The Gulf Between Us
As I type this I am looking out on the body of water that has been called the Gulf of Mexico since somewhere around 1550. Of course, like all bodies of water and other geographic features, it was named by humans and has been called by various names at different points in time. Naming things is inherently political, linked to issues such as the power of conquerors, the winners of wars, or sometimes just being in the right place at the right time.
For the most part, we don’t really think about these names unless we are people curious about the past. California, to pick one place I have lived, is strewn with names in Spanish, although I expect there are a fair number of Americans who never, ever stop to consider what San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco means or why they have those names. It’s just their names.
All Texas school children are taught in seventh grade, where Austin and Houston came from. Dallas may require a little more digging. Side note: I still don’t know why there is a Dallas County and a Houston County in Alabama. I may have looked it up once and have since forgotten.
It occurs to me that I have lived the bulk of my life in states that touch the Gulf. I have lived in either Texas or Alabama for all but six years in California and a year in Colombia. Gee, I wonder if the Mexicans will change the name of “Baja California” to “Alto Mexico” or some such? At any rate, it never once in my life occurred to me to think that the Gulf of Mexico ought to be called anything other than the Gulf of Mexico, because, after all, it’s a gulf and Mexico is like, right there. It never once entered my mind that it was some affront to America’s masculinity (and I use that word very deliberately) that it was called what it was called.
Speaking of name changes, the Trump administration famously changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Because, you know, that’s important.
Look! Here he is with his map and easel!*
To be honest, it struck me at the time, and it still strikes me as the kind of thing a child might think a president does.
On one level, it is just oh so very silly.
Despite the juvenility of it all on one level, it is more serious on several other aspects of it all. There is, for example, the whole banning the AP from the White House because they wouldn’t conform to his will on the name issue.
Then there is the imperialistic tone of it all. It is saying that we in the US are powerful, and therefore, we get to name things after us, not some lesser country. And while that may sound like some pointy-headed (maybe even “woke”) academic concern, it fits a broad assertion of US control of its near abroad.** Consider how Trump also talks about Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Setting aside using the name of the Gulf as a cudgel to affect First Amendment rights or as an international signal of power, even using it as just a little joke is obnoxious because it makes something that wasn’t political (at least in terms of contemporary political discourse) into an overly political item.
Just choosing what to call it becomes an act of allegiance. Call it “Gulf of America,” you signal acceptance. Call it “Gulf of Mexico,” you are being defiant. Call it “the Gulf,” you are avoiding the issue.
It polarizes a term no one thought about for no reason except Trump wanted it, and it reinforces to a certain kind of nativist (and maybe even some nascent nativists) that he is their guy.
America (as in the United States–certainly not the rest of the hemisphere) über alles, dontcha know!
On the one hand, it is kind of a joke, but it is a joke of dominance. To laugh it off is a bit of forced acceptance of the absurdity of it all. While pushing back can cast you in the role of a partisan jerk who doesn’t have a sense of humor. It is like a lot of alt-right humor. It is clearly intended to provoke, but if you get provoked, you are the one who can’t take a joke, but if you don’t get provoked, you are tacitly accepting the joke-that-really-isn’t-a-joke as true in some way.
Heads they win, tails you lose.
There is a definite bullying element to it all. Ha! You have to call it “Gulf of America” because the President said so. It is like a child telling their sibling that they have to behave a certain way because Dad said they had to. The power doesn’t really come from the obviously inherent worth of the action. It comes because a person in power decreed it so.
How very patromonial.
It creates an unnecessary division. It solves no actual problem. And it will likely be a symbol of polarized America for years to come, even if we return to officially calling it the “Gulf of Mexico.” The president who changes it back will be accused in some quarters of petty politics in a way that ignores the original petty politics of it all. And if it is changed back, we can look forward to any number of “Gulf of America” deadenders wearing t-shirts and having signs to go along with the Confederate Battle Flag collection.
And does the next GOP president change it back?
In this way, it is like a lot of what Trump has done, such as with our NATO allies. What was once understood to be permanent (or as permanent as things can be in the world of human interaction) now feels malleable and perhaps never to be fully set again. And one’s views on the subject mark your tribe forevermore.
I know there are dozens of problems with the Trump administration above this one. One might not even think it is a problem worth commenting upon. But I think it is illustrative of how Trump sews division, and in that way which many of his supporters then revel in wallowing in and amplifying that division.
It is also part and parcel of Trump’s desire to shape reality (or, at least, the perceptions thereof) without any concern for what is actually real.
You know, like taking a Sharpie to a hurricane map.
Or, I dunno, declaring that a man wrongfully imprisoned in a Salvadoran torture prison is not only definitely in a gang, but is a leader of said gang.
There is a danger in someone who thinks they can just say whatever they want and that makes it true.
