Of frogs, roses, kings and a Great Lake

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, as the saying goes. Basically, if you change something’s name, you don’t actually change the nature of the thing.

That being said, if even 15 years ago an American president had called an entire news conference to announce he was renaming one of the Great Lakes by writing on a map with a red pen and issuing an executive order purporting to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” all and sundry would question his mental health.

Maybe, after witnessing so much from Donald Trump, we’ve all just been hardened off and the foolish is now expected daily. Perhaps it’s the political equivalent of the fable of the boiling frog.

As the fable goes, drop a frog into a pot of boiling water and it will jump right out. But put the frog in room temperature water and bring the pot to a boil, the frog will stay until its death. (It’s unlikely the frog would actually wait.)

But you get the idea.

Boggled by the apparent stupidity of the whole event — and the way it was seriously and dutifully covered by the media — some are suggesting the executive order was something else: an attempt to begin to try and exert control over the entirety of Lake Ontario, even though an international boundary clearly zig-zags through the lake.

Those observers suggest the name change was meant to cloak details in Trump’s executive order that suggest American rights to the lake because of its depth near the American shores: “With the deepest parts of the Lake’s waters lying within United States territory, the United States claims most of the Lake’s volume,” the executive order says.

Those same observers compare Trump’s actions to China’s efforts to absorb areas by renaming them and exerting control over them.

Perhaps that’s true.

Or perhaps the truth is closer to the fact that President Watch-My-Spectacle dearly loves to be at the centre of big things, whether it’s a UFC fight on the White House grounds, a car race through Washington, or leading the construction of an Arc de Trump in his own honour.

Regardless, it’s Lake Ontario. It has been named that since before the United States, before Canada, called Ontari’io, or “beautiful lake,” in the Wendat language. Oddly enough, Trump claims to be honouring history by calling the water Lake America, when in fact he’s simply erasing history that he either doesn’t like or doesn’t understand.

What is terrifying about this process is that apparently no one on the president’s staff could convince him that the plan was the height of foolishness, especially at a time when high gas prices, food inflation and spending on a massive foreign war are much larger concerns for the Americans who elected him.

Instead, we see performative tweets from senior politicians cheering Trump on, such as U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Bergum, saying “We’re on it Mr. President! The places and waters that border our nation and support our economy should reflect the greatness of the United States.”

You might call that patriotism. But … a rose by any other name.

In high school, Bergum’s fawning obsequiousness would have been called out for what it is — brown-nosing.

Or you could call it sucking up, boot-licking, toadying or currying favour. Or fawning, grovelling, buttering up, bowing and scraping, laying it on.

Panegyrizing, if you want a word that a self-proclaimed “stable genius” wouldn’t understand.

But back to famous sayings.

Here’s one: the emperor has no clothes.

And it’s royal frippery in a country whose constitution explicitly rejects monarchs.

Fancy that.