#1357 What Trump is Invoking When He Invokes Manifest Destiny
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2020
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Air Date 7/10/2020
Today we take a look at the origins and legacy of Manifest Destiny, the historical term most closely tied to our most toxic version of nostalgia: the one longing for America's golden age of genocide
Transcript
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SHOW NOTES
Ch. 1: Intro contemplating conservative thinking applied to genocide
Native American historian Nick Estes explains the crimes against Indigenous people committed by the four presidents whose faces are carved into Mount Rushmore.
Ch. 3: The Interest of the White Man demands their extinction - @BackStory - Air Date: 01-19-18
Ed talks with historian Benjamin Madley about the devastating impact of the Gold Rush on California’s native tribes – and how both government officials and everyday citizens justified enslaving and killing native peoples.
Ch. 4: Doctrine of Christian Discovery Part 1 - Let’s Talk Native - Air Date 3-18-19
I learned that most educators know nothing about the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. How can you teach about colonization, slavery, the American genocide, Westward expansion or imperialism without teaching the origins of it all?
Native American historian Nick Estes explains the crimes against Indigenous people committed by the four presidents whose faces are carved into Mount Rushmore.
Ch. 6: Doctrine of Christian Discovery Part 2 - Let’s Talk Native - Air Date 3-18-19
I learned that most educators know nothing about the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. How can you teach about colonization, slavery, the American genocide, Westward expansion or imperialism without teaching the origins of it all?
Ch. 7: Paul Frymer on the building of an American empire - The Dig from @jacobinmag - Air Date 1-30-18
We are living on land from which indigenous people, over hundreds of years, have been violently removed. Almost everyone knows this — yet it’s rarely mentioned in stories that Americans tell themselves about who we are as a country and how we got here.
Native American historian Nick Estes explains the crimes against Indigenous people committed by the four presidents whose faces are carved into Mount Rushmore.
Ch. 9: Understanding the origins of scalp hunting and "redskins" - Empire Files - Air Date 11-25-15
Abby Martin interviews Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, renowned indigenous scholar and activist, about her most recent book "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States."
We call up brilliant scholar Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz to dig into her work, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
FINAL COMMENTS
Ch. 11: Final comments on the pain caused by the breaking of your shell of understanding
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- Quaver - Codebreaker
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left by Cast in which we are rapidly |
| 0:07.9 | responding to Trump's recent full embrace of Manifest Destiny. |
| 0:13.1 | He first mentioned it in the State of the Union address this year, but again, this week |
| 0:17.8 | framing space exploration as the next logical step for a people God ordained to expand endlessly |
| 0:26.2 | and subdue any non-white people we have in the process. |
| 0:31.4 | Here's a quick snip from the Bill Moyers website on this news item. |
| 0:36.1 | Then out of the blue, the official White House Twitter account published a photo of Trump |
| 0:40.8 | and Pence apparently gazing into the sky alongside a quotation that said, quote, |
| 0:46.1 | �Americans are the people who pursued our Manifest Destiny across the ocean into the |
| 0:51.8 | uncharted wilderness over the tallest mountains and then into the skies and even into the |
| 0:57.5 | stars." |
| 0:59.7 | Manifest Destiny was a term coined in the 1840s by the editor of the Democratic Review |
| 1:04.6 | magazine to explain why it was the divinely ordained duty of Americans to push West and take |
| 1:11.1 | over the lands of indigenous peoples and Mexicans spreading slavery into new lands. |
| 1:16.9 | The term is widely associated with white supremacy and deadly dominance over people of color, |
| 1:22.6 | unquote. |
| 1:24.1 | And even more pointedly, Mark Sumner on alternate said this, |
| 1:28.4 | �There we go. |
| 1:30.2 | Americans have pursued our God-given right to slaughter people by the millions, take their |
| 1:34.6 | lands, steal their sacred places, ignore treaties, engage in massacres and make really |
| 1:40.5 | pretty movies about it. |
| 1:42.7 | Because Manifest Destiny. |
... |
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