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It is Time to Cast Aside Dreams of Empire and their Peddlers

Nadin Brzezinski
4 min readAug 17, 2021

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USS Maine By National Museum of the U.S. Navy — Lot-3370–7, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70765409

The United States has had two fantasies that are hard to kill. The first is manifest destiny. The second is its feverish twin: Empire. They both have gotten us into trouble since 1898 and the Spanish-American war.

This led to things like the Great White Fleet, and many interventions in Central America. These, Americans in the homeland could care less. But if you ever wondered why people in those parts of the world distrust the US, you can thank the Marines. If you wondered where the Sandinistas got their name? One of our adventures was in Nicaragua in the 1920s. Banana republics are a result of those policies.

We now know the USS Maine sank from an accident, not a torpedo. But all the history with Cuba came from that lie pushed by the Hearst papers, who got patriots boiling and willing to do anything to bring honor and defend the country. That the Cubans were ready for independence is true. So we’re Puerto Ricans, and the Philippines, the last colonies of a once vast, global Spanish empire. Puerto Rico became a protectorate, and it’s time to make it a state. The Philippines resisted for years, and there were horrors committed by the army and the marines. That this history is rarely taught, is true.

Fast forward to Vietnam. We went in there to continue the work after the French left in…

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Nadin Brzezinski
Nadin Brzezinski

Written by Nadin Brzezinski

Historian by training. Former day to day reporter. Sometimes a geek who enjoys a good miniatures game. You can find me at CounterSocial, Mastodon and rarely FB

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