Did even vexed Never Trumpers envision that one historically-bereft ignoramus could with a stroke blow up geography, culture and map precision—then exile the Associated Press from the WH for not rolling over?
The Cosmic Con is in full circus rampage. Will the oddly-named Greenland become Trumpland when seized? Will Gaza (from a Hebrew word—ready for this?—meaning “strength”) morph into Vance Vacation Vistas? Insanity is more than repeating stuff while expecting different outcomes; here’s blatant craziness at work, trying to make rip-roaring fantasies sound plausible (like pugnacious renaming makes us greater?).
Names do matter. Timing certainly matters, especially when betraying an array of foundational world IDs. Bad enough to deny climate degradation and play tariff monopoly game. Must our deviant country add insult to injury by warring against centuries-old maps in every office and ship across the globe? So now we make America look as uncivilized as Russia in Ukraine by declaring “it’s ours” because the name has a “beautiful ring.”
The Gulf of “Mexico” was confirmed by 1650 because Mexico was the sole Spaniard destination for its invasion, thus crediting its supreme importance in the “New World,” at least to impetuous Europeans. Upwards of a hundred million indisputably “real Americans” had already cultivated and loved their homeland for ten thousand plus years. Put that in your twisted pipe, Trump, and that ancestral Asians had made their homeland work fine until outsiders hunting gold and souls to save served up guns, steel and germs. Ninety percent of originals died, mostly from disease, making the “Gulf of Genocide” more accurate to facts.
Intimidation works, at least short term
Last week, I must say I was shocked beyond measure when my wife exclaimed, equally beyond measure, “Oh no! Apple and Google changed their maps to the ‘Gulf of America.’ Can even huge companies just discard reality for such pettiness?” What price, the hoodwinked free market? What justifies that a functional, 500 year old ID, albeit penned by foreign mapmakers, now falls to rank partisan pandering? Once again we endure the exorbitant, pointless outcomes of MAGA swagger—plus squandering tax-payer expenses (in the multi-millions) for modifying and updating all U.S. references. Tomfoolery doesn’t come cheap.
What stops the sanctified Namer-in-chief from declaring “the Gulf of Trump”? Or the Golf of America? Or the Sea of Stupids? Makes you ill just to think on it. If this cheap shot is pulled off, historians, geographers and ship captains must bow to an enfeebled, celebrity entertainer with the historical consciousness of a sea slug. Historians don’t wonder why the Gulf of Mexico was so named, considering that Spanish invaders insisted on knowing how to find Mexico, their paramount 16th and 17th C destination. No surprise as the yet to be named “American” coast had no gold statues to steal and fewer souls to save. Hell, the “Louisiana territory” purchase wasn’t even American for three centuries (1803). Invaders out to savage the more sophisticated (cleaner) Aztecs demanded maps to find Mexico—local, much poorer hinterlands be damned.
So what’s this perverse stunt about, besides the arrogant over-reach of PR gall? Does the U.S. gain one more right to those claimed for oil drilling, fishing or sailing across “open international waters”? What do we now “own” that we didn’t a month ago? Behold imperial bellowing, another classic MAGA “bargain” that costs millions and lowers our prestige. Fit this nitwittery next to the made-up “war on Christmas” or other slights the phantom “deep state” inflicts on poor, white trash. Just because a leader can do something doesn’t mean doing it makes sense. Throw in costs for insulting a key trading partner already facing treaty-breaking tariff abuse.
What’s in a name? A great deal.
Proper, objective naming identifies distinguishing essences, relying on understanding both human and scientific worlds (as when naming a new plant). Apt, sustainable names demonstrate our relationship with the named entity and the all-important context. Naming also awards perceived control, even power over the outside world. Recall that Adam in the Garden named the animals, though oddly (as gardeners) not plants. Even the fruit on the Tree of Knowledge was generic, only later an “apple” forbidden by top down decree.
In reality, international commerce and communications demand coherence and universality. Thus, the century-old, global International Hydrographic Organization stands by the “Gulf of Mexico.” Standard terms are not a nice-to-have but must-haves with chancy oceanic waters. Of course that depends on trusting procedural, organized, co-operative expertise recognized by every other world government. What chaos would plague transport and navigation without agreements about terms, descriptions, and global mapping?
That’s why this arbitrary, undisciplined, narcissistic renaming is so objectionable, even dangerous. The reason the Associated Press (AP) refuses to change its style sheet follows the simple logic that no one country has the right to unilaterally change what all depend on. This is more MAGA individualism gone mad. The AP did return the Alaskan mountain changed to Denali to its earlier (English) name, McKinley (as Trump dictated) because Alaska remains under U.S. jurisdiction, open to American vagaries (potential Russian expansionism aside).
Ongoing is the standoff, per the Wash Post, that sets trusted international agreements vs. gratuitous Trumpism playing to its suckers. If Trump can just rename the Gulf of Mexico, all bets are off re Greenland, Gaza, the “Panama” Canal and who knows what else. As Seth Stern concludes, “punishing journalists for not using words the government likes is an egregious violation of the First Amendment. Trump’s team knows that, notwithstanding their ridiculous justifications, and clearly doesn’t care.”
The biggest “gulf” is MAGA oblivion
After all, per autocratic DT agendas, so much qualifies as “enemies of the people.” The press, the Constitution, now an unimpeachable international organization that respects collective, democratic decisions, rational procedures, and scientific research. The nerve! A rose is now hardly a rose without MAGA approval. When lawless know-nothings “know everything,” spiteful willfulness trumps reality. Tourists now should reconsider the safety of (crashing) planes and errant cruise vessels plying the wayward Caribbean islands.
Like Adam or God or any five year old, naming grants both the meticulous scientist or the drunken sod the “power by naming.” Name your pet and, like Trump’s Gulf, it’s yours; name the accurst enemy, then start the war. For noted writer Eve Ensler, naming carries mystery, “Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learning, patterns of behavior, and redirect our thinking.” The importance of naming (and titles) matter so much to psychology, teaching and law, they invoke their own “Rumpelstiltskin principle.”
By that logic, why not rename oceans to banish outmoded imperial remnants? Or update the anglicized swath from Boston, Albany, York, Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, to the Carolinas, let alone “New Mexico”? Why sustain the hypocrisy of relying on Native American tribe names, considering the brutal way settlers dishonored aboriginal cultures by scheming, malice and force? And still do today, Native Americans being among the poorest, least healthy (oddly patriotic) citizens. “Ft. Bragg” shifts with every political windstorm.
Why, if renaming matters so much, why doesn’t MAGA dump the messiah’s crude Germanic family term (originally Drumpf), befitting today’s limitless presumption as America’s Savior? Why not Lord Donald, His Majesty Donald, even the “Greatest Donald Drumpf who ever lived”? What’s in a name? Who can tell until it’s changed? Who cares about absurd costs when changing to “Lord Donald” when magic thinking is all. How about the “ring” of the Disunited States of Trumpery? That captures today in an anti-democratic nutshell.
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