A Call to Reject the New Manifest Destiny
- mrymntcpw
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Manifest Destiny was the 19th Century belief that the United States was divinely ordained to expand its territory and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Now the Trump Administration, in an attempt to position itself among the three great superpowers of the globe (Russian and China being the other two) wants to expand its territories across the Western Hemisphere and thus attacks Venezuela and threatens to take Greenland either by purchase or by force.
But let’s be clear, Trump’s playbook goes back even earlier than the ideology of Manifest Destiny. The European monarchies of the 16th and 17th centuries, along with their powerbrokers in the Catholic Church, created a profit-based society “where mercenary outfits promised the soldiers the right to sack and loot Muslim towns and cities, feats that would gain them wealth and prestige back home” (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz). This model was brought to the Americas as they began the colonization on this continent.
Let us shift our focus for a moment though back to the present where we see “Capitalism Unbounded”.
One of the daily features of “The Morning” from the NYT is called:
TODAY’S NUMBER
On 1/12/26, that number was:
2.7
— That’s how many million acres of the Earth that are owned by Stan Kroenke, the rancher and billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Rams, the Denver Nuggets and other major sports teams. It is more than twice the size of the land mass of Delaware. Kroenke is the largest private landowner in the United States.
That number and the accompanying article drew my ire, possibly due in part to the Trump Administration’s new American Imperialism, but take a look at the 100 largest private landowners in the US.(click the link below).
“Land has always been an appealing investment to the ultrarich, but recent years have seen billionaires gobbling up ever larger quantities of it. According to The Land Report, the average quantity held by the top 100 landowners 10 years ago was 378,000 acres; today it is 430,000 acres.
The entire land mass of Delaware is 1.2 million acres. Mr. Kroenke’s holdings are over twice that size.”
US history is marked by continuous land grab. Our history is primarily and profoundly about land theft, land occupation, and land management. Ownership of private land has been a catalyst for American Capitalism. Trump, referring to Greenland this week, stated, "You have to own it."
In her best selling book entitled, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes, “US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twentieth century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories, and removals of Indigenous children to military-like boarding schools. The absence of even the slightest note of regret or tragedy in the annual celebration of the US independence betrays a deep disconnect in the consciousness of US Americans.”
Acquisition by Force (Then)
“Indians who will not put themselves under the restraints required will have to be forced, even to the extent of making war upon them, to submit to measures that will insure security to the white settlers of the Territories.”
-President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872
Quanah Parker (c. 1845–1911), the last Comanche war chief, led his people in the Red River War (1874–75) in Texas. He was the son of Chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, a white woman captured as a child and raised by the Comanche. His intense charisma was enhanced by a striking physical feature: the bright blue eyes he inherited from his mother.
“[Quanah] had been foremost among the white-man haters; he had burned hottest for revenge for the death of his father, the capture of his mother and sister, and the death of his nephew and other friends and family…he had spent the early summer [1874] killing white people.” (S. C. Gwynne) But following his defeat in what is known as the Red River War, he finally surrendered and later became a rancher and at his mother’s interment expressed his belief in assimilation into white society and Christianity.
Acquisition by Force (Now)
Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, has famously stated that the world, particularly international relations, is governed by “strength,” “force,” and “power,” dismissing diplomatic niceties in favor of realism, and asserting Trump’s absolute power in certain domestic situations, reflecting a strong nationalist and realist worldview focused on raw power dynamics.
There is a curious irony in that some of the land bought by Kroenke is land stolen from the Comanches during the second half of the 19th Century.
So here I am in 2026 graveling over an administration who intends to take sovereign territories by force, and billionaires who avail themselves of the extremes of capitalism. We obviously can’t reverse history, but hopefully we will learn lessons from it so that the atrocities of the 19th Century "Manifest Destiny" are not repeated. Let us stand up against the current greedy, oppressive, authoritarian government and instead support a new type of progressive socialism whereby all people are permitted to better themselves for the good of all.
CPW
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