President Trump is cool. He’s not a traditional politician; for example, his is not a wishy-washy waffling wuss. Unbeholden to the pandering and wavering political class, he is unafraid to disrupt stale thinking just because “that’s the way it has always been done.”
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Now the free-thinking MAGA leader is hinting at a new name for New Mexico: New America. It’s about time!
Unfortunately, he can’t do it by Executive Order. It’s up to the state — state constitutional amendment, state legislative approval, public vote, and all that palaver. Still, since Trump, in his inimitable way, got the conversation started, let’s consider an alternative name. “New America” is great, but how about “Polkland” for the commonsense folk?!
That really isn’t so outlandish. We wouldn’t be able to gloriously sing “from sea to shining sea” were it not for the enlightened expansionist policies of President James K. Polk. He brilliantly pursued our Manifest Destiny. Recognizing that “civilization marches along a paved path,” he secured the Southwest and California through the Mexican-American War. We taught them a stern lesson in Western superiority in that one; gave them a bloody good hiding, indeed. Following the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1850 New Mexico became an incorporated territory of the United States.
At the same time he took over the Oregn Territory, consisting of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, from Great Britain without ahot being fired.
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That means the United States has maintained hegemony over the territory-cum-state for what, about 176 years, give or take? By contrast, the corrupt Mexican government mismanaged the land for only twenty-seven years — 1821 to 1848. So don’t let the revisionist apologists tell you that “we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.” Nonsense!
Polk is an underrated President partly due to the unpatriotic and testosterone deficient wusses who foist prejudiced presidential rankings upon us. Perhaps it will take a long time for Trump’s renaming proposal to gain momentum, but once it does, why not rename the Land of Enchantment to “Polkland”? Please remember: the spellbinding words to “America the Beautiful” were conceived by Katherine Lee Bates around 1893. Many of the awe-inspiring purple mountain majesties, spacious skies and fruited planes it sublimely references owe their Americanization to the great President Polk.
There are several Polk countries throughout the United States, but he deserves a whole state. “New America” is fine, but give the folk “Polkland.” At the very least, the residents’ “New Mexicans” nickname must go — it has been 176 years.
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Image: Public Domain