Engulfed

Two names for the same place? Not a problem. It took centuries to stabilize “Istanbul” and displace the name that came before it. I’d still be happy with Constantinople and use either name on alternate days. My guess is that there are some people who continue to slip, in much the same way that they never made it from “Prince” to the unpronounceable hieroglyphic we were supposed to adopt. The two continued to be used interchageably.

The Bible manifests an ancient version. Sinai and Horeb are exactly the same mountain. Hebron and Mamre are exactly the same city. No one know the why of this doubling, but it seems to be part of the structure of human life, an organic feature of the Biblical tradition.

Not so with President Donald John Trump (Sauron!) and the first ugly days of his return to office. Barely done with refining his enemies list, he decided he could no longer live with the “Gulf of Mexico.” He stood as a Lawgiver on one of the balconies of Mar-a-Lago to say “Let it be known as the Gulf of America!” And so it was on the maps of the new administration.

Or maybe not, depending on your politics. The problem, of course, is not the name per se. There are arguably more Americans citizens who live adjacent to the waters of the Gulf. That’s despite the fact that our refineries and chemical plants have created a dead zone that kills anything for miles.

The real problem is the larger context. The shift from “Mexico” to the “Gulf of America” takes us into the dead zone of Trump/Sauron’s pugnacity, his unalterable impulse to lead with provocation. With Roy Cohn embedded like a lizard in his psyche, he imagines every encounter as an opportunity for violence, for expressing an empty, arrogant primacy, for pinning the potential opposition to the wall. It’s not enough to jettison Mexicans from North America. He has to seize their gulf and make it his bathtub, a personal fixture in the new king’s toilette.

For our president, there is no such thing as stare decisis, the doctrine that things might have a past of their own that should be respected by succeeding generations. The Gulf of Mexico, bearing that very name, has been with us since the mid-sixteenth century. There’s history here and the patina of usage, a settled sense that however chaotic and whimsical you may be, some things have an existence outside yourself that a normal person would treat with defernce.

Not so with Sauron and the Orcs who serve him. They are addicted to agression, intimidation, and bullying, the poisonous, pointless pleasures of the quarrel. No issue too small, no gulf too large. If you can imagine seizing Canada, Greenland, or Panama, the Gulf of Mexico is small potatoes.

Not only that, but it can be endlessly weaponized. In the Biggest Genitalia contest that now marks his presidency, Trump has barred reporters who cling to the Gulf of Mexico from sitting in the room with other journalists. The nomenclature issue has now become a pretext for punishment and retaliation at a consequential level.

That, of course, is not fine at all. It reduces all of us to worried servants, wondering what Master will react to next. How do I stay out of the line of fire and keep stay in the good graces of a sour tyrant? That is not the way America is supposed to work. Yeoman farmers do not have to worry about their lords because whatever lords they once had are back in England.

But maybe I’m just as guilty as Donald Trump. I’ve taken to calling him Sauron the Second. Two names for the same person? Not a problem for me.