Donald Trump Announces Return of National Expansion

Settler Marxists claim the U.S. is not a settler colonial state anymore because the capitalist means of production have changed since the 1700s. Yet, Trump is talking about “Manifest Destiny” (which is American zionism), to expand U.S. colonial territories. pic.twitter.com/ZNTT70U5PX

— Rick Tabenunaka – Decolonized Buffalo (@RickdaBuffalo) January 21, 2025

Trump: In the 1890′s, our country was probably the wealthiest it ever was because it was a system of tariffs. We had a president, you know McKinley. Remember Mount McKinley? @Acyn
pic.twitter.com/OtFZm22xeq

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) September 28, 2024

For his first day in office Trump will be renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and he will rename Mount Denali to Mount McKinley, which was its original name before Obama decided to make it woke. pic.twitter.com/hdXZopggAO

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) January 20, 2025

the day has come pic.twitter.com/59L1XjfHeZ

— Secular Talk (KyleKulinskiShow@bsky.social) (@KyleKulinski) January 20, 2025

Rep. Andy Ogles on his bill giving Trump the congressional authority to “acquire” Greenland: “We are, quite frankly, the dominant predator” pic.twitter.com/o311Ejzvo2

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 21, 2025

Make America Great Again.

What does that mean? When was America great?

Donald Trump has repeatedly answered the question in recent months: America was great in the 1890s when William McKinley was president at the end of the Gilded Age. In contrast, 20th century America was dominated by a liberal establishment that took the country off course. The whole 20th century was a mistake and we should go back to America as it was at the end of the 19th century.

Trump was crystal clear about his vision of America in his inaugural address when he announced a return to Manifest Destiny, national expansion and the creation of the External Revenue Service. He spoke in what used to be familiar terms about the conquest and settlement of North America. He said nothing about “fascism” or World War II or Israel or Zionism. He said very little about foreign affairs.

The Economist:

“The traditional point of an inaugural address is to transcend the politics of the campaign and draw the country together. Donald Trump’s second inaugural was not that. But it stuck with tradition in other ways—it’s just that the traditions in question were much older.

The only one of his predecessors President Trump spent any time discussing—other than excoriating the administration of the outgoing Joe Biden—was William McKinley, in his telling “a great president”, though he is not one many Americans would put in their pantheon. The reference came in a passage about restoring the 25th president’s name to Mount Denali, an idea that combines two Trump obsessions. America’s tallest mountain was officially given its koyukon (native Alaskan) name in 2015—which he considers a rewriting of history in deference to liberal sensibilities that is evidence of a woke mind virus. And the president who signed that change into law was Barack Obama, so reversing it undoes an Obama achievement too. But Mr Trump’s homage to McKinley, a fellow Republican, did not end there.

McKinley, who was inaugurated in 1897, presided over the negotiations that created the Panama Canal. He loved tariffs, both as a way to fund the government and to protect domestic industry. And he courted, and was courted by, robber barons of the Gilded Age …”

It makes perfect sense to me.

If you are a reactionary businessman and a billionaire from New York like Trump, wouldn’t you be nostalgic for a time of virtually unfettered free market capitalism when the country was ruled by the Rockefellers, Morgans and Carnegies who were the biggest “winners” in American history?

The Atlantic:

“Eight years ago, with his “American carnage” speech, Donald Trump delivered what was likely the darkest inaugural address in U.S. history. During his second inaugural, he tried for a slightly more uplifting message.

“I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success,” Trump said. And although he listed many challenges, he assured the nation that  they would be “annihilated” by American momentum. (Yes, the word choice was strange.) “The golden age of America,” he declared, “begins right now,”

Perhaps it would be more aptly called a Gilded Age. Trump was joined in the Capitol Rotunda by many of the nation’s richest and most powerful men, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and Mark Zuckerberg. The attendance of the business titans was rendered conspicuous by the small space. (Other major donors to the inauguration were forced to watch on a livestream when the ceremony was moved inside because of frigid temperatures. Don’t shed a tear for them; they made the donations to curry favor and influence, not for the view.) Their presence also added a strange dimension to Trump’s complaint that “for many years a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens.”

This was the first time since Grover Cleveland’s second inauguration in 1885—during America’s first Gilded Age—that a president was sworn in for a non-consecutive second term. And many of the policies and ideas in the speech evoked the late 1800s more than any recent presidency.

As Southern reactionaries, we get misty eyed thinking about ancestors sitting on the front porch of the Big House, mint julep in hand, watching our slaves toil as the Confederate flag flaps in the breeze and our boys are in Virginia fighting off the Yankee Army in 1862. That’s our lost Golden Age.

For our Neo-Nazi commentators, their lost Golden Age is the Third Reich in 1942 at the peak of Adolf Hitler’s conquest of Europe. Everything went to hell when Germany lost the war. There are other flavors of reactionaries like the Trad Caths who date the fall to Martin Luther and the Reformation. Midwesterners might look back to their own Golden Age before they declined into the Rust Belt.

Surely, to be a New York business tycoon in the 1890s before the Jews took over the city and ran it into the ground must be a nostalgic fantasy that that appeals to some Gentile New Yorkers. Imagine what it would have been like to be in New York City at its peak and watch the skyscrapers being built or the electricity coming on when New York was a dynamic city approaching the peak of its power.

Note: Donald Trump himself was in this History Channel series.