Lake Ontario ("Lake America")
community.openstreetmap.org
community.openstreetmap.org
Honestly can’t believe there’s a few million very smart people in America who have to put up with this. Bridges for Americans worldwide are being burned to the ground and there’s no sign of a new enlightened political age arriving on any horizon. Canadians also don’t seem to understand that this situation is only going to get worse and America can no longer be considered a friend.
As a Canadian, I very much understand that this will/can get worse, and not just for the US. The problems of America do not stop at Trump. He is merely the distracting, mercurial figurehead of a dysfunctional government and populist movement.
It is not a matter of friendship --- the average American isn't that different than the average Canadian. Some of my best friends and favoured colleagues are Americans. We can't turn this into Americans v. Canadians. We're all just getting exposed to the same social media cues that feed on fear and despair driven by profit and bad actors which leads to an erosion of trust and goodwill. America may just be a few short years ahead of the rest of us. We need to recognize who/what is driving us apart and fight that.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-june-17-2...
The orange narcissist will probably see it as a win and the sane people in the country may finally be embarrassed enough to actually do something about him and his cronies.
It will likely improve when the Russian asset departs, maybe even after the mid terms.
This trolling and misdirection are not in the movie. Also, both are clearly effective, and a discourse that warps economic impact on US midterms voters within identities, reduces the chance of exposing the bad consequences and risks of power-politics. So this is quite well timed, and the outrageous quotient is I think also well calibrated.
Charles Chaplin understood it, so please y'all catch up ASAP.
The difference being that in the movie Idiocracy the President didn't assume he knew everything and was willing to listen to people who knew more than him.
Maybe there's naunces I'm missing because I'm not American, but it made me feel a bit gross in the same way a lot of pop culture around 'chavs' in the UK made me feel a bit gross. I don't think always refraining from punching down is a good rule in comedy, but I struggle to find much comedy in things which are nothing but punching down.
Maybe I'm being unfair to the film because of the fanbase as well. I've always seen it as a mild red flag when someone says it's their favourite comedy, but it's hardly the film's fault it got popular on places like reddit.
This is circular reasoning: You don't like the film because of the fanbase which you don't like because they like the film.
There is no "apologia for eugenics" in the intro. You have to actively infer that as a logical consequence ("we need to prevent stupid people from procreating as much") of what is shown ("society becomes stupid when stupid people procreate more than intelligent people"). The reason it is only in the intro and is never revisited is that it is just the setup for the actual movie, not a message in itself (the whole sequence is in fact very dissimilar from the rest of the movie). A more accurate setup would be that we have a culture that selects for primitive behavior and is anti-intellectual, but that isn't as funny as showing Cletus fucking everything that moves.
I expect the next administration will push through some laws limiting this sort of idiocy.
So you have faith in the average American voter? (Or at least a plurality of them?)
You also seem to be ignoring all the systematic changes that have been made during Trump 2 in your prediction for such huge wins for the democrats. Things like the final destruction of the Voting Rights Act and the extreme Gerrymandering have gone mostly towards republicans. Also 32% of voters (or more) still don't really see a distinction against Donald Trump and The Almighty. Forgive me but I'm not convinced it'll be the bloodbath you think it's going to be. Democrats might have a minor edge in the house when all is said and done and literally nothing else to show for it.
† But it might not, if you turn five 7/3 R seats and two 9/1 D seats into six 6/4 and one 9/1 you risk a dummymander where too many of "your" voters vote the "wrong" way and you have seven Democrats elected even though you still took almost 50% of the vote in some districts and you drew the maps.
Now the trouble is that voters seem to be imagining that if the Democrats take the Legislature that's the whole ball of wax and it just isn't. If there's a narrow D majority in both parts of Congress you can expect that to stall the stupidest stuff from Trump which was subject to congressional oversight, but the useless "We need bipartisanship" mewling will start almost immediately from people who apparently were 100% fine with party-line Republican decisions or executive override.
When it became clear this was happening some gerrymandering attempts were aborted, for example in Indiana.
As awful as it is, this is what America is now.
Expensive gas and groceries are pretty unpopular. I guess some chunk of people will find a way to wholly blame Biden or whatever.