There is an even greater danger when others nod and amplify the nonsense because the leader said so
*Handy for me that this was the first photo on the White House Flickr page. This photo op was linked to the signing of an EO on mining the sea floor. See NPR: Scientists are raising the alarm about Trump’s deep sea mining executive order. Apparently it is a go-ahead to do something that the rest of the world has said they are not going to do until rules can be established. But, as is known, rules and agreements are for chumps and losers.
**IYKTYK
The long version of Los Angeles:
On September 4, 1781, a group of 44 settlers known as “Los Pobladores” founded the pueblo (town) they called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, ”
I.e. “The village of the Queen of the Angels,” – i.e., the Virgin Mary.
A bit long, so easier to just say “Los Angeles.”
Gulfs and bays are typically named for the destinations of the travelers who cross them. Thus, colonial Spaniards traveling to Mexico named the gulf they crossed.
Or the Indian Ocean, the one the Brits crossed on their way to India.
Biden certainly showed his age as he neared the end of his presidency, that of an eighty year old man.
Trump is showing his age, that of an almost 80 year old man with the intellectual curiosity and problem-solving skills of a 4 year old.
Trump long ago read a book called “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale, and he has been like that ever since.
Houston County was named after George Smith Houston, the 24th Governor of Alabama. But, oddly, he lived mostly on the opposite end of the state.
Weirdly, Dallas County, Alabama was named after U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander J. Dallas of Pennsylvania, who seemingly had no connection whatsoever to the state.
EDITED TO ADD: To make things even weirder, the name of Dallas, Texas is related:
“The origin of the name is uncertain. The official historical marker states it was named after Vice President George M. Dallas of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. However, this is disputed. Other potential theories for the origin include his brother, Commodore Alexander James Dallas, as well as brothers Walter R. Dallas and James R. Dallas.
It is not a joke, or even about dominance, it’s just the childish way Trump thinks.
@charontwo: It is definitely about dominance. That is it childish doesn’t change that.
Children very frequently seek dominance.
@charontwo: also note part of my
point is how this all gets used in the broader society.
@Steven L. Taylor:
There is something broken in Trump’s brain that he can not think through the consequences of his actions. He doesn’t just choose not to, he can’t.
France is not going to start calling it the “Gulf of America.” Nor will Germany, Cuba, Canada, China, Denmark, nor anyone else outside the U.S. So how is this going to work out?
He unilaterally changes deals he has made because he is unable to grasp the consequences of getting a reputation of that behavior.
It’s why he has given China a great pretext for, if they so choose, to wreck the U.S. economy by an extended “embargo” of rare earth magnets and refined metals.
Yeah, the whole “joking not-joking” thing plays out a lot. I’ve seen it in online gaming. I’ve even simply observed it – to good effect. I said something like:
Classic move.
Say something outrageous and offensive. Really stir things up.
When there is pushback, blame the offended for their lack of sense of humor.
That’s what Greenland, Panama, Canada, and the Gulf of Mexico feel like.
There’s also the ambiguity of the “big talker”. They probably don’t mean it, but they might mean it. Maybe it’s more of a trial balloon than a joke.
@charontwo:
When I was a lad my mother put a Hazel cartoon up on the refrigerator. At the time, I was told in no uncertain terms that it was up there for my consideration. Stayed up for years.
In the cartoon, the little boy in the family has assembled on the driveway a complicated enclosure for a pair of ducks, including a shelter, a kiddie pool filled with water, and a feeding station. The garage door has just gone up and the mother in the driver’s seat is looking over her shoulder, glaring. Hazel is standing over the little boy tapping her toe asking “Have you thought this through?”
Trump might have benefited from seeing that cartoon daily at the appropriate age.
I think you offer some respite here. The great danger of a leader claiming something as “true” really hinges on enough others nodding along to create some kind of permanence. Once a powerful fabulist isn’t making the claim, reality reasserts itself. The fabulist needs converts in order for the falsehood to persist as a truth. Limit the acceptance and limit the permanence.
I have found myself thinking about all that Trump is doing in terms of lasting effects. If, as I expect, the US reverts to officially calling the Gulf of Mexico its historical name and what most of the world calls it, then the lasting effect will be whatever maps and textbooks that are published in the next 4 years having this anomalous name. Maybe they become collector’s items.
Trump is doing everything right now through Executive Orders which all can be undone by a successor’s Executive Orders. That fact he is unwilling or unable to drive his agenda into legislation is a mixed bag. The immediate effects are more expeditious damage, but the lasting effects are more recoverable than they would be if established as law. The opposition must hold firm on following the law and resisting the policy by fiat as much as possible in order to limit the permanent damage.
