Gulf of America? It's not an original idea
A Mississippi state legislator had a tongue-in-cheek proposal to do the same thing more than a decade ago. He wasn't serious. Is Trump?
When president-elect Donald Trump proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week, he may have been channeling a colorful Mississippi state legislator—a Democrat, no less—who once did the identical thing.
His name is Steve Holland, and in 2012 he proposed a bill that would change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
In Holland’s case, though, he wasn’t serious. It was a way of tweaking the tailfeathers of his Republican colleagues who were all a-flutter over illegal Mexican immigrants.
You hate Mexico so much, he was telling them, let’s erase the word “Mexico” from our state documents, specifically any references to that big body of water on our southern border.
"They want to kick immigrants out of the state,” he told NPR at the time. “They want to drug test Medicaid people. They want to get rid of anything that's not 'America.'
"So, I just thought it would be in keeping to introduce a bill to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. It fits right in with what the majority thinking apparently is now."
The proposal went nowhere, but that wasn’t the point. It did, however, win Holland his 15 minutes of fame (including a reference in one of my novels).
Sid Salter, a columnist for the Clarion Ledger, said this about him:
“Holland, at once, is obstinate, profane, compassionate, intelligent and crazy like a fox … in his prime (he) was one of the best honky-tonk gospel piano players I’ve ever heard. As a funeral home owner, director, and licensed embalmer for some 40 years, Holland’s lack of convention and his occasional rejection of the rules of polite society might well trace to the quantity of time he has spent with the faithful departed.”
In other words, he would have made a great Florida Man. It’s a pity the downtrodden state of Mississippi gets to claim him.
Trump, though, does qualify as a genuine Florida Man now that he’s changed his voting address to Mar-a-Lago. And unlike Holland, he seems serious (or as genuine as he can pretend to be) about this Gulf of America nonsense.
In Holland’s case, the State of Mississippi, in its misguided wisdom, actually could have required all references to the Gulf of Mexico to be changed to the Gulf of America in state documents. It’s not so different from the action of a certain Florida Republican governor banning the expression “climate change.”
Fast forward 13 years and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—always eager to suck up to the convicted felon soon to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—has filed a bill to do Trump’s bidding. Even if that legislation is ultimately passed, it is unclear—at least to me—what it would actually accomplish.
After all, America doesn’t own the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, it got its name from the time Spain laid claim to the Gulf Coast (as if any of the illegal European immigrants back then actually “owned” anything; they just took it. Oh, yeah, Greenland, we got a lot of experience at that, just FYI).
Would the international community, specifically the United Nations, bow to the will of Trump? Would all the globes and maps of the world have to be redone?
I can’t imagine.
Then, again, I couldn’t imagine Trump winning a second term, either. So, what do I know?
J.C. Bruce is an award-winning journalist and author of The Strange Files series of mysterious novels (available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, other online booksellers, and at selected libraries). He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and Florida. His latest novel, Strange Timing, has been named Book of the Year in the Royal Palm Literary Awards. When he’s not writing, he’s in training for the next international underwater ping-pong championships.
Sponsored by TROPIC PRESS, publisher of The Strange Files Series of Mysterious Adventures.
