America's Empire: Identity Crisis and Ambition

America didn't just stumble into an empire; it was a full-on national identity crisis.

After the American frontier closed, the country got restless. Some,

like Alfred Mahan, said we needed a huge navy to be a world power. Others argued it

was all about money and finding new markets for our stuff. Then you had the

newspapers, with guys like Hearst and Pulitzer basically inventing clickbait to push us into

the Spanish-American War. They called it Manifest Destiny, but critics like

Mark Twain and W.E.B. DuBois saw it as a racist power grab. It was a wild mix of ego and economics.