It's Called The Gulf of Mexico
How to resist by hanging on to the language and places that we love.
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In her new book, The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer describes all the names that exist for a particularly wonderful berry.
“Saskatoon, Juneberry, Shadbush, Shadblow, Sugarplum, Sarvis, Serviceberry.”
It’s a bush that’s known for its fruits, for its medicines and for the “early froth of flowers that whiten woodland edges at the first hint of spring.”
Ethnobotanists know that the more names a plant has, the greater its cultural importance, Kimmerer tells us.
I have dozens of names or my kid (“Baba, “Babaloo,” “Baboosh,” “Little Chicken”) my pets (Maple, Mai-Mai, Mapelino), my partner (I’ll spare you), the people in my family.
We give names to the things that we love.
Naming builds a bond. It says out loud how important a thing is to you.
The power to name things is one of the important actions we have in making sense of our world.
Which is why, as the fifth full week of this Trump Administration continues at its mind-numbing pace, I have to remember to shake myself awake and remember the names of things I care about.
February, for example, is Black History Month, which our family celebrated with homemade cakes at a gathering while hearing from elders in the community about their efforts to uplift young people.
In March, it will be Women’s History Month. In May, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. In June, we will celebrate Pride.
All of these months are meaningful to us, we name them in honor of the things we care about. And we can add as many as we need.
But I learned just last week that Google has been quietly stripping the names of these months from its Google calendar app (“Too hard to keep track of,” their spokesperson said. But it’s easy enough to keep track of my personal data, I guess).
Then, more recently, Google and Apple changed the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” in their map apps, a result of pressure from the President.
Trump also took a swipe at Denali, reverting back to the name “Mount McKinley,” as part of an Executive Order titles, “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.”
And the world gets smaller.
We can’t allow the names for our world to be changed on the whims of white supremacists. We can’t allow them to narrow the vision of the world want for our children.
Lane wrote recently about the narrative of male grievance that dominated the campaign, and that animates all the actions that have emerged from this new administration.
“Hegseth is being appointed on male grievance. Mark Zuckerberg is singing the song of male grievance. Andrew Tate has launched the BRUV PARTY. This administration won in large part thanks to a message that men are being treated unfairly."
The narrative is so pervasive that you might start to wonder if male grievance is real, and men are being oppressed everywhere from the military to the office,” Lane wrote.
And what of women?
We should all be terrified when this government says it is “defending women.”
But here we have it: This dystopian statement, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism” which denies the existence of our trans children, neighbors, colleagues and ourselves, withdraws funds to support healthcare, and demands the removal of guidance that supports children in their schools.
The National Parks Service has followed suit, removing mention of trans and queer people from its website marking the Stonewall National Monument.
Areas that used to be described as LGBTQ+, has been changed to LGB.
"Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969, is a milestone in the quest for LGB civil rights and provided momentum for a movement," the website now says.
It’s not the world we know.
But there are ways to remember in real time.
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First, we can challenge the information we’re receiving about the actions of the administration. That means holding the media we consume to account.
I was inspired by this list of actions from a longtime producer at CBS.
The so-called “legacy media” are being dangerously irresponsible in their approach to covering President Trump and his henchman Elon Musk, he writes, by imitating their language instead of questioning it.
And while the suggestions he makes are for journalists covering the administration, all of us should be following this advice when we read or share the news.
The first among them is, “Do not parrot Trump and Musk’s language or framing.”
The most debilitating part of Trump controlling the narrative is the risk that the rest of us begin to adopt the same language.
The administration’s language waters seeds of racism, misogyny, transphobia. It normalizes cruelty.
We can also call a thing what it is: The Department of Government Efficiency is a made-up agency that is doing exactly the opposite of what its name connotes. Don’t call it by the name it invented for itself. Call it a takeover by an unelected official. A threat to our lives and our livelihood.
More guidance from Brian Montopoli:
Stress the unconstitutionality and illegality of their actions in every headline
Do not conform to outdated ideas of neutrality that water down reality
Focus on the impact and outcomes, instead of process and bluster
And always, always, always keep a relentless focus on the bigger picture
Of course, this is not the first administration to use language to re-shape reality. That’s politics.
But as many other folks have pointed out, the lies in this particular administration abound.
Take, for example, Sean Duffy, the current head of the US Department of Transportation, and former U.S. Representative, Fox News host and reality TV star.
Duffy tweeted last week:
"In line with my commitment to restoring sanity to @USDOT, the FAA will resume using the term “Notice to Airmen” instead of “Notice to Air Missions.” Also, pilot charts will now reference the Gulf of America and Mt. McKinley. Thanks to President Trump, we are taking back our language, our history, and our country.”
Restoring sanity? Call it what it is: Gaslighting at best; violence at worst.
“Planes may be crashing right and left, but male fragility is being protected even if passengers are not--by some petty denial that currently about ten percent of pilots are women,” Rebecca Solnit noted.
Language matters. Where we turn our our attention determines what grows.
This obsessive focus on combatting equity initiatives means that swaths of truly material concerns will be dutifully neglected.
“The language belongs to all of us and to each of us, and under most situations short of torture and imprisonment most of us have some agency in how we use it,” Solnit says.
“Authoritarians recognize that authority over language itself is vital to their power.
Going along with them is a surrender most of us don't have to engage in.”
Let’s not just go along.
Let’s name what we cherish, and recommit to what we know to be true.
And, while we’re at it, let’s reboot Mapquest, which seems to be unafraid to call things as they are!
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I just think we have to stubbornly resist any and everything he and his minions say and do - in our own minds, where it all starts. I remind myself every time I hear them talking on tv that they are full of it, and they are bad people to boot. It stiffens my resolve to continue to move through all the nonsense and keep my eyes on the prize - surviving this crap period of time and getting to the good stuff - the backlash against all of this and the return of liberal views and values. Age of Aquarius got to come sometime, amirite?
yes, i keep thinking about how cults use language and re-naming things as recruitment tools! its so fucking blatant i'm going crazy