Ep. 0160: “Remember the Maine!” & The Pageantry of American Aggression

Here’s a big beast of a DHP episode, dealing with the Deep History of the sinking of the USS Maine, the origins of the Spanish-American War, and what relevance this story might have to recent events.

Join CJ as he discusses:

• The explosion of the USS Maine in Havana in 1898
• A brief description of the so-called “Large Policy” and its proponents in the late-19th century, especially its most influential members: Theodore Roosevelt & Henry Cabot Lodge
• The so-called “Yellow Press,” as exemplified by William Randolph Hearst & Joseph Pulitzer, and how they were working toward similar goals as the Large Policy cabal (namely, war), for their own reasons
• TR’s appointment to the position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and how he used that position for all it was worth (and more)
• Increasing tensions between the US and Spain, leading up to President McKinley’s dispatch of the Maine to Havana, where of course, it would blow up & sink
• How proponents of war (the Large Policy cabal & the Yellow Press) hastily jumped to conclusions on virtually no evidence that Spain was behind the sinking, and the official Sampson Board of Inquiry that concluded the ship was sunk by a mine (albeit without claiming to know who was behind it)
• The lead up to the actual declarations of war between Spain & the US, over two months after the Maine, and a brief rundown of the troubling legacies of this so-called “Splendid Little War”
• A closer look at the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and its oft-overlooked connections to TR & to the Maine
• Some possible alternative explanations for the sinking of the Maine
• A basic description of the playbook of “The American Way of Going to War” that pro-war politicians & media outlets still use to this day, for one big reason: it keeps working

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External Links

• Operation Northwoods
• “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (PNAC, 2000)