Alas, I think the most pernicious lasting effect of Trump will be the death of what was once one of America’s strengths – the core consistency of a democratic electorate over time. As France’s Europe Minister, Benjamin Haddad said recently, “We cannot leave the security of Europe in the hands of voters in Wisconsin every 4 years…” America’s electorate can no longer be trusted.
@charontwo: “Trump long ago read a book called “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale, and he has been like that ever since.”
An interesting thought. Peale, of course, is best known for suggesting that positive thinking, or having a “positive mental outlook” (PMA), can lead to success. This and similar concepts are known under different names, such as “the law of attraction,” and they are the basis for the 2006 book The Secret.
I’m not sure Trump has demonstrated the discipline necessary to read too many books all the way through. Still, Mary Trump, in Too Much and Never Enough, wrote that the Trump family regularly attended Peale’s sermons during the 1950s, and it appears that Peale officiated at Trump’s first wedding.
But even if Trump has read Peale, he still seems to have a lot of negative emotions and malevolent beliefs, and a tendency to “blame the victim,” which is part of the reason so many people have criticized Peale and like-minded writers over the years.
Peale wrote a lot of books, founded Guideposts, and was an inspiration for many. But he was political. For example, he opposed the election of JFK for President in 1960, saying, “Faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture is at stake,” although public criticism led him to later retract that. So maybe Peale is one of Trump’s influences, after all . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Vincent_Peale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_mental_attitude
Bingo!
He gets not a whiff of an honest response to his idea.
@charontwo:
I find that hard to believe.
I kind of like “Gulf of the Americas” — initially sounds like the Right wing version, but then you realize that it isn’t even letting the US be the sole “America.” We aren’t even all of North America.
(I assume we divide our geography by dominant skin tone, and that Mexico is part of Central America, so that body of water touches two Americas, and is due north of South America. I also assume this is part of the “Make Canada the 51st State” thing…)
(hmm… would Mexico like to be a state? It would really help bring a lot of manufacturing back to the US, and greatly reduce illegal immigration, and we would have a much easier to protect southern border)
Hey, a guy people love to hate on this thread beat you to the punch Friday Dr Taylor:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e6N94BJwZL0
Amazing people think he’s a turncoat, and because of these purists, we lose elections. Maher is much more closer to the pulse of sane Dems and moderates than the out of touch elitists that seem to dominate our politics recently. And by out of touch, I mean those who virulently protested Maher’s WH visit and then threw in all the ad hominem e.g. he’s “a worthless POS”, narcissistic, Trump fawner etc.
Yet he effectively skewers the GOP constantly yet OTB people make him a pariah.
@The Q: Personally, I don’t care enough or pay enough attention to Bill Maher to hate him at all, let alone love hating him. And I still side with caring more about the public Trump than the private one. The public Trump is the one deporting minor child cancer patient citizens. It doesn’t matter that the Trump that Maher has dinner with probably wouldn’t do that. The one he didn’t break bread with did.
@The Q: Given that I didn’t say any of those things in my post, I would rather wish you would go argue with those people and not me.
If you would like to engage with what I wrote, rather than stuff you imagine I wrote, let me know.
You are doing nothing to suggest that there is much reason to really engage with you. As I noted the other day, you are arguing with ghosts.
@The Q:
To be fair, I did say that. But I wholly stand by that and it well predates the Trump dinner.
@Steven L. Taylor:
The most tiresome people on the internet aren’t trolls. They’re the people who insist putting forth their half of an argument that occur only inside their heads and only they care about, all the while insisting that you hold whatever imaginary positions their imaginary opponent have.
@charontwo:
I suggest that many of these obnoxious and purposely abrasive decrees by Trump, in fact, have genesis among the many bigoted “Trump whisperers” who cling to his charismatic orbit of power. These crude expressions serve as an affirmation of the absolutist nature of that power to Trump’s supporters, simultaneously encouraging them to reject civility and tear away at our cultural landmarks and social values. And besides, lots of lolz to be had.
@The Q:
Maher makes himself a pariah to reason, with his flip flopping hypocrisy, thinly veiled bigotry, and self aggrandizing pomposity. He is an ass. Not to be taken seriously, he retreats behind his mantle of “comedian” when confronted and his contradictions and generalizations are called out. He is a coward and poser, presiding over his kangaroo court that doubly serves as self worship altar for his outsized ego.
@The Q: I finally had time to watch the segment. I agree with the general sentiment.
I have never, BTW, argued for purity tests nor that we shouldn’t talk to Republicans. I, too, have Republican friends and family members. I do, after all, live in Alabama.
And I agree we should talk.
I just disagree with the notion that treating Trump as a normal Republican is a good idea.
Maher said last week, “A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House.” And then this week, he wants to warn us about fascism in the White House. This is an incongruous message.