really needed The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. They contribute nothing, so Denmark gets PR and we get Greenland. A fair trade! We each walk away with something useless.
We acquired Puerto Rico, of course, in 1898, after the Spanish-American War. Sadly, Puerto Ricans are legally considered to be American citizens, and that’s been the case since 1917. Thankfully, we impose some limitations on that citizenship that they shouldn’t hold in the first place:
- They cannot vote in federal elections
- They do not pay federal taxes, which means that they should have no representation as there is no taxation. They do have representation in Congress, but it’s useless as that person cannot vote, effectively silencing the commonwealth.
- Despite being American citizens, Puerto Rico is not a state and as such, they are not entitled to the privileges that come to each of the fifty states.
There are those who say that Puerto Rico will one day become our 51st state. Not so! If it were going to happen, it would have happened by now. They do not deserve statehood anyway. The only thing that Puerto Rico has going for it is the fact that the commonwealth’s largest religion is, by far, Catholicism. That is as it should be.
But what do we get out of the deal? What can Puerto Rico do for us mainland Americans (and yes, Alaska and Hawaii too)? I’ll answer that: absolutely nothing? They’re a liability, not an asset. Not a single asset. That makes them useless to us and Greenland would be useless to us, but at least if we traded entities, that would make more sense than paying an obscene amount of money for something that isn’t as precious as Trump is claiming that it is.
Yes, Greenland is useless and is not important for national security, despite what our nation’s greatest president claims. Puerto Rico is doing nothing for us, so Denmark and the United States should just sign some paperwork and make a trade. At the very least, it would make Greenlanders Americans and Puerto Ricans Danish. Win-win!
It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out. To be honest, I don’t care what happens to Puerto Rico. It could sink like Atlantis tomorrow and I don’t think anyone in any of the fifty states would even notice.