Stay tuned. A GOP Congressman has introduced a bill to rename Greenland to ‘Red, White and Blueland’ as soon as the takeover is final. Also look to the ‘United States Canal’ coming to a country called Panama.
Despite a life of financial and human failures, if Trump knows anything, he knows the power of marketing.
The goal is to secure the impression of his power; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is therefore missed.
The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. …That is the tension at the heart of his whole strategy: he is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. Gotta love watching his minions scurrying about to justify this charade on the American populace solely for the enrichment of the ultra wealthy.
But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe that he holds the real power he so desperately wishes he had.
Not sure what is sadder, Trump feeling the need to change a name that adds no value to anything but his ego, or companies like Google changing the name in MAPS. I wonder if the European version will change or display the proper name since it technically is an international body of water.
I really don’t give a crap if he changes Base names, Towns, or even states. Lets change Florida to TrumpLand or, what may be residing in his rather minimally capable brain, renaming the United States to just Trump. What I can about is having the leader of this country deny the Fourth Estate access because they won’t bow to ignorance or giving an unelected man access and control over the aviation system thinking he’ll “fix it” in a year.
Changing the names of things on a whim is the act of a child, not a man, nor a President.
As reported by the NYT and the AP: “The Associated Press said on Tuesday that one of its reporters was barred from an Oval Office event because the outlet has continued to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its original name.”
This is a textbook violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The federal government is penalizing an organization for its lawful exercise of free speech. Meanwhile, as I noted above, still waiting for those claiming that the change to “Notice to Air Missions” was the deliberate act to control language by a Marxist and communist administration explain their flip-flop in support of “Gulf of America.”
We have seen this rodeo before. Hitler scrubbed Jewish and non-German names off the map. Stalin airbrushed people and places out of existence to fit his Soviet fairy tale. Mussolini renamed towns to conjure up some grand Roman past that never really was. Franco bulldozed local languages under the weight of Spanish nationalism. Kim Jong Un rewrites history every time he gets the chance, making sure North Korea’s past always bows to his family’s rule. These were not just innocent acts of renaming. They were power moves meant to erase, reshape, and herd people into submission.
An yet, the current administration is acting in a way that suggests pro-freedom, pro-constitution, pro-government transparency and pro-free speech.
It takes really twisted logic to say openness and individual rights = slavery and conformity.
Arthur, if the administration were truly acting in the spirit of freedom, transparency, and individual rights, there would be no need to enforce compliance with a politically motivated name change. Transparency means open discussion, not unilateral decisions. Free speech means allowing people, institutions, and the press to use the name they have always used without fear of exclusion or retaliation. When the White House bars a journalist for refusing to comply, that is not openness, that is control. Framing this as a pro-freedom move is not just misleading; it ignores the reality of how authoritarianism operates.
Yes, in much the way that Orwell suggested that War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. But not in the way that the words would ordinarily be understood. There are numerous examples of explicitly unconstitutional efforts (eg, birthright citizenship is enshrined in the US constitution and the decree from the administration that it was no longer legitimate was immediately ruled unconstitutional by a Reagan appointee), explicitly non-transparent efforts (what, exactly is Mr. Musk doing and what is the basis for his public claims of fraud by government employees?) and, of course, the silencing of the Associated Press solely for using the phrase “Gulf of Mexico”. As for freedom, I don’t see any efforts that affect it either way.
If you like what the administration is doing then good for you. But, assertions that it is “pro-constitution, pro-government transparency and pro-free speech” are entirely at odds with observable reality.
Then perhaps consultation with the surrounding countries to get their opinion. Maybe “Gulf of the Americas” would have been more appropriate or accepted. One man should not be playing king of the world and changing the names of things he doesnt like and has no right to change unilaterally.
As Google themselves explained, there are many instances where map names are displayed differently depending on where one is located. Outside of the US, it will be shown as “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”.
