What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Malthus]

They are pure products of colonialism inasmuch as these countries have been very much defined, including in their self-mythology, by political expansion in lands that were deemed either not owned, or owned by peoples categorized as unworthy of owing it. I do not mean that they are *only* defined by colonialism.

Certainly they are products of colonialism, as in they were colonies that grew at the expense of others.

Where the US differs from Canada, is that it eventually ended up with colonies of its own - as in, ruling overseas territories it took in war with other colonial powers. Some it still has (like Puerto Rico).

[Oexmelin]

Yes. I said as much.

[Valmy]

None of this has anything to do with Obama and his anticolonial agenda though.

The US is the product of the first great anti-colonial rebellion.  Anti-colonialism is more American than apple pie.

Until the point when it wasn't.

If we define colonialism tautologically as the forms of imperial domination exerted by European powers over distant polities, then yes - even as the US took openly colonialist stances in the cases of Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, etc.

If we include settler colonialism, as I think we should, then the US (and Russia, and Canada, and Australia) are pure products, and proponents, of colonialism.

I don't think that was what Minsky was getting at. Being anticolonial may be very American from a cultural perspective. But national politics do not always perfectly line up with cultural ideals.

[Oexmelin]

What I understood from Minsky's point, is that there are enough resources in the American past to mount a strong rhetorical defense of anti-colonialism without fearing accusations of being unpatriotic. In short, the political existence of the US being a rejection of a certain form of colonialism, these guys should not make anti-colonialism a marker of hated leftism.

But what I pointed out, perhaps too obliquely, is that such American anti-colonialism was a political stance, developed for a particular political context. At times, such a stance receded in favor of bona fide American colonialists. And pretty much from the start, it coexisted with aggressive expansionism which shared quite a bit of its principles, celebration of might, racism, dispossession, with European colonialism. It may very well be it is that strain which the critics of "anti-colonialism" are mobilizing...

In short, Minski is suggesting a rhetorical strategy to denounce these guys as essentially un-American; I suggest we should denounce these guys as imperialists. 

[Maximus]

You seem to have special insight about what's up his ass. Is this part of your Michelle obsession?

My obsession is with Michelle's fabulous arms, so yeah, do the math

I'm fairly certain it goes deeper than that.

[Maximus]

In other news: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-mueller-idUSKBN1AJ2RA

[Barrister]

I never understood the anti-colonialist dig on Obama.  Are we supposed to be pro-colonialist?  Bring back King George III?  Put the East India company back in charge?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

[grumbler]

If we include settler colonialism, as I think we should, then the US (and Russia, and Canada, and Australia) are pure products, and proponents, of colonialism.

As is Britain, France, Germany... in fact, pretty much every country.  In almost no country is the current population the population that originally inhabited it.  The Indo-European colonists colonized the Middle East, some of South Asia, pretty much all of Europe...

And then their descendants took land away from other of their descendants.

I think your definition of colonialism is so broad as to be useless.

[Valmy]

I never understood the anti-colonialist dig on Obama.  Are we supposed to be pro-colonialist?  Bring back King George III?  Put the East India company back in charge?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

[Barrister]

I never understood the anti-colonialist dig on Obama.  Are we supposed to be pro-colonialist?  Bring back King George III?  Put the East India company back in charge?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

If I wanted to pick nits I would say we should put the Hudson's Bay Company back in charge, but I thought my point still stood.

[grumbler]

I never understood the anti-colonialist dig on Obama.  Are we supposed to be pro-colonialist?  Bring back King George III?  Put the East India company back in charge?

It's that he has a bug up his ass about colonialism even though it hasn't been a thing in a quite a while.

So, in other words, it's another lie.  The fact that you fell for it it interesting, and telling.  Did Obama ever actually behave in any way that would indicate that he "had a bug up his ass about colonialism," or do you just assume that because it fits your tribe's narrative about him?

[Tamas]

You know what would be ironic? Democrats and Republicans pushing the Russian anti-Trump PR angle so hard, that it triggers a war with Russia

[DontSayBanana]

In other news: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-mueller-idUSKBN1AJ2RA

What's interesting to me is that this comes right after a financial crimes expert joins the investigatory team, shortly after more details come out about the Russians whining to the Trumps about sanctions before The Don took office.

[Oexmelin]

As is Britain, France, Germany... in fact, pretty much every country.  In almost no country is the current population the population that originally inhabited it.  The Indo-European colonists colonized the Middle East, some of South Asia, pretty much all of Europe... I think your definition of colonialism is so broad as to be useless.

Only if one wants to broaden it beyond usefulness. It becomes similarly useless if it is narrowed into tautology.  If we want to transform any expansionist polity into an "empire", every organized government into a "state", and every conflict into a "war", we may as well forego these term too. And everything becomes the ahistorical expression of might. I do not think it useful.  Comparative history is about likening different places and context, not to posit everything is always exactly the same, but to think productively about the nature of the elements compared.

I tend to think there is value in distinguishing conquest (i.e., the various changes of domination in Europe) from settlement, in distinguishing invasions of settlers from invasions of warrior elites (say, the "Barbarian Invasions"), and in distinguishing settlements that seek to create limited independent polities (say, Greek colonies) from settlements which are made to subjugate local populations (say, Westward expansion). If only because, materially and culturally, I think these are liable to have quite different effects.

While we, in many cases, ignore the intellectual context and justifications that were used during the high antiquity, we have access to these in the case of early-modern and modern empires and still use these intellectual resources to shape our own political thinking. And in the case of Europeans empires and their offshoots, these produced at least a specific blend of moral and political universalism combined with an increasingly theorized racism. And these forces are very much present in the "reduction" of indigenous populations of Oceania and America.

What do we gain, intellectually, by separating European colonialism from American expansion? Do we gain a better understanding of American expansion? No. It's been defined, from the start, by Americans (or Canadians, or Australian) as *already* different, precisely for the reasons Minsky alluded to: it allowed the US to claim moral high ground from a different political perspective than European polities. I think likening it to European colonialism allows us to see similarity of processes, as well as the political gains that were expected by asserting, and insisting, that it was, by essence, a different process. I'd be quite happy to call it something else, "Reductionism", or whatever.

[Razgovory]

Is there widely accepted definition for "Colonialism" and "Imperialism"?  The two terms get used interchangeably.  The American colonization of it's own borders, the Norwegian colonization of Iceland, the British governing India and the the US sphere of influence in the Latin America are so different from each other that using the word "colonialism" to describe all them seems less than helpful.