Despite, only this year they will finally make the bald eagle the national bird. Which, I also learned that they are not official symbols until a President signs a document for them to be. It is just a recognized symbol but not official. (Just my opinion but why do they really need a bill for this? What changes would making anything like this official really do?)
Here is a list of other US symbols (article includes links to other countries of the world national symbols, some official, some not made official) if you are interested:
It was at the time Obama was doing a bunch of tribe recognizing and appeasement. It was a good sentiment and was received in a clouded light that the Republicans used to attack Obama. But the thing is that it was well received coming from Obama but it wasn't well received coming from the President of the United States. Lots of people couldn't understand that difference.
Presidential decree could be overturned every time the president changes. If there was an agency that declared things to be official, then they would have to pass a law to grant them the power to do that.
Being official always starts with laws, might as well do the whole thing at once.
The way presidents will flip the history book back 50 years and issue a polite "My bad" while they persecute a new generation of people and scrub out the associated civil rights movement in real time is nauseating. It's less than meaningless. I have to wonder what horrors President Pete Buttigieg will be apologizing for in another twenty years, in between the ethnic cleansing of Panama and the War to Liberate Singapore.
Probably because we were more focused on the things that mattered. Like his attacks on our immigrant communities, the war crimes he was committing abroad, and his propping up of private healthcare.
Jangle any set of keys loud enough and you can get the handful of remaining living DC journalists to stare in rapt fascination, because its easier and cheaper than doing any amount of meaningful long-form investigative journalism.
He really picked the animal systematically slaughtered by colonizers for the purpose of starving and controlling the indigenous peoples America genocided. What could be more American I guess
perhaps it was meant as a way to pay honor to the species rather than forgotten completely?
nahhh, you're probably right. Obama was a malicious sadistic cock sucker of a president that actually took great pleasure in hunting endangered species.
Countries have national animals, if you look on the list of other countries' animals, you can see it is usually because they are the most common or most unique in some way.
European bison were called bison a thousand years before America was discovered by Europeans and is a very close relative (different species). Buffalo is the name of the African animal that is only distantly related (different genus) and has been called bufalus by Europeans since before America was discovered by those same Europeans.
If you are going to die on a hill, might as well call them by the names given to them by people who lived with them for thousands of years before Europeans came here:
in Arapaho: bii (bison cow), henéécee (bison bull)
in Lakota: pté (bison cow), tȟatȟáŋka (bison bull) - we all know how to pronounce that one, thanks to Dances with Wolves.