Thoughts Regarding Maps For the Masses

I was particularly struck in the section regarding American attitudes towards race as the country expanded. America has a really interesting history regarding expansionism, especially between the Civil War and World War I. We're the same country that theoretically objects to colonialism because we started out under the thumb of a faraway mother country. Yet, I have this theory, and the reading sort of confirms how I felt before, that Americans for a long time felt it was their destiny to always dominate the globe.
It was long ago accepted that whenever America faced any sort of issue on a national scale, the solution was to expand west regardless of whether the territory which the country was trying to engulf was already populated. This idea of Manifest Destiny was often confirmed by incredibly fortunate circumstances which have built our country such as the previous backwater California being discovered to have gold less than a week and a half after annexing it from Mexico. In the late 1800's, a mix of scientific attitudes, patriotism, and a sense of final superiority over the formerly dominate European nations meant that America did the inevitable by absorbing colonies. Interestingly enough, it seems to me that even the national conscious was in a sort of denial as to this blatant contradiction of American values; as the reading shows, we had to justify this action by demonstrating through propaganda that Spain was holding Cuba down, and that liberation from Spain's control could turn Cuba into a civilized, prosperous, capitalist utopia although we ended up neutering Cuba's political and economic independence with the Platt Amendment. Regardless, America was extending its reach far beyond its own borders. Alaska is another great example of America's drive to possibly own the globe as suddenly, after almost half a century of shame over buying what seemed like a giant frozen rock, suddenly the country flaunted in atlases the resource heavy access point to Eastern Asia we were now proud to own.
More likely however, the U.S. was trying to extend its reach to Asia through the Pacific islands it now owned such as Hawaii (which came under American control after an almost sickening power grab by American expansionists) Midway, the Philippines, Guam, and Samoa. Nevertheless, Americans such as Matthew Perry had already tried to extend the States' control in Asia by demanding entrance into the eastern ports of Japan and China. Assuming that these efforts had followed the previously established American model of trade with a new Western contact, intensifying this contact, and then demanding further control until our population practically clamors for the federal government to drum up a reason to displace this contact's authority and we ultimately absorb it altogether, America would have practically owned Eastern Asia. My question becomes this: where does it stop? Americans were expansion-crazy at the end of the 19th century, and I have a hard time believing that they would have ended the Westward movement had they taken over Japan or China.
Likely, what ended this drive for expansion was World War I. This coincided with Woodrow Wilson's presidency who was a particularly logical guy, and he was generally an isolationist. After the most ugly and destructive war in history, which was really about nothing whatsoever, had finally ended, Americans started a drive for isolationism which would last until 1941, and basically spelled the end for the impending disasters, bloodshed, and attempted global domination that I believe Manifest Destiny was setting up. In short, World War I may have been a gruesome war of attrition, but it may have stultified many conflicts that America would have otherwise compelled itself to enter.
Anyway, how this theory relates to the reading is that I think American attitudes from that time towards other races would have helped to facilitate America's betraying its own principles by attempting to create this colonial empire of sorts. Clearly, the predominant idea of inherent white superiority fueled the idea of Manifest Destiny. What's more, these white American conquerors practically never actually inhabited the overseas territories they took over. More often, they just became places of trade and military outfitting reserves. This form of settling has so many troubling implications: think about the Filipino rebellion which unceasingly fought the American military installations to a bloody stalemate, or the Cuban Revolution against the American-installed government in the 1950's. If America had gone further in its Manifest Destiny aspirations and set up satellite regimes or military outposts presiding over China, Japan, or other Asian, South American or possibly even European countries, think about the different backlashes we would have seen over the last century in countless areas. Worse, think about the retaliation we would have dispensed in these concomitantly dissenting territories. As a globe-spanning chauvinistic empire that saw white Protestant males as entitled to rule and displace whomever they want, I don't think its an overstatement to say that in most parts of the world, we would have been thought of the same way we think of Nazi Germany today. We would have absolutely ended up becoming the globally despised villain.
If I'm right that World War I may have averted this outcome, I wouldn't say that it means the war was worth its tragic consequences, but I guess this would be a silver lining. After all, if there's one thing I know about history and alternate history, we're all comfortable with whatever led to today. Thinking about a different outcome is too scary, and given the opportunity, I don't think most people would change tragedies from the past if it means we could keep things the way they are.