Donald rushed the White House press corps into the Oval Office saying he had a big announcement, which is that, effective immediately, he is going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America.
One of his flunkies, when asked, “Do you have anything to say about it, Ben?” said, “Yes, sir,” before explaining that this was a straightforward but important executive order. It directs Secretary Burgum and the Department of the Interior to update the Geographic Names Information System to reflect that the lake once known as Lake Ontario will from this time forward be known as Lake America. According to him, this is a lake that has most of its volume in the United States and the deepest parts of the lake sit in United States territory, so this will reflect that this is an American lake. Thankfully, all of the necessary papers and documents were filed to make this official.
In case you were thinking, “Oh, well, okay, maybe he’s finally done renaming bodies of water,” you would be wrong.
This is what Donald said:
The lake change, Lake of America, was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, actually. As you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico. We changed it, and now it’s very routinely the Gulf of America. So if you think about it, we have a Gulf and we have a lake. Now all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.
That’s the President of the United States of America who currently has us involved in an illegal, unconstitutional war of choice, who is currently engaged in an unprovoked trade war with our closest ally and second largest trading partner, which will wreak havoc on both the economies of Canada and the United States of America, creating even more hardship for Americans given the fact that the economy, thanks to Donald’s completely stupid economic policies and the aforementioned war of choice, is in shambles.
American farmers are going bankrupt by the score, up to 77 per day. America is divided. America’s reputation across the world is cratering. America is a shadow of its once relatively respectable self, all because of that man and the fascist Republican Party that continues to enable him.
And it’s not because they don’t know what’s going on. They can see clearly that he is in serious, serious cognitive decline. There is overwhelming evidence of this.
They see clearly his toddler like levels of self involvement, his delusions of godhood, and his grasping need for attention. They see that his only priority is his wealth, his power, his megalomania, and yet Republicans continue to go along with his demands, which are increasingly insane, detached from reality, and utterly humiliating.
It’s not an accident, or maybe it is an accident, but it’s a convenient one, that by renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, the acronym for the Great Lakes, Superior, Huron, America, Michigan, and Erie, is now SHAME.
And I have begun to wonder if America will ever, ever be able to get out from under the weight of the shame Donald Trump and the Republicans have heaped upon us.
It is clear to any sentient being who isn’t lying to him or herself that Donald is increasingly unfit, increasingly just a prisoner to his psychopathologies. And now so too are we because not only has there been no pushback, he continues to be enabled. He continues to be told that he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to, because he’s him.
As you may have heard, Donald had wanted to close the Kennedy Center for two years because it needed such extensive renovations, according to him. Howard Lutnick is claiming that Donald is the only person in the world great enough to renovate the Kennedy Center. He also said that when the renovation project started, Donald, the great master builder, should be the project manager because being President is just another part time job.
We’ve also learned recently that Donald wants to make the midterms about himself. So here’s what holier than thou, sick of it Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had to say about it.
This is what Mike Johnson said:
The president is going to look right into the camera and say, I am on the ballot, okay? Because even though his name isn’t, it’s his administration, his legacy.
No, that isn’t how any of this works.
By continuing to enable him, by continuing to spread the wild, unhinged, untethered from reality narratives, Donald is trapped with it. They continue to act as if it is normal for a president at war to spend his time giving tours of the White House construction projects, to spend millions of dollars renovating a reflecting pool and then arresting people because the job was done so incompetently it made him look bad.
This is the President of the United States spending his time changing the names of bodies of water. First the Gulf of Mexico becomes the Gulf of America. Now Lake Ontario becomes Lake America. And apparently, having secured a gulf and a lake, Donald is considering moving on to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans because, as he explained, “Now all we need is an ocean.”
This is happening while America is at war. It is happening while farmers are going bankrupt. It is happening while we are engaged in a trade war with Canada. It is happening while the economy is in shambles and America’s reputation around the world continues to crater.
Yet the people surrounding Donald continue to treat his increasingly bizarre demands as if they are perfectly normal acts of presidential leadership. Nobody apparently has the courage to tell him that changing the name of Lake Ontario is not an important presidential accomplishment, just as nobody seems willing to tell him that being President of the United States is not a part time job that leaves plenty of room for managing the renovation of the Kennedy Center.
Instead, they flatter him. They indulge him. They tell him that he is the only person in the world capable of doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with the job the American people elected him to perform.
As long as we have people like Mike Johnson and everybody else in Donald’s inner circle trying to normalize this deviance, we are all part of this psychopathological system that will lead inevitably to our destruction.
To which I say, is there not one sane adult who knows where this is going to lead? Is there not one person in the Trump regime who can send up the signal flare to the rest of us that some of them are willing to start speaking out against this insanity?
Because this isn’t simply about renaming Lake Ontario. It isn’t simply about whether Donald decides tomorrow that the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean needs to have America stamped across its name, too. It is about the fact that there seems to be nobody around him willing to say no. There is nobody willing to stop indulging his grasping need for attention, his delusions of godhood, his megalomania, and his increasingly insane demands.
The Republican Party sees what the rest of us see. They know what is happening. They see the same behavior. They hear the same words. They watch him make the same increasingly detached demands, and rather than push back, they continue enabling him. They continue pretending that this is normal because Donald is Donald and therefore, apparently, he gets to do whatever he wants whenever he wants.
And that is how we get here. We have a President of the United States involved in an illegal and unconstitutional war of choice, an unprovoked trade war with one of our closest allies, and an economy that is creating extraordinary hardship for Americans, while he summons the White House press corps to announce that Lake Ontario is now Lake America.
And everybody around him plays along.
Donald said that now that America has a gulf and a lake, all we need is an ocean. Maybe he’ll change the Atlantic. Maybe he’ll change the Pacific. Maybe he’ll change both.
Meanwhile, the Great Lakes are now, conveniently enough, Superior, Huron, America, Michigan, and Erie.
SHAME.
That may be the most appropriate thing Donald has named yet.
This is unsustainable. He is unsustainable. And the sooner somebody is willing to stand up against the depredations that continue to be made against the American people by Donald and those who are perpetuating this, the better.
The First Nations named Lake Ontario. End of discussion.
I still say Gulf of Mexico and I’ll continue to say Lake Ontario. I like familiarity and I DON’T like change, especially without American citizens having a say.