Corleone-Style Diplomacy

World events in the context of The Godfather

I don’t usually use this space for politics — not really since I began worrying about the lure of Obama in 2007, and how his branding may have been more powerful than his commitment to the issues I cared about. I saw Occupy Wall Street, direct action, bottom-up mutual aid as more accessible avenues for Team Human to participate in our collective welfare.

But given the season, as well as the intensity or immensity of what may be coming to pass in the next year, I thought I’d share some perspective on world events, as well as what those of us invested in a future of human flourishing may be able to do about any of it.

There have been a lot of statements and seemingly random chaos coming out of the new administration even before they take office. But as I see it, it all makes sense from their point of view. You can read Project 2025 to understand the means by which they take power, but even that document doesn’t convey the philosophy of life here.

As I’ve been sharing occasionally when I’m interviewed, or in the Q/A portion of a talk, or even with some of my guests on Team Human, my read on Donald Trump’s world view is that he understands himself as a mafia don. I’m not referring any personal involvement he may have had with organized crime over his decades as a real estate magnate in New York; I mean an understanding of the world as a set of neighborhoods or territories controlled by bosses like himself.

Just like on The Sopranos, where one family might control lower Manhattan, another one gets Harlem, and Tony gets New Jersey between the bridge and the tunnel, in the global syndicate as seen in Trump world, Russia controls Europe (or Eurasia except for maybe England — Brexit doesn’t sound so dumb now) and China gets Southeast Asia, the pacific, and most of Africa, while America gets North and South America, Canada, and — yes — Greenland. (See Orwell’s 1984 for the fictional account.)

This is why Trump doesn’t really object to Russia claiming a portion, or even all of Ukraine. That’s Russia’s neighborhood, and Putin’s prerogative. I imagine neither he nor Putin would object too strongly to China taking Taiwan either (which is another reason America’s tech sector welcomes some…