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The better world that is being taken from us
Kay W.
January 07, 2026
I wouldn’t expect you guys to remember this, but Denmark loved Obama and part of the reason they loved Obama is Rufus Gifford:
In his capacity as the ambassador, he helped modernize the transatlantic relationship through youth engagement and institution-building, among other bilateral and global issues. He outlined a diplomatic strategy that prioritized non-traditional audiences and people-to-people relationships. As part of a never-before-seen public diplomacy strategy, he was the subject of the documentary series I am the Ambassador, broadcast on the principal public service channel for youth and for several weeks was its most watched program. Its first season tracked his professional and personal life over three months in six episodes, including a conversation with Mitt Romney, a screening of an HBO film for the Danish film industry, and his own 40th birthday party. When it was renewed for a second season, Gifford made the announcement himself speaking Danish in a video posted on Facebook.
As Ambassador, he traveled to Greenland for bilateral meetings on climate change, promoted counter-extremism initiatives and Danish–American trade, and worked to maintain Danish military support in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2016, he accompanied U.S. secretary of transportation Anthony Foxx, several American mayors (including later U.S. secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg), as well as Danish transport minister Hans Christian Schmidt on a bike ride around Copenhagen to showcase its success as a "cyclist-friendly city".
On January 16, 2017, Gifford was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog by Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark for his "meritorious service to the Kingdom of Denmark".
That, my friends, is soft power and it’s what the Trump Administration, Republicans, media and few warmongering Democrats want us to give up and replace with military threats, belligerence and a sneering, arrogant disrespect for anyone and anything that won’t bow down to Donald Trump and his violent, profoundly damaged regime change thugs.
We shouldn’t let them take soft power from us. It’s more durable than bombing, summary executions and kidnapping and also much, much cheaper. Soft power may be the most bang for the buck ever invented.
This is Obama in Copenhagen in 2022. He stumbled upon a Danish women’s chorus, and they sang for him - he’s being serenaded. They’re singing the Danish anthem, and unlike Usha and JD Vance strutting around Greenland and issuing decrees, no one had to threaten them or bomb them to cooperate with the US during Obama’s two terms. He was simply decent and respectful to them, and that’s all it took.
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