By Nick Catoggio
Friday, August 28, 2026
Today marks six months since our four-to-five-week war on Iran began. The president’s
approval in the matter has sunk below
35 percent. Emboldened by America’s provocative weakness, Russia may be preparing
to attack NATO. Yet, somehow, Donald Trump is preoccupied with …
… actually, we’ll come back to that. A proper analysis
pegged to the current news cycle of how pathetic the United States has become
under populism should start not with the Great Lakes but with the Pentagon.
A few days ago the Washington Post supplied new
evidence in the curious case of Gen. Randy George, the respected Army chief of
staff who was fired in the thick of the war earlier this year. The New York Times alleged in April that George was
ousted in part because he wouldn’t
rescind the recommendations for promotion he had made on behalf of several
officers, two of them black and two of them women, which in Pete Hegseth’s
“anti-DEI” military made them presumptively unqualified. The defense secretary
allegedly wanted them taken off the promotion list, George refused, and that
was that. He was gone.
According to the Post, though, there may have been another factor
in his dismissal: “Days before the Army’s top officer was abruptly fired
earlier this year, he was advised by a fellow general now vying to replace him
to stop the military’s investigation into an unauthorized helicopter flyby of
musician Kid Rock’s Tennessee estate, three people familiar with the matter
said.”
That fellow general was Chris LaNeve, who’s advanced
meteorically up the ranks since January 2025 by distinguishing himself as an
enthusiastic Trump ass-kisser. LaNeve allegedly told George that Hegseth
was unhappy that a probe into the Kid Rock flyby had been opened and wanted it
canceled, which “troubled” George per the Post’s sources. But it was
canceled, and the defense secretary trumpeted
its cancellation on social media.
Then, a few weeks later, he celebrated again by
commandeering a pair of Apaches for him
and Kid Rock to joyride around in.
Punishing Randy George for resisting the culture of
impunity that Hegseth hopes to instill in the military is evil stuff, one of several reasons the latter is the worst defense chief—and plausibly
the worst Cabinet member—in U.S. history. What elevates the incident from
standard-issue fascism to a vignette about America’s new global laughingstock
status is that it revolves around a tawdry celebrity has-been whom no one
without a political motive to do so pretends to take seriously.
Firing a capable officer like Randy George is bad. Firing
him because he didn’t show proper respect for Kid Rock is so unbearably
humiliating for the United States that I feel it in my chest.
“Shameful” isn’t the right word, as shame implies a sense
of guilt over some serious offense for which you feel directly or indirectly
responsible—and, to be sure, the Trump administration routinely acts in ways
that fit that bill. The George episode isn’t so much shameful as it is
pathetic. It betrays a bratty juvenile fatuousness that’s only possible in
political leaders who fundamentally don’t grasp, or actively disdain, the
concept of dignity.
America has had periods of weakness in my lifetime (whatabout
Jimmy Carter?), but it’s never been a laughingstock, let alone one that
regularly and gratuitously communicates to the rest of the planet why it
shouldn’t be respected. Until now.
Which brings us to “Lake America.”
Bookends.
Formally changing the name of Lake Ontario (within the
executive branch, anyway) is the presidential preoccupation du jour to
which I alluded above. War, inflation, a mushrooming public panic over AI data
centers: All of it had to wait yesterday as Trump bore down on the more urgent
task of rechristening the smallest of the Great Lakes “Lake
America.”
It wasn’t the first time that he’s undertaken to rename a
local body of water in a flourish of nationalist chauvinism and, if some of the
noisier chuds in his fan base have
their way, it won’t be the last. But not every right-winger received the
news as enthusiastically as they did the “Gulf of Mexico” rebrand last year. One
Republican candidate in a northern border state reassured voters there that
he’ll continue to refer to the lake as “Lake Ontario.” And a
major influencer in the chud space complained that it was silly for America
to disclaim a moniker that’s existed longer than America itself has.
The “Gulf of America” and “Lake America” episodes are
actually useful bookends to Trump’s presidency (so far).
He issued his order renaming the former on Inauguration
Day 2025 as a gesture to mark nationalism’s triumphant return to power. In
hindsight, it was an early warning from the president about how he intended to
throw the United States’ weight around in its near-abroad even if doing so
overturned tradition. If he was willing to erase the Gulf of Mexico, he seemed
to imply, he might be willing to act boldly in other ways that our
neighbors—like Venezuela, and Cuba, and Greenland, and Canada—wouldn’t like.
