Legislating through your hat

 

Another day, another surreal series of news items from America.  Today we see Donald and his entire cabinet sitting round a table each with a "Gulf of America" hat in front of them.  Not on their heads of course, because that would be silly but just on the desk in front of them like a glass of water.

It's a bizarre piece of political theatre not unlike something the USSR would have created but somehow even crasser than that.  The Trump administration declared that the "Gulf of Mexico" was now the "Gulf of America" some time ago without consulting anyone else and this decision has gone down like a cup of warm sick with most of South America, the Caribbean, Journalists, Mapmakers, Lexicographers and just about anyone else who doesn't think you can just change Proper Nouns willy nilly and expect everyone else to tag along.  I'd say it's a policy statement but it isn't even that, it's more like a strange oath of fealty that everyone around him has to engage in by possessing a hat with a slogan on.  For what the statement really states is that the US somehow owns a bit of the sea.  It sounds like an attack on the second of Wilson's famous 14 points "Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants."  At the least it is a statement of the projection of US powers beyond its shores (without the inconvenience of literally starting a war).

It's odd to see so many political statements made by millinery....  

But if this is to be the future why not strike out from baseball caps and go for something different next time... Stovepipe hats to celebrate American kitchen appliance manufacturing, flat caps to celebrate American Apartment construction, cocked hats to celebrate the dickheads running America etc...