I could see Trump issuing meaningless EOs or Truth Socials re-naming a perceived outlier liberal jurisdiction like San Francisco, and almost all of MAGA would cheer it on and even some swing-voters would shrug it off as "just Trump being Trump". But even then, the political establishments of most states and cities would still view it as an ominous encroachment.
Renaming a city is another thing that unquestionably can’t be done by presidential executive order.
I wouldn't think so, no. But my layman's guess would be could probably type out a Truth Social announcing he's gonna issue an EO changing the name of a perceived anti-MAGA municipality to "Trump City", and the post in and of itself wouldn't be enough to put him on the wrong side of the law.
But that would be an exception to my general observation. Main point, it's a pretty limited range of options Trump would have if he wanted to start renaming jurisdictions wholly within the USA itself and not piss off large swathes of potential supporters.
File this under the "O Brother" category: Last week, the United Nations General Assembly voted 164 to 1 to redraw the map of Africa to show its actual size in relation to the rest of the world. Guess who voted against it.
For the geographically challenged amongst us (me for example) is the African continent significantly larger that it is usually depicted?
I do know that Aotearoa/New Zealand is often left off world maps altogether, which could be useful if anyone declared war on us.
You can't preserve both shape and area when copying a globe onto a flat map. So all maps are compromises.
The Mercator projection, which was historically the most common preserves shape in so far as that's possible. At any given point on the map locally distances north-south approximately represent the same distance as east-west. (Technically what it preserves is bearing: an angle of 45 degrees up from the right always points north-east.) Unfortunately in order to do that the Mercator projection has to expand distances as it gets to the poles: Greenland, Canada, and Alaska all look much bigger relative to countries on the Equator than they actually are.
There are various map projections that try to preserve area. Unfortunately that means they either have to stretch countries on the Equator north-south or squash the globe near the poles or both. The Peters projection, which usually came with text making a great fuss about how it was much fairer to the developing world than Mercator, did both, having no north-south distortion at the latitudes of southern Europe and the northern US.
Basically you decide which aspect of the world you want to preserve on your map and which compromises you're willing to make and go with it.
Fans of the West Wing may remember an episode where the White House staff met with a group "Geographers for World Equality" (or something similar) who wanted to introduce a fairer map (the Peters projection I think) and it freaked them out.
That's the only episode of the West Wing I've ever watched, and it was extremely snooty about fair trade and fair trade protestors. That it dismisses fair trade as a rich white people issue while asserting that the Peters projection is objectively more accurate than the Mercator projection about sums up the Peters projection for me.
Now, people are worried New Mexico may get a new name by fiat.
That’s something that unquestionably can’t be done by executive order. Not that technicalities like that seem to bother Trump.
Btw, I was confused upthread when I said Carney said he was renaming Lake Michigan “Lake Wisconsin.” It was Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers who wrote that “executive order” on a napkin.
Now, people are worried New Mexico may get a new name by fiat.
That’s something that unquestionably can’t be done by executive order. Not that technicalities like that seem to bother Trump.
Btw, I was confused upthread when I said Carney said he was renaming Lake Michigan “Lake Wisconsin.” It was Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers who wrote that “executive order” on a napkin.
He was not supposed to be able to rename Lake Ontario either due to a treaty George Washington signed with the local tribes up there, yet here we are.
That's the only episode of the West Wing I've ever watched, and it was extremely snooty about fair trade and fair trade protestors. That it dismisses fair trade as a rich white people issue while asserting that the Peters projection is objectively more accurate than the Mercator projection about sums up the Peters projection for me.
It was slightly more sophisticated in its take on the WTO protests than you give it credit for, and while the sentiments you note were put in the mouth of Toby Ziegler he was also robustly challenged and gave a very clear indication later in the episode that he agreed with the substance of the protestors' critique and had he not been working for the government would have been protesting himself.
I thought the best bit of the Cartographers for Social Equality scenes was when they suggested inverting north and south on the world map.
And that’s the problem. At best a map is information. Much of the time it’s no more than data, but to make decisions requires knowledge and wisdom, and intelligence is needed to gain those. Don’t underestimate maps, they are the best tools we have, but don’t let them make decisions.
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I wouldn't think so, no. But my layman's guess would be could probably type out a Truth Social announcing he's gonna issue an EO changing the name of a perceived anti-MAGA municipality to "Trump City", and the post in and of itself wouldn't be enough to put him on the wrong side of the law.
But that would be an exception to my general observation. Main point, it's a pretty limited range of options Trump would have if he wanted to start renaming jurisdictions wholly within the USA itself and not piss off large swathes of potential supporters.
For the geographically challenged amongst us (me for example) is the African continent significantly larger that it is usually depicted?
I do know that Aotearoa/New Zealand is often left off world maps altogether, which could be useful if anyone declared war on us.
The Mercator projection, which was historically the most common preserves shape in so far as that's possible. At any given point on the map locally distances north-south approximately represent the same distance as east-west. (Technically what it preserves is bearing: an angle of 45 degrees up from the right always points north-east.) Unfortunately in order to do that the Mercator projection has to expand distances as it gets to the poles: Greenland, Canada, and Alaska all look much bigger relative to countries on the Equator than they actually are.
There are various map projections that try to preserve area. Unfortunately that means they either have to stretch countries on the Equator north-south or squash the globe near the poles or both. The Peters projection, which usually came with text making a great fuss about how it was much fairer to the developing world than Mercator, did both, having no north-south distortion at the latitudes of southern Europe and the northern US.
Basically you decide which aspect of the world you want to preserve on your map and which compromises you're willing to make and go with it.
He was not supposed to be able to rename Lake Ontario either due to a treaty George Washington signed with the local tribes up there, yet here we are.
It was slightly more sophisticated in its take on the WTO protests than you give it credit for, and while the sentiments you note were put in the mouth of Toby Ziegler he was also robustly challenged and gave a very clear indication later in the episode that he agreed with the substance of the protestors' critique and had he not been working for the government would have been protesting himself.
I thought the best bit of the Cartographers for Social Equality scenes was when they suggested inverting north and south on the world map.