Grace’s Reviews > How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States > Status Update

🗣️KAHO’OLAWE MENTIONED🗣️

“It was a known bug. Humans didn’t travel well. Take them from one part of the planet to another and their typical response was to get sick and fall down”

“What those waterlogged troops discovered that afternoon was an age-old truth, one that had governed history up to that point: moving things [beat] is hard”

Can you imagine telling your buddy “hey I’m gonna take the day off; hold down the fort for me?” And your buddy says “yea yea sure ofc” and then when you come back, your buddy has set everything in place for a WAR from your position. (This is about Long and Roosevelt.)

“These workers, called kānakas…” there’s a LOT going on with that statement. First, kānaka refers to native Hawaiians and is not, in modern parlance, the word for “workers.” Second, Hawaiian plurals don’t work like English plurals, and the word “kānakas” therefore has to qualify as some kind of pidgin. I have questions but I’m holding them til the end of chapter

Do you guys ever wonder if Washington’s alleged reluctance for power is a ruse bc it makes for a more cohesive American narrative that maintains that power is burdensome and those who bear it are automatically honorabke