Keep the name of Longboat's Gulf of Mexico Drive

The recent July 24th Observer article is devoted to the desire of Longboat resident George Reenstra to have GMD renamed Gulf of America Drive, to align with President Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. 

Mr. Reenstra, a Vietnam War veteran as a helicopter pilot, is all in on Trump’s action. But he writes that his support is non-partisan, motivated by a desire to see “America stand up again like it used to be.” 

I am not a Vietnam War veteran, like Mr. Reenstra, but President Eisenhower did send me to the Middle East in 1958 as a member of the 187th Airborne Battle Group. And I would dearly love to see America “stand up again” as it stood under President Eisenhower. To that end we should not fall for President Trump’s relentless efforts to divide the American people, as by setting up phony “Patriotism” litmus tests:

Do what I demand and you are a patriot. Decline and you are anti-American. 

His “Gulf of America” issue is a classic, blatantly political ploy. The world has been OK with the Gulf of Mexico for 200-plus years; all that has changed is Trump’s megalomaniacal triumphalism.

True, America no longer has the status on the world stage that it had even a year ago.

That status is plummeting ever more each day under the Trump brand of governance.

Doubt it? Check the world press, beginning with Canada. Let us not further indulge this man.

–Philippe Koenig, Sarasota