No one should be surprised when Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the rest of the MAGA Plutocracy talk about America First and making the country great again, they are speaking about the turn of the 20th Century when the nation was at the height of the Gilded Age where the Populist and Progressive Movements were not yet in full steam and the rich male members of the white race reigned supreme across the land with little to no rights for everyone else.
Trump has also demonstrated through his Truth Social Posts that he shares the 1898 mindset of the need for an Imperial American Empire blended with the Ethnocentric beliefs in American Manifest Destiny and the White Men’s Burden.
Over the last few weeks, he has posted comments yearning to make Canada the Fifty-First State (a goal for American Expansionists during the Revolution and The War of 1812,) invading Northern Mexico (a favorite goal of American Imperialists from before the Civil War,) retaking the Panama Canal (Reagan once said “We stole it fair and square,) and annexing Greenland.
During his first term, Trump publicly mused about annexing Greenland.
When Panama’s President protested against Trump’s comments about retaking the Canal, Mr. Trump posted this.
What Americans need to remember is that there are corporate and extreme conservative plutocratic interests that would welcome the type of American Expansion that Trump is advocating for.
These are the same groups (historically led by families like the Dulles and Rockefellers) that lined their own pockets in making Mexico, Central, and South America economic grabbags for United States Businesses and were willing to send in the American Military to overthrow unfriendly governments to achieve those ends.
Readers should check out Stephen Kinzers Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq and Smedley Butler’s War is a Racket.
They are both very illuminating on this topic.
Beware of what Trump and his cronies may try to pull off as they try to extend the American sphere of influence.
Beware of what real or fictitious event they may use to launch their imperial designs.
Remember the Spanish-American War that started in 1898 began with the Yellow Journalism coverage of the attack of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor.
Remember how the Bush II Administration used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq.
Americans should not be fooled again if Donald Trump and his plutocratic MAGA supporters use the same playbook.
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