The Inner Monologue

By [Anonymous Patriot Hydrologist, Ph.D. (Probably)]

There comes a time in every great nation’s life when it must look itself squarely in the mirror—then turn slightly to catch the light just right—and admit a terrible truth: we’ve been calling the wrong river by the wrong name for nearly two hundred years.

It’s an embarrassment. A hydrological scandal. A betrayal of destiny so profound that the Founding Fathers are probably rotating in their graves fast enough to power a small hydroelectric dam.

For too long, America has lived under the tyranny of cartographic mediocrity, meekly accepting that the “Mississippi River” ends where the real river—the Missouri—begins. We have allowed French explorers with fancy hats and bad maps to define our geography. We have surrendered the birthright of American exceptionalism to a few syllables of Ojibwe etymology and colonial convenience.

Ladies and gentlemen, patriots and armchair geographers—it’s time to make rivers great again.

The Longest, the Strongest, the Most American

Let’s talk facts, not feelings.

The Missouri River begins in the defiant peaks of the Rocky Mountains, where bald eagles and freedom itself are born. It then marches—no, storms—across the heartland, carving valleys, drowning towns, and irrigating corn destined for ethanol and obesity alike. It travels 2,341 miles before joining the so-called Mississippi north of St. Louis.

Now, if we apply the radical, almost seditious idea of basic math, we find that from the source of the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico, the river system stretches nearly 3,900 miles—longer than the Amazon, longer than the Nile, longer than your uncle’s political rants at Thanksgiving.

By rights, by reason, by raw hydraulic dominance, the Missouri River is the main trunk of this continental colossus. The Mississippi is merely an enthusiastic sidekick—a Robin pretending to be Batman, a tributary with delusions of grandeur.

But because history was written by the French, and geography by people who never owned a pickup truck, we’ve been robbed of our natural bragging rights. America’s mightiest river has been hiding in plain sight, buried under the wrong name.

The Great Cartographic Injustice

You see, Europeans named the Mississippi first—because it’s the one they bumped into after paddling a bit too far south. By the time anyone followed the Missouri upstream to its mountainous womb, the “Mississippi” label was already splattered across maps like spilled wine at Versailles.

The rest is history: a clerical error fossilized by tradition.
Imagine if Lewis and Clark had carried a Sharpie.

Renaming the lower Mississippi as the Missouri would not merely correct a map. It would correct history. It would un-French the river. It would re-Americanize the flow of destiny.

We renamed St. Petersburg to Leningrad and back. We renamed the planet’s air-conditioner “freedom gas.” We can certainly rename a river.

A River Worthy of Empire

Let’s be honest—every great civilization needs a great river. The Egyptians had the Nile. The Chinese, the Yangtze. The Brazilians cling to the Amazon like it’s a lifeline.

And here sits America, with the world’s grandest waterway system, meekly divided between two names because we’re afraid of offending a textbook. If there’s one thing this nation should not tolerate, it’s modesty.

We put men on the moon. We invented the cheeseburger, the internet, and the concept of “unlimited refills.” Yet we can’t even unite our own river under a single glorious banner?

Rename it. Declare it. Etch it in stone and Snapchat filters alike:

THE MISSOURI — LONGEST RIVER IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE.

Let the Amazon weep its tropical tears. Let the Nile file a formal complaint with UNESCO. America will once again be number one—in cubic miles of unbothered self-confidence.

Economic and Spiritual Benefits

Think of the opportunities! Tourism! Branding! Merchandise! Imagine the “Mighty Missouri Cruise Line,” proudly sailing from Montana to the Gulf. Imagine the “Gateway Arch” rebranded as the “Confluence of Greatness.” Imagine the maps—oh, the maps!—finally stretching the red, white, and blue from sea to shining sea without asterisks or hydrological humility.

Children would grow up in awe of a single, continuous river—the River of Liberty, the Hydrological Manifest Destiny.

Our textbooks could finally proclaim: “America possesses one of the longest rivers on Earth.”
And if that isn’t worth a few million in reprinting costs, what is?

An Act of National Healing

In these divided times, when states feud and parties brawl, perhaps the only thing that can unite us is a bold act of geographical self-confidence.

Renaming the Mississippi as the Missouri wouldn’t just fix a river—it would heal a nation. It would remind Americans that we can, in fact, agree on something absurdly large and mostly wet.

It would be our Apollo 11 of cartography, our Louisiana Purchase of logic.
It would prove that when America sets her mind to something pointless yet grand, nothing can stop her.

The Waters of Greatness

So let it be written, let it be dammed: from the snowy Rockies to the salt marsh Gulf, this river shall bear the name Missouri. The word shall flow like freedom itself—strong, proud, and slightly overfunded.

Our children will look upon their maps and know that America did not settle for second place in the Western Hemisphere’s River Olympics. We took what was ours, by reason and by rhetoric, and we made it exceptional.

Because that’s what America does.

We take a continent’s humble water and make it a world record.