Renewable Revolution

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November 10, 2018 TD ORIGINALS

By Maj. Danny Sjursen

Maj. Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan...

Editor’s note: The past is prologue. The stories we tell about ourselves and our forebears inform the sort of country we think we are and help determine public policy. As our current president promises to “make America great again,” this moment is an appropriate time to reconsider our past, look back at various eras of United States history and re-evaluate America’s origins. When, exactly, were we “great”?

SNIPPET:

According to the old historical narrative, the U.S. has always been a democratic republic and only briefly dabbled (from 1898 to 1904) with outright imperialism. And, indeed, even in that era—in which the U.S. seized Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii and the Philippines—the U.S. saw itself as “liberating” the locals from Spanish despotism. This wasn’t real imperialism but rather, to use a term from the day, “benevolent assimilation. ” Oh, what a gloriously American euphemism!

The truth, of course, is far more discomfiting. The U.S. was an empire before it had even gained its own independence. From the moment that Englishmen landed at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, theirs was an imperial experiment. Native tribes were conquered and displaced westward, year in and year out, until there were no sovereign Indians left to fight. In 1848, the U.S. Army conquered northern Mexico and rechristened it the American Southwest. Yes, the U.S. was always an empire, what Thomas Jefferson self-consciously called an “Empire of Liberty.” Only the American Empire looked different from the British and Western European variety. Until 1898, the U.S. lacked the overseas possessions and expansive naval power that have come to define our contemporary image of empire. That was the British, French and Spanish model. No, the U.S. was a great land empire most similar (ironically) to that of Russia, but an empire nonetheless.

Still, there is something profound about 1898 and the years that followed. For it was in this era that the American people—and their leaders—became sick with the disease of overseas imperialism. With no Indians left to fight and no Mexican lands worth conquering, Americans looked abroad for new monsters to destroy and new lands to occupy. Britain and France were far too powerful and were not to be trifled with; but Spain, the deteriorating Spanish Empire in the Caribbean and Pacific, proved a tempting target. And so it was, through a brief—“splendid,” as it was described—little war with Spain, that the United States would annex foreign territories and join the European race for colonies.

1898 is central to our understanding of the United States’ 🦍 contemporary role 🏴‍☠️💵🎩 in the world, for it was at that moment that the peculiar exceptional millenarianism of American idealism merged with the Western mission of “civilization.”

The result was a more overt, distant and expansive version of American Empire. And, though the U.S. no longer officially “annexes” foreign territories, its neo-imperial foreign policy is alive and well, with U.S. military forces ensconced in some 800 bases in more than 80 countries—numbers that by far exceed those of other nations. Furthermore, the remnants of America’s first overseas conquests are with us today, as the people of Puerto Rico, Guam and Samoa are still only partial Americans—citizens, yes, but citizens without congressional representation or a vote in presidential elections. How ironic, indeed, that a nation founded in opposition to “taxation without representation” should, for more than 100 years now, hold so many of its people in a situation remarkably similar to that of the American colonists before the Revolutionary War.

In retrospect, then, 1898 represents both continuity with America’s imperial past and a bridge to its contemporary neo-imperial future. This era is key because it stands as a moment of no return: a pivot point at which the United States became a global empire.

One can hardly understand contemporary interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan without a clear account of 1898 and what followed. The Spanish-American War and the occupation of the Philippines are two of America’s fundamental sins, and their consequences resonate in our ever uncertain present.

The Closing of the Frontier (1890)

Full IRREFUTABLE historical truth filled article:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-for-truthdiggers-tragic-dawn-of-overseas-imperialism/

Agelbert RANT:

From the above article:

"...social Darwinism, the notion that “survival of the fittest” applied to man as well as beast, that certain races were scientifically superior to others. It was all snake oil, of course, but it was a predominant ideology..."

Social Darwinsim is, EVEN MORE SO TODAY,  the predominant CANCEROUS ideology destroying our biosphere. The Social Darwinsit cheerleaders 👹 for Profit Over People and Planet, BECAUSE THESE Empathy deficit disordered, might is right worshipping barbarians have NEVER been able to add and subtract in biosphere math, ARE the embodiment of the 'Perpetual Growth AND Greed is good' CANCER ☠️ destroying America. 😱

DEFINITION OF THE CANCER ☠️ destroying America AND most of the BIOSPHERE (that Human Civilization relies on to survive) ► Fervent Social Darwinsts ☠️ = CAPITALISTS ☠️ who believe that we must expand continually or "atrophy" from "non-manly = leftist, socialist, peaceful, environmentalist against polluting businesses, etc. you get the idea" behavior. 🤬

Religion is just the clever disingenuous 😇 😉 fig leaf these Consciense Free BASTARDS 😈 use. The CORE RELIGION of Social Darwinists is that MIGHT, no matter how irresponsible, no matter how unprincipled, no matter how unethical, no matter how destructive to the biosphere in general and fellow humans in particular, IS RIGHT. 🤬