Crikey.
I guess this is the (east-west) hemisphere we are in. But, no, it doesn’t belong to us. We have interests — political, economic, security — in what happens in this hemisphere, arguably more urgent than we do in what happens in, say, Africa, or South Asia, etc. (though the lesson of the last century, if anyone in the Regime is listening, is that pretending things over there don’t matter is more and more dangerous in our world).
But there are a bit over a billion people in North and South America, combined, of which the US makes up about a third of a billion. That means a whole lot of people in other countries, other nations, other sovereignties. They are of the US (as the Regime repeatedly points out in trying to throw them out). Asserting that, despite having no say in how the US runs, they are “ours” is building an imperial house of cards.
Can the US, militarily, dive into any other country in the hemisphere and take out (physically or metaphorically) the heads of each government? Probably.
Does might make right? Nope. And does the US have the power, and interest, and money, and will to treat the hemisphere as conquered realms. Nope.
Or, as another person put it as a new empire was being founded …
Hey, remember when George Lucas said that in Star Wars the Empire was the US and the Rebels were the Viet Cong, and a bunch of people lost their shit over how awful that was to say about the US?
Tell me that “Our Hemisphere” image doesn’t have serious Emperor Palpatine vibes.
Oh, dear Lord, please don’t let the Star Wars prequels be an insight into modern history …
And just in case you missed it, the “Our Hemisphere” and vacuous cry about “our security” being threatened isn’t just about Venezuela (or Cuba, or Mexico, or whatever other Latin American nation the Regime is threatening today). It’s clearly encompassing an actual territorial add to the Empire in Greenland.
Never mind there is already a sovereign power there. Never mind that the people there seem to have no interest. The Dear Leader wants to Change The Map of the US as part of his “legacy,” by hook or by crook (or by CIA and helicopter gunships).
Maybe he’ll have a steady program of ever-updating the new Trump Arch being built outside of (appropriately enough, since one can expect a lot of US military casualties out of all this) Arlington Cemetery — a different frieze for each conquest, something like that — some friezes of the Venezuela raid here, some etchings of Greenland, maybe future attacks on Mexico and Brazil, you know, good ol’ American things like that.
Yeesh.