Laughingstock America

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 “51^st 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.