The same people throwing a tantrum about the inconsequential naming of a lake are now throwing a shit-fit after they discovered their newly beloved MapQuest doesn't show their preferred borders for Palestine, so I'm quite enjoying this play out.
Dictators make spurious announcements in order to see who obeys and who doesn't, and then punish those who didn't, in order to further their own grip on power.
Whether the dictator does this one time, or a million times, each time matters. Each time you obey the dictator, other people see you obeying the dictator, which is you handing your credibility to the dictator. It entrenches them further. See The Power of the Powerless for how it played out in the Soviet Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#Hav...
> Havel uses the example of a greengrocer who displays in his shop the sign Workers of the world, unite! Since failure to display the sign could be seen as disloyalty, he displays it and the sign becomes not a symbol of his enthusiasm for the regime, but a symbol of both his submission to it and humiliation by it.
I don’t understand why the phrasing of the order matters. It’s very obviously a petulant and childish move made in response to trade negotiation failures with Canada. That’s literally what Trump himself has said:
> The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
>I don’t understand why the phrasing of the order matters.
Because my parent comment said that he was throwing a tantrum. I don't see any evidence that he is balling his eyes out, trashing the Oval Office, or screaming. The order is not written in childish frustration, but in a professional tone.
This is head in the sand behavior and I question your comment being put here in good faith.
These actions are not commonplace. This is not how you run a country. The long held names of bodies of water with international neighbors are now suddenly up for changes on a whim. No discussion, no convincing, just I say so.
Problem with the "childish" take is it waves off the admins statements they intentionally engage in this shit to rile up the terminally online lizard brains
