I hope I’m not doing anything illegal or making anyone feel uncomfortable or guilty in Trumpland by mentioning this, but today is the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. That agreement ended the bloody Mexican-American War by allowing the US to claim (steal) the territory that would soon become California, Texas, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming.
Quite a haul.
Back then, they called it “Manifest Destiny”, a phrase coined in 1845, meaning that the United States was destined by God, to expand its dominion and spread democracy — meaning Protestant Christianity, and capitalism across the entire “backward” region of the North American continent. It was the ideology also used to justify dispossession and genocide against Native Americans and allow for the expansion of American slavery.
I imagine this bloody chapter in our history will soon be erased from textbooks and banned from school curricula with the anti-teaching laws currently being passed in at least 24 states so far.