Just as I refuse to say “native American”, I refuse to say “Gulf of America”
A British map from 1700, with the Gulf of Mexico
labeled at “The Great Bay of Mexico”
The recent effort by Donald Trump to get the name of the Gulf of Mexico changed to the “Gulf of America” appears at first glance to have many laudable aspects, the most important of which his desire to energize the American people to have pride in their country. For too long young Americans have been indoctrinated with the anti-American Marxist poison pushed by our modern bankrupt academic community, and have thus been trained to think timidly and with hate about their own country.
Advocating this name change is Trump’s way of quickly countering that negativity. The United States is founded on noble principles — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — and it has lived up to those ideals with remarkable success during its entire 250 year history. Thus, Americans have plenty to be proud of, and to Trump’s mind something needed to be done to underline that fact.
Hence, his push to change the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America.”
And yet, as much as I support his general effort to invigorate Americans to their glorious past, to my mind this particular effort by Trump is as false and as shallow as the left’s never-ending demands that we use new language for everything. American Indians should be “native Americans”, even though everyone born in the U.S. is native. “Chairman” must become “Chair” or “Chairperson,” even though such usage is ugly and unnecessary. Spaceflight can never be “manned,” football teams can’t be “Redskins,” and “communists” must now be called “progressives.”
And worst of all we must all use the pronouns demanded by perverts, even if when by doing so we are denying reality.
Such abuse of language offends me, as a writer. Words have very precise meanings. This precision is in fact their very purpose, because it allows us to think with clarity and depth. If you distort or hide those meanings you make it impossible to think clearly. Instead, you have chaos and incoherence. You have a society that suddenly believes that a man can make believe he is a woman, simply by saying so.
Nor is the left’s desire to impose these rules of idiocy on language new. The communists in the Soviet Union loved to do it. St. Petersburg became Leningrad. Tsaritsyn became became Stalingrad. And those are only two examples of the hundreds of city names the Soviets changed for political reasons.
Americans used to routinely ridicule this Soviet behavior. We considered it childish. And we understood that these name-changes were superficial, often used like a Potemkin Village to hide failures. You don’t achieve success by changing a name. You achieve success by achieving success. That achievement would then give the name — whatever it was — a value far beyond the sound of the words.
Thus, I won’t participate in that idiocy. Just as I won’t use the fake pronouns demanded by the LBGTQBIPOC+ crowd, I won’t use “The Gulf of America” as demanded by Trump. Hi renaming of the Gulf of Mexico is the same game, and just as shallow, no matter how laudable his intentions.
There are also other reasons for not playing this game. The renaming of many places like this is often a slap in the face of the courageous individuals who first explored these places. The map above was produced late in the 1600s to aid British ship captains in their travels to the New World, and it clearly recognized then the name the early Spanish explorers favored most for the gulf, honoring the territories of Mexico. The British understood that the Spanish were there first, and thus they had the right to name things. It is one of the rewards given to explorers, and we should not dishonor their sacrifices and hard work by changing their chosen names.
Moreover, Trump’s name choice for this gulf doesn’t fit that early history at all. Those early Spanish explorers had many names for the Gulf, from “the Sea of the North” to “the Gulf of Florida” to “the Gulf of the Yucatan” to “the Gulf of Cortez”. By 1700 the Gulf of Mexico was generally accepted by all.
At no time at all was “the Gulf of America” ever proposed by these earlier explorers. Not even the British proposed it. To suddenly pull that name out of thin air now is truly an insult to the explorers of the past.
And so, for me the name will always remain the Gulf of Mexico. Hopefully this silliness will fade, and Trump’s fake name will vanish from use.
The bottom line however is this: Trump has far more important issues to deal with than the changing of old place names. America and the world will be far better if he focus on those things, and leave the naming of places to history.
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Trump is asymmetrical and disrupts what he sees needs to be disrupted in order to tear down what has been established that has become perverted, sick and broken.
Screwing with the status quo is his superpower.
The “Gulf of Mexico” is just one component just like “Taking over Greenland” and “Canada becoming the 51st state” in his multi front multi layered attack on the status quo and the radical “progressive” Globalist Leftist Democrat agenda that threatens us all. Whether they stick and become manifest or not.
May I have some more please?
Mr. Z, I concur. We erase history at our own peril, whatever the ideological motivation. Changing or erasing parts of history at a whim makes it less likely that we understand and respect the integrity of that history, much less learn from it. Even a seemingly trivial thing like this. Thanks for looking into historical names for the body of water in question, to show that “Gulf of America” was never a thing. And I can think of at least two rather good songs that name the Gulf of Mexico, lyrics not likely to change. The most I’ll concede is that an alternate name could be used, just as we have a much closer body of water (here, anyway), known alternately as the Gulf of California or the Sea of Cortez.
Fine. We’ll call it, “The Great Bay of America”, or maybe “Bay de Merica” for short.
Also the previous administration did away will drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Good thing we have oil in the Gulf of America est. 2025!
Well that’s what I heard. Can’t tell if things are satire or not anymore! I like money.
George Orwell
“Politics and the English Language”
[Horizon, April 1946]
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/
“Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure and then fail all the more completely because he drinks.
It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible.
Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation, and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.
If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.”
♫ “God Bless Vespucciland”… ♫
Cotour, that’s what I’m thinking. These are pawns Trump is strategically moving in preparation for checkmate in 10 moves.
James Street: You realize I hope that Trump is not simply manipulating his opponents, he is manipulating his supporters as well.
I prefer an America where Americans were strong-willed enough to recognize it when a politician plays these games, and responded by laughing at them.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/971227917/central-america-gulf-of-mexico-1671-old
Any thoughts on calling it “Golfo de Nueva Espania”. We have changed the names of many States in the USA to better suit our preference.
“Trump is not simply manipulating his opponents, he is manipulating his supporters ” – Robert
Yeah… isn’t it awesome!!!1
https://t.ly/wKXeo
“This is not a game. Learn to play the game.”
HEAR!!! HEAR!!!
Mr. Zimmerman well said. The “renaming” of the Gulf of Mexico is of the same cloth as the stupid liberal Newspeak like trick of renaming things such as many of the military bases or the Native American issue (itself problematic because ALL humanity is NOT native to the Americas, it is not IF you are a interloper but merely a matter of when).
Denying historical fact is always wrong. It is like the left claiming Slavery first first and foremost an uniquely America institution when it had been endemic in the world for as far back as we have decent records of civilizations, and other parts of the Americas (Brazil, many of the other colonies including British ones) had far more slaves than the United States ever had. Letting historical truth be denied just cheapens our efforts.
As a manipulated supporter, I see Gulf of America more as a “two can play this stupid game” rather than anything serious.
I don’t care what you call it. It’s your blog, use whatever term you like – although you are correct: It gets confusing when words keep changing meaning.
As for historical names, whatever. People give stupid names to things and change them all the time. See New Amsterdam.
That’s leaving aside pronunciation. There’s a Catron street in town. It’s kat-TRON, not KA-trone. I still use my grandfather’s Him-AL-yahs rather than HIMA-lay-as.