Trump’s Wet Fantasies Are Irrelevant For Reality

If anything, the distraction tactics of the malignant narcissist and convicted felon in the White House are paying off. More people are talking about this attempted renaming of the Gulf of Mexico than the insidious US government coup performed in plain sight. It’s all about one small man’s desperate need to make a mark at any cost, devoid of deeper meaning or genuine care for the American people. It only serves his grandeur and his bottomless need to control the narrative—that’s all that matters to him.

Legally, there is no base for a name change of the Gulf of Mexico. One government cannot change the naming of international seas. That is the prerogative of an international organisation.The Gulf of Mexico was discovered by the European explorer Amerigo Vespucci in 1497.

The US territory covers a small upper portion of the Gulf of Mexico. The lower, larger half is Mexican territory, with a small, quarter-sized portion on the right belonging to Cuba. In the centre are two smaller patches of international sea.

The US operates a large amount of oil platforms in its territorially claimed portion, which poisoned the sea with several oil spills, the most severe being the Ixtoc I oil spill in 1979 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

Whether Trump wants to rename something outside of US territory is completely irrelevant to the world. As for Alphabet, the company that owns Google Maps, bending over to an authoritarian bully doesn’t only show spineless character and a lack of leadership—it also diminishes the authority of Google Maps as a neutral, internationally recognised source of the reality we all perceive. In that sense, Trump’s tactics are indeed effective, and we can stop searching for a bigger picture or strategy beyond the self-serving need for recognition of a small man.

Sources

The UNGEGN International Course on Toponymy, Manila, 2018: Naming objects beyond a single sovereignty, by Hyo Hyun Sung, Professor, Ewha Womans University