The posture for the “Lake America” nonsense is different.
If the “Gulf of America” rebrand was a declaration of triumph, the targeting of
Lake Ontario is a declaration of defeat. It was inspired, of course, by the
stupid-even-for-him new trade war the
president has launched against Canada. Canadians are emphatically behind Prime Minister Mark Carney in prosecuting that
conflict while Americans, just as emphatically, are
not behind Trump. As politicians across the spectrum up north mock
him for his childishness and invite him to kiss their ass, the only U.S. politicians who
seem to want to take sides in the matter are Democrats. Who are … also mocking him for his childishness and, more or less, inviting him to kiss their ass.
Under those circumstances, changing the name of Lake
Ontario reeks of impotence and humiliation. It’s transparently an act of spite
by a man-baby who’s lashing out after failing to get his way. And it’s a boost
for his domestic opponents on the left, who already planned to campaign this
fall on the idea that the president is too absorbed with trivial idiocy like
ballrooms—and now lakes—to address the problems he was elected to solve.
The “Gulf of America” trolling was an act of strength at
a moment when Trump’s approval was above 50 percent and before he’d disappointed anyone. The
“Lake America” idiocy is an act of pitiful weakness at a moment when his
approval is below 40. It’s “cover your eyes”-tier pathetic, and the muted
reaction to it in Chudworld suggests that even they know it. If there’s a trace
of dignity left in right-wing populism after 10 years of degradation, the
president might have at last found a way to wound it.
Which is amazing when you realize that changing the
lake’s name wasn’t even the most pathetic thing he did yesterday.
A case study.
The essential point about the “Lake America” episode,
though, is that it isn’t a departure for Trumpist government. It’s a case study
of its pathologies.
Renaming things is a logical expression of the same
impulses that have caused the president to devote 70
percent of his mental energy toward building monuments and ordering renovations
around the capital, in the estimation of New York Times reporter
Maggie Haberman. His desire for a legacy that can’t be expunged by his enemies
after he’s gone has led him to focus on changing landscapes and maps, and his
fetish for dominance has led him to be imperious about it. The cost of living
might be important to you, but being remembered is important to him—and guess
whose priorities come first in that scenario.
Be happy he’s not giving it the Kennedy Center treatment
by changing the name to “Lake America, as presented by Donald J. Trump.”
It’s also a case of Trump using state power to try to
coerce changes to the culture, one of his most authoritarian traits. That’s a
core premise of postliberalism: If you can’t persuade businesses and schools to
drop racial diversity programs or support for transgender rights, you can win
control of the government and squeeze them by the throat financially until they
do. That’s what separates yesterday’s patheticness from the right’s embrace of
“freedom fries” to spite France in the early days of the Iraq war. “Freedom
fries” was an informal grassroots (and ultimately failed) attempt to change the
culture by pressuring people not to use the word “French.”
But “Lake America”? That’s an official order from the
president. Let the culture take note.
And of course, Thursday’s stupidity was also an obvious
example of the president letting personal pique drive policy. Scrubbing the
name “Ontario” off a body of water to try to antagonize Canadians isn’t going
to make them more agreeable to trade concessions. The opposite: It’s an attempt
to injure their national pride, the same way the “51st state” jabs
are, which will cause them to dig in. To call it bad strategy is to pay it a
compliment. It isn’t strategy at all. It’s a middle finger.
And it may have consequences for America in the
long-term. Chatter has picked up in Ottawa and overseas about Canada potentially joining the European Union; if that happens,
and if the United States continues on its postliberal trajectory, in a few
decades we might have an understandably hostile liberal adversary on our
northern border that’s backed by the military might of a fully rearmed Europe.
Play out that scenario however you like.
Petulance, narcissism, and bullying that, as often as
not, ends up with us punching ourselves in the face: Those are the hallmarks of
how a thoroughly undignified nation does business now, and not just with
respect to the Great Lakes. Pathetic. A laughingstock.
Luxury nationalism.
It’s fair to ask here whether the “Lake America”
embarrassment is due to something inherent in populist nationalism or something
specific to the president himself. Not every prominent nationalist, if handed
executive power, would stoop to such pettiness, right?
I do think that’s right. In many ways Tucker Carlson is
an uglier figure than Trump, yet I can’t imagine President Tucker bothering
with juvenilia like renaming Lake Ontario to try to irritate Canadians.
(Although “Lake Russia” does have a ring to it.)
Even President J.D. Vance would probably be above such
things. One can’t be sure about that, as the vice president also regularly embarrasses his country by behaving in aggressively
undignified ways. But I suspect that he too wouldn’t trifle with trollish
stupidity like renaming bodies of water, or at least wouldn’t do so as
frequently as Trump does.
Partly it’s a function of personality, as the president
is immensely vain and unusually fragile. In the same way that I doubt President
Vance will have a
“human printer” following him around to keep him constantly apprised of
people praising him, I doubt he’ll resort to grabbing a map and pulling out a
Sharpie every time he doesn’t get his way. Trump is a 5-year-old
psychologically; the vice president is at least 11 or 12.
But there’s also an ideological reason that I think Vance
and Carlson are less inclined to bratty ineffectual stunts than Trump is.
They’re actual nationalists whereas the president is a luxury nationalist.
As noted here a
few days ago, actual nationalists don’t fear that their policies will cause
hardship. They welcome it. Popular suffering is the price of restoring the
nation to glory. That can mean financial suffering—as would be caused by, say, ending the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency—or
it can mean more visceral kinds. Either way, committed nationalists aren’t
squeamish about sacrifice and immiseration. If they wanted to fight a trade war
with Canada, they’d go a lot further in escalating than hollow gestures
involving lake names.
Trump is squeamish, though. His brand of “luxury
nationalism” comes packaged with a con man’s promise that Americans will suffer
no enduring hardship from his agenda. He couldn’t be any plainer than he’s been
this summer about how frightened he is by what protracted economic suffering
caused by his policies might do to his legacy.
True to form, his new trade war with Canada is being sold
to Americans with assurances that it won’t affect them at all. “I think the
market knows that at the end of the day, this is 5 percent of imports from
Canada. It’s 0.06 percent of our overall consumption in this economy. So
there’s no possible way it can really affect U.S. well-being, right?” the White
House’s trade representative, Jamieson Grier, told CNBC recently. That’s “luxury
nationalism” in a nutshell. All the benefits of nationalism with none of the
costs!
That’s the sort of mindset that might foreseeably lead to
something as stupid as “Lake America.” Keen to pursue his trade war but
terrified by how voters might be affected should it escalate rapidly, Trump
needs ways to look tough that won’t cost Americans anything. Erasing the word
“Ontario” from the Great Lakes was a no-brainer. Think of it as zero-calorie
nationalism—unappetizing, unsatisfying, but chauvinistically nourishing with
little downside.
Struggle without struggle.
After I wrote about luxury nationalism on Monday, I
thought of Francis Fukuyama’s famous prediction from The End of
History about why liberalism would decline in the West:
Experience
suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that
just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against
the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will
struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine
living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in
which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy,
then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against
democracy.
That explains most of the last decade in politics in a
few tidy sentences. What Trump recognized or intuited, though, was that a
people as accustomed to luxury as Americans are would be willing to struggle
against liberalism only so much. There’s a reason nationalism tends to spring
up abroad in times of privation: Convincing men to struggle for the greatness
of the nation isn’t a steep ask when they’re already struggling. The dilemma
the president faced in 2016 was convincing people to struggle for the greatness
of a nation that was already the wealthiest and most powerful on Earth.
His solution was simple, even elegant: He wouldn’t ask
them to struggle. The greatness of the nation could be secured by simply
electing him and letting him follow his bliss on policy. Indiscriminate
tariffs, mass deportation of illegal immigrant workers, gratuitous alienation
of allies: Those policies would have no trade-offs.
You can draw a straight line from the childishness of
that fantasy to the childishness that’s reduced America to laughingstock status
10 years later, of which the Lake Ontario fiasco is a notable but ultimately
minor example. Only a pathetic and ignorant people would have fallen for it,
and only a really pathetic and really ignorant people would have
fallen for it twice. Say what you will about Trump, but don’t ever say that he
hasn’t delivered what Americans voted for.
