The audacity! Obama changes the name of Mt. Mckinley to Mt. Denali! Past is the past people!

[Zanten]

Yeah, really not seeing it. o_o I mean, the name Mount McKinley is pretty clearly a byproduct of self-interest and grand shows of purely political support all on its own, and lacks even the cultural significance that other monuments possess. It was renamed for a dumb reason, its name has endured for ultimately sleazy reasons, and so I'm not sure why THIS is the horrible, villifying thing. o_o

To go through the list;

-The officially sanctioned Mount McKinley name is only a bit more than a century old, when it was passed making it, while certainly on the old side, hardly a deep-rooted part of American history. Heck, the RUSSIAN name for the mountain, Boyshaya Gora, (literally 'Big Mountain') was actually around longer, as the Russians owned Alaska between 1733 and 1867. Only difference possibly being that they never passed an official act about it, they just called it 'That Big Mountain.'

-The original 1896 naming, by the way, was actually just a gold prospector showing some political support for a man who, at the time, wasn't even president yet, but rather a presidential canditate. That brings us to the pandering aspect of things, because this wasn't recognition for the great deeds a man had done for Alaska- or even the U.S. at this point in time, but rather because the prospector decided; 'I like this canditate! ...Imma name that mountain after him!'

-McKinley never, from what I've seen, done anything specific regarding Alaska, he never even got a chance to visit the place; the fact that the government chose to officially rename the mountain some 21 years later seems to stem purely from the fact that some gold prospector did it a long while ago, so why not?

-Alaska actually ALREADY changed the name in their own state back in 1975, making Mount McKinley, essentially, 'the name those foreigners on the mainland call it,' with Mount Denali being recognized as the proper name in Alaska itself for about forty years now.

-Attempts to widen it to the rest of the U.S. that same year were blocked by an Ohio congressman whose distrinct actually included McKinley's hometown, which brings us to self-interest. I mean, do you want to be the Congressman who managed to LOSE a big monument to a famous figure in your riding? That'd be a political black eye if ever there was one and lead to some admittedly hilarious opposing campaign ads. ("My opponent, Ralph Regula. You know. THE GUY WHO LOST A MOUNTAIN.")

-Again, attempts since then to change the name country-wide by Alaskan representatives have inevitably been blocked, often by Ohio politicians who stand the most to lose if they let that shit happen.




Which brings me back to my original point. There's plenty of signs that the guy was a good president, and certainly deserves all the memorials and other things that go with it, but Mount McKinley just ISN'T in any way connected to the man. Not his work, not his legacy, and not his character beyond some crafty political campaigning. The only reason it was done in the first place was a grassroots political marketing stunt, the only reason it was cemented because, eh, heck with it, dude should get a mountain and that one has precedence, and the only reason it was MAINTAINED was to keep a bunch of Ohio political figures from losing their heads. -_-


I mean, is the argument that no name should be changed EVER? Under any circumstances? No matter how unnecessary or bizarre the circumstances behind it were?