No Clever Pseudonym

If There’s One Sure Sign of American Declinism…

… it’s that we now seem to be okay with naming things after people who aren’t dead yet.

First it was the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) but that might be excused since he was far into Alzheimer’s at the time and wasn’t a public person anymore. But that doesn’t excuse the USS George HW Bush (CVN-77).

Then it was travesties like renaming Anchorage International Airport to “Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport” in 2000.

But now a Long Island elementary school has renamed itself for Barack Obama. Not only isn’t he dead, he isn’t even President yet.

I don’t care that “most of the 440 students there are black or Hispanic, and Obama’s victory is a source of great pride;” we have traditions in this country, and one of those is you name schools for dead Presidents, either great ones (Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington) or assassinated ones (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy).

Normally I don’t buy into American declinism much, but are we next to clamor for the Senate to declare Obama, like Augustus, a living god?

(hat tip to Hyacinth Girl)

Tags: cult of personality, obama