The Sect. of the Interior’s plan to erase the names of lakes and other sites offensive or derogatory to Indian or aboriginal women is well intentioned yet also creates a concern for historians. History and culture appreciate names that are stable and record the past. When the names are sanitized and given to titles the past tends to be lost. Eventually the historical footnote in some obscure record that the names were changed sometimes hundreds of years after will be lost. No one would know what culture had existed before erasure and that all hadn’t been as placid as Bucolic Buffalo might have imagined.
Democrats have been about the business of sanitizing culture and social media for some time. Language offensive to Democrat voters was labeled hate speech. One cannot use the word hate at many sites, as for instance, if one asks whom are the top ten most hated Democrat politicians in America, the word hate would be banned.
The Biden-Pelosi-Schumer-Shiff-Madler axis of hate for Donald Trump continues to erupt like Old Faithful geyser recurrently; interminably finding new legal paths to attack until erasing the former-President from history. It is unlikely that Yellowstone park will be renamed soon for it reflects the will of insiders of the capitol. Skiing at Squaw Valley may evolve to be associated with KKK conventioning of the make America a Great Society again sort of thing. One will not be able to say that Donald Duck squawks without it being a sort of slur on trans-gendered Democrats. It could be that billions of people actually squat to defecate as they lack porcelain thrones to sit on. I used such a toilet hole in the floor in Athens long ago for the hotel couldn’t afford thrones so I experienced dropping a load ten stories down a sewer pipe.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/news/2022/09/09/us-changes-names-of-places-with-racist-term-for-native-women
Language does evolve or permutate over history of course. Meaning values for words sometimes change too. The philosopher Saul Kripke went over the persistence of meanings of words in his book ‘Naming and Necessity’. Meanings of words have values in given lexicons that may have different meanings in others. W.V.O. Quine considered values of words to remain phenomenally as people use them. I believe, if I recall correctly, that Kripke regard words as having a semi-Platonic realism character with meanings that persist longer than in Quine’s criterion such as he went over in ‘Ontological Relativity’.
Words and implicit meanings change over time. It is interesting that words may have pejorative meanings for some that don’t exist for others. N.P.R. mentioned the term demotically nem-berm-ship for membership this mornings for example. That may be offensive to some, hate speech to others and meaningless for most. Try changing meaninglessness into meaning. The meaning will be lost to history if it doesn’t rise to become officially associated with a place-name. Place-names have meaning values that remain until some time after they are renamed.
Politically correct naming and renaming of places and solid objects reflect cultural power of insiders to designate real-world objects and events within their favorite narrative contexts. It would of course be great if people could name places inoffensively to all for all times in the first place yet for several reasons that fails. The Queen Charlotte islands could be renamed the Queen Elizabeth islands yer some would object and for God the effort of humans to lift up royalty might be amusing, as the Son was the only royal who counted as more than a bump in the road of history.
It is entirely imaginable that if Ukraine invades east of the Dniepr they might begin erasing Russian place-names in fact and erase history in the process. Washington D.C. insiders have already erased Russian historical ownership in Ukraine from their social reality that for-itself might be regarded as a lexicon. That lexicon requires Democrat supplied HIMARS missiles, artillery and billions and billions of dollars to force a social reality and view of themselves and their ideas of democracy.
Democrats may believe they can sanitize the planet such that the words allowed to be used and names allowed to exist for places and people will make the rich happy forever. They might envision a day when political independence and free expression are entirely subjugated to the will of Democrat Party leadership. Renaming lakes to not offend American Indian women is reasonable enough, yet that occurs in a machine that is processing the world to satisfy the urges of original sin for the upper classes. That technique of culture conquest can lead to widespread nuclear war. As looking in a rear view mirror may make objects look farther away than they are, the dangers of forgetting or losing the meaning-values of the past may allow clear and present dangers to the U.S.A. and world become closer than one thinks.