Gather ‘round, boys and girls, we’re going to play a game called, Name this mountain! First, a little story.
A story about a mountain.
A beautiful mountain, the biggest and the greatest.
The natives called the mountain the Great One. The settlers called the mountain the Great One.
Then the mountain became property of the United States of America. Still, everyone called the mountain the Great One.
Some 30 years later, someone with enough political clout (and the right skin color) "discovers" the mountain and unofficially renames the mountain, giving it the name of a politician in order to promote that politician (and his political agenda, of course), a name that has absolutely nothing to do with the mountain or anyone living around it, the name of a man who never set foot on the mountain. Did he even know about the mountain?
Didn't matter to the political clout (with the right skin color) in charge of the property.
Did matter to the people living around the mountain, natives and settlers, seemingly of all skin colors.
Natives and settlers continued to call the mountain the Great One. And for the last forty years, they’ve been petitioning the federal government, trying to get the federal government to officially called the mountain the Great One.
But even a mountain as great as the Great One could not break through the mountain of governmental red tape, and so the mountain — although still quite great — did not possess an official name that seemed all that great to anyone living near the mountain.
That is .. until enough time passed, enough loopholes lapsed, and the ultimate political clout was in the hands of someone (with an amazing different skin color!), but also someone who could officially make the Great One, the Great One again …
…thereby giving the people of Alaska — natives and settlers alike — what they wanted all along. What they called it anyway.
Denali, or, as we say in the non-native language, the Great One.
Happy ending?
It would seem so, for the people of Alaska who have actively sought to make this happen for the last 40 years. Today, President Obama has made it happen.
Isn't that a happy ending?
Depends on who's telling the story and their point of view (and agenda).
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| President Obama. Air Force One. Alaska bound. |
The Alaska state government — (an historically white/Republican dominated institution, yes?) — has been trying to assert its states right over the federal government's rights to name its mountain, or rather, keep the original name of its mountain.
Finally, the federal government delivers. Completely legally. And what are the "pro-states-rights" Republicans saying about this?
“Another example of the president going around Congress,” says one member of Congress from Ohio (who should perhaps bone up on his job description and the laws of the land).
“Obama overstepped his bounds,” says a former governor of Ohio (who should perhaps realize the Prez’s Dept. of the Interior is leaps and bounds within its bounds).
“Another example of Obama's constitutional overreach,” claimed another member of Congress from Ohio (who should point out where in the constitution “naming mountains” is mentioned).
Did I mention it was Congress who followed up on the original, unofficial renaming by making it official a couple of decades later?
That unofficial-turned-official political name? Mount McKinley, after former President McKinley, who never set foot in Alaska, but walked around plenty in Ohio, his native state.
And home of most, if not all, of the politicians now making a big fuss about President Obama’s Department of the Interior offically renaming the mountain by giving it its original name.
Isn't that restoring American? Making the Great One great again?
Not to his opponents.
“President Obama has decided to ignore an act of Congress by unilaterally renaming Mount McKinley in order to promote his job killing war on energy. This political stunt is insulting to all Ohioans,” says the former Ohio governor, now running for president.
What about the political stunt that was insulting to all Alaskans?
What about the political bullshit that's insulting to all Americans?
What about the political party that constantly twists and bends the facts and circumstances of every situation to make Obama seem like one dumb (or smart) Kenyon-born, Islamic monkey nigger who's trying to take away everybody's guns and jobs and turn America into a Muslim caliphate?
What would you name the mountain?
If you can't see the mountain of bullshit, it's no wonder you can't see the great accomplishments of the greatest president of the 21st-century.
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Quotes and other information about this story can be seen in the USA Today articles, Obama administration renames Mount McKinley to Denali and Ohio delegation blasts Mount McKinley name change.
