We are all inseparable from our times, whether we realize it or not. - Elizabeth Martínez

ours is an age of intensified empire-building in which no war is unthinkable.

The march reminded us that at one time 17 million Americans boycotted grapes not picked by unionized farmworkers. (“Walking with César”)

Manifest Destiny saw Yankee conquest as the inevitable result of a confrontation between enterprise and progress (white) versus passivity and backwardness (Indian, Mexican)...The concept of Manifest Destiny, with its assertion of racial superiority sustained by military power, has defined U.S. identity for 150 years. Only the Vietnam War brought a serious challenge to that concept of almightiness. Bitter debate, moral anguish, images of My Lai and the prospect of military defeat for the first time in U.S. history all suggested that the long-standing marriage of virtue and violence might soon be on the rocks.