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Trump’s Stupid Lake America Stunt Is Less Funny than It Looks

The spectacle masks something sinister: a major power coming undone

W e’ll never get to draw a line through stupid. I remember, as a kid, thinking Thank god someone is in charge. I assumed someone had it figured out. Lots of someones. Anybody taller than me, in fact. Things seemed to work, so I figured there must be someone making them work. I took this for granted and continued to believe it for too long. Even at forty-two years old, I still believe it from time to time; I still slip into moments where I think that despite everything we’re staring down right now, we’ll end up at some regression to an acceptable, if not ideal, mean.

On Thursday, when Donald Trump put on a little puppet theatre show and “renamed” Lake Ontario to Lake America, I thought for a moment we might have tapped the bottom of the well of stupidity. There can’t possibly be anything left to draw from it. Some sort of sense must thus prevail, right? Trump can’t unilaterally rename a shared body of water for all who share it or recognize it beyond our borders. US states, beginning with New York, will refuse to play along with the bit. Trump’s most devoted cultists will clap along for fear of upsetting their leader, but most Americans will recognize the stunt as a petulant, juvenile outburst while they struggle to afford groceries and dodge poisoning by blueberries or lettuce. These are sensible checks against the mad king, and that must be something.

But no, none of this changes the fact that, the way things are going, we may never reach the bottom of the well of stupid. The American empire is in decline, its global dominance receding and internal political institutions in decay. Trump is a symptom of this decline, and his inevitable departure from the political scene won’t reverse it. Post-Trump, we should expect more of the same absurdities........

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