Markwayne Mullin, DHS Secretary, just yesterday:
“You have a Biden administration that is failing the American people because they are allowing millions of people to come into this country illegally.”
20 months in to a 48 month term and they're still blaming the last guy, and phrasing it as if the last guy is still actively doing things other than having cancer.
The whole admin is a bunch of clowns. And unfortunately they benefit from a right wing media machine that reinforces the nonsense, and a general media environment that is more than willing to sanewash and downplay.
The midterms won't look pretty for him.
> I expect the next administration will push through some laws limiting this sort of idiocy.
The problem is that the bar is now so low that basically anybody will win, by design.
They'll pass some surface level bullshit to treat symptoms, like how lakes can or cannot be renamed. But they'll fail to address any root, systemic issues that allowed this BS to unfold in the first place, paving the way for the other half of the Uniparty to resume power 4-8 years later.
Democracy is illusory.
Not according to the link above, and the growing array of solvable yet perpetually unsolved problems in other countries.
At best, you get an illusion of progress. That's not progress.
Plus frequent public votes on actually important matters, the mark of adult smart population. Politicians globally will go out of their way to explain to you why Swiss model is bad for other places, but it boils down to who holds actual decision power and accountability.
Folks generally like to feel they are objective, but only to the point when something they don't favor is winning. I am guilty of same behavior, part of human nature I guess but its good to realize one's own fallacies
Recent rebuttals to the Swiss model:
Its most direct democracy globally having most free citizens (depends on viewpoint but I stand behind this claim firmly), bar none. They just don't need to shout about it all the time like US folks do, they simply just deliver, over 800 years and counting.
"In a 5-4 decision..."
They're clearly OK with that, so it's not a problem that we can't ask them because they're dead, but the remaining Justices might now want to weigh in on whether it's OK to kill Supreme Court Justices if you're President, and might perhaps be expected to decide that's not OK and the earlier judgement was flawed.
It's not even that many deaths, Trump's decisions have directly killed far more people than that without them having any say in the matter - He isn't (and never will be) in jail for it because of course these assholes get to do whatever they want and a Democrat will maybe send them a stern letter
The response we saw would be appropriate for toddlers but the Justices aren't toddlers, they're adults, they knew perfectly well what they were doing and so the only way to deliver justice was to ensure their decision has consequences.
What we really need is to sweep away the existing party duopoly, particularly by dropping the bullshit and actively harmful first-past-the-post electoral system which effectively mandates it.
The socialist wing of the Democratic Party is even less libertarian than the moderates, and it’s hard to call them controlled.
What's particularly damaging about Trump's approach to tariffs is the uncertainty. The targets don't always make a lot of sense. They're done haphazardly through questionable paths, which means they're subject to legal challenges. They're changed on a whim when Trump decides he needs to make a splash, or when someone says something he doesn't like, or when he wants to blow up a negotiation, or whatever.
It all leads to a situation where business owners and investors can't really be sure what the tariff landscape is 6, 12, 18, 24 months into the future. Will the tariffs survive legal challenges? Who will Trump decide to tariff next? Which tariffs might be increased drastically next week?
That is not an environment that fosters investment and business growth.
Unfortunately November is going to be a historic voter supression event like nothing ever seen before.
(Laughing and crying.)
How do you have pride when the leader of your tribe is a liar, swindler, rapist, thug?
What a simplistic mind that says unthinkingly "Well the leader of my country wants it, I'm not going to question him, rah rah!"
This is my kind of patriotism, personally. I love America. I want America to succeed in the world. And I will call my government out when it is fucking it up.
Renaming Lake Ontario on a whim because Trump is no longer happy with the USMCA trade deal he himself made just a few years ago and the negotiations aren't going well because he keeps making crazy demands is squarely in "fucking it up" territory.
We are absolutely being taken over by a gang / mafia style organization.
As a Canadian I say: please don't apologize; we're actually enjoying this.
The US could retaliate in a lot of other ways that could be much more hurtful to us: higher tariffs, break collaboration treaties, etc. The fact that Trump is "fighting back" with something this lame is just funny. It is like watching a 5 year old throwing a tantrum.
Compare this reaction with dogs. When a rottweiler or Doberman is angry with you, it attacks and hurts you. When a chihuahua or terrier is angry at you, it just makes a lot of noise. Trump's reaction is like a chihuahua, it is not like a rottweiler.
Gradually, he is steering away the public discussion from what matters: the Iran War, inflation, the abusive police state created by ICE, the rise of China and weakening of international standing of US... We're making a lot of noise about what doesn't matter: what's the name of a lake.
It is like when I admonish my 4 year old son about something he did and he replies: "Look over there!". I think the name of this trick is "non-sequitur".
And you know the funniest part? It has been working for years and will keep working! Remember the "immigrants eat our cats and dogs"?
This low-level debating is exactly what Neil Postman described in "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business", in 1985. The entertainment industry makes everyone stupid.
On Canadians too. Remember what party was leading the polls before Trump started mean tweets?
The Epstein Files.
And yeah, the name predates the Canadian province.
This, as its just made up, reminds me a lot of political/nationalist renaming of things like roads which is very common in parts of South Asia.
Totally unserious behavior, and it's ridiculous that Americans and the rest of the world have to put up with this nonsense.
A small number of Republican representatives and senators could end it all today by publicly supporting impeachment.
What about when the locals are perfectly happy with the colonial name and politicians (maybe distant from the place) want to change it?
I read elsewhere that Map Quest refused to use "Lake America". I was pleased to find, pretty much on the other wide of the world, their maps also still use the name "Duplication Road" after many decades.
The examples you're citing are less ridiculous than these recent stunts, but still should be considered in terms of their intentions and effects.
What's the motivation for trying to detatch the name of something from its existing understanding and historical context?
Why should the attempts to "rebrand" an entire country or geographical feature made by a government -- a particular instituion within society, usually under the control of one narrow faction in opposition to others -- be respected by the whole of society within that country, let alone by people in foreign countries speaking a different language?
Why should, for example, the Turkish government -- which operates in the Turkish language, where "Türkiye" already was the standard name of their country -- be respected in its attempt to get English speakers to write the country's name in orthography that is not readily pronounceable by English speakers, and using characters that aren't standard on our keyboard layouts?
??? that's not true at all
> reminds me a lot of political/nationalist renaming of things like roads which is very common in parts of South Asia
Isn't that very common in... Canada?
Ottawa, Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway -> Kichi Zībī Mīkan (2023)
Winnipeg, Bishop Grandin Boulevard -> Abinojii Mikanah (2023–24)
Halifax, Cornwallis Street -> Nora Bernard Street (2023)
Montreal, Rue Amherst -> Rue Atateken (2019)
Vancouver, Trutch Street -> šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm Street (2025)
Victoria, Trutch Street -> Su'it Street (2022)
Calgary, Langevin Bridge -> Reconciliation Bridge (2017)
Are the Canadian examples nationalist? It looks like your first example was first renamed after a politician (which is like South Asia) and then renamed again after a pushback to that (which is not like South Asia)
name:en=Lake Ontario
vs.
official_name:en-US=Lake America
(Google Translate from "Satan's armpit").
I mean, if temper tantrums by the supreme executive are allowed and all.
And while he's at it, Georgia could become Trumpia to avoid confusion with the nation of the same name. (Why even do you have a state named after the granddad of the king you fought off?)
But I guess those might accidentally be useful, so of course he's not going to do them. :P
[1]: https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/official_name#overvie...
Thankfully, North Korea's antics doesn't matter, because nobody is trying to sell map service to North Koreans anyway.
The US mechanism seems the strongest of the three, and people have considered this a normal thing in a democracy long enough for this to happen.
Clown court.
Changes to major landmarks require a 5-year grace period (wait 5 years).
Nothing about it feels "right-wing" at all -- actual conservatism is all about maintaining continuity and avoiding forced changes to traditional conventions and established social norms.
Trump and his followers are a competing faction of the extreme left, as should be readily evidenced by his economic policies, and it's not at all surprising that he shares the same mentality of inserting political shibboleths into mundane aspects of everyday life.