There