MAGA-Fest Destiny
William Astore for the TomDispatch
What were those “new possessions”? The cover made it quite clear: Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. The subtitle made it even clearer: “A graphic account, descriptive and historical, of the tropic islands of the sea which have fallen under our sway, their cities, peoples, and commerce, natural resources and the opportunities they offer to Americans.”
What a mouthful! I’m still impressed
with the notion that “tropical” peoples falling “under our sway” offered real
Americans amazing opportunities, as did our (whoops — I meant their)
lands. Consider that Manifest Destiny at its boldest, imperialism
unapologetically being celebrated as a new basis for burgeoning American
greatness.
The year that imperial celebration was published — 1898 —
won’t surprise students of U.S. history. America had just won its splendid
little imperial war with Spain, an old empire very much in the “decline and
fall” stage of a rich, long, and rapacious history. And just then red-blooded
Americans like “Rough Rider” Teddy
Roosevelt were emerging as the inheritors of the conquistador tradition of an
often murderously swashbuckling Spanish Empire.
Of course, freedom-loving Americans were supposed to know better than to follow in the tradition of “old world” imperial exploitation. Nevertheless, cheerleaders and mentors like storyteller Rudyard Kipling were then urging Americans to embrace Europe’s civilizing mission, to take up “the white man’s burden,” to spread enlightenment and civilization to the benighted darker-skinned peoples of the tropics.
Yet to cite just one example, U.S. troops dispatched to the
Philippines on their “civilizing” mission quickly resorted to widespread murder and torture,
methods of “pacification” that might even have made Spanish inquisitors blush.
That grim reality wasn’t lost on Mark Twain and
other critics who spoke out against imperialism, American-style, with its
murderous suppression of Filipino “guerrillas” and bottomless hypocrisy about
its “civilizing” motives.
After his exposure to “enlightened” all-American
empire-building, retired Major General Smedley Butler, twice awarded the Medal
of Honor, would bluntly write in the 1930s of war as a “racket” and insist
his long career as a Marine had been spent largely in the service of “gangster” capitalism.
Now there was a plain-speaking American hero.
These and other regions of the globe offer Donald Trump’s America so
many “opportunities.” And if we can’t occupy an area like the Gulf of Mexico,
the least we can do is rebrand it the Gulf of America! A
lexigraphic “mission accomplished” moment bought with no casualties, which sure
beats the calamitous wars of George W. Bush and Barack Obama in this century!
Now, here’s what I appreciate about Trump: the transparent nature of his greed. He doesn’t shroud American imperialism in happy talk. He says it just like they did in 1898. It’s about resources and profits.
As the dedication page to that old book from 1898 put it: “To all Americans who go a-pioneering in our new possessions and to the people who are there before them.” Oh, and pay no attention to that “before” caveat.
We Americans clearly
came first then and, at least to Donald Trump, come first now, and — yes! — we
come to rule. The world is our possession and our beneficence will certainly
serve the peoples who were there before us in Greenland or anywhere else (the “hellhole” of Gaza included),
even if we have to torture or kill them in the process of winning their hearts
and minds.
