Comment by jasonjayr
12 hours ago
It's a loyalty test. And he's given his supporters permission to classify anyone who doesn't follow along as 'the enemy' aka 'the other'. It's a shortcut so his supporters know they don't have to give any credence to anything else they say, since now they assign all the other labels and insults he's hurled at 'his enemies' to the person they are talking to.
Gulf of Mexico -> Gulf of America
Department of Defense -> Department of War
Lake Ontario -> Lake America
AI -> SI
He's been doing this for years. Change the name from something widely used/adopted to something brand new and watch who follows along. Anyone who starts using the new name is a friend, and anyone who doesn't is an enemy.
Kennedy Center:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Center#Second_Trump_pr...
Including threats to demolish it:
* https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-administration-suggests-k...
Twitter -> X
Same playbook.
I don't want to defend Musk, but renaming a thing you own is a far cry from renaming geography.
(And on that spectrum, DoD > Department of War is somewhere in the middle)
3 replies →
Apple Computer -> Apple
Google -> Alphabet
Facebook -> Meta
2 replies →
This is the right answer. People should start pronouncing it see as in yes in Spanish. Let’s see how long he sticks with it then.
So he renamed AI to SI and decreed that all must use it, and whoever acquiesces is loyal and everyone else is a traitor?
Surely there are less embarrassing ways of doing that sort of thing...
That's pretty par for the course - at least, as far as authoritarian regimes go. It's getting very difficult to think of the US as anything but, at this point.
It's meant to be embarrassing, that's part of the control strategy. Once you start doing embarrassing things on Trump's behalf, everyone will know you've done a shameful thing, and you can only escape the shame by digging your way deeper into his cult where it becomes a virtue.
There's already been a few media outlets (and not just the obvious way right pseudo-media) who have started using it, eager to stay in his good book.