February 5, 2025
As I write this the US is being extraordinarily petty and slapping tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada -- which people are very quickly learning is "most of what you buy". Those two countries have since instituted retaliatory tariffs on goods from America, which is expected and (given the circumstances) proper.
The problem is that people, and especially nations, can't afford to be petty over important things. It's right there in the word: petty comes from the French word petit meaning "small". Be petty all you want, but over small things.
To give a counterexample, I offer you the Athens airport. When I was getting ready to fly home from the cruise a couple summers ago, my flight went from Athens (where the cruise ended) to Istanbul (Turkish Air's hub) then back to Dulles. As a favor to all the non-Greek speakers/readers coming through the airport, the departure boards flipped between the Greek and Latin alphabets.
Most of the time, if you kinda-sorta know Greek pronunciation, everything made sense. Until you got to the gate I was at: The board would switch between "Istanbul" and "Κωνσταντινούπολη" -- "Konstantinoupoli", or "Constantinople" in English. Greece doesn't get along with Turkey very well (to put it mildly) so they just never accepted the renaming of the old Byzantine capital.
Does it matter at all? No, not really. A Turk going through a Greek airport probably wouldn't do more than roll their eyes at it. Is Greece going to change their mind any time soon? I doubt it, the city was renamed in 1930 so if they haven't switched after almost a century they're not likely to. And that's proper pettiness -- flipping the bird on something inconsequential from across the Aegean. Not bogus trade war stupidity because the last remaining brain cells in your head fired at the wrong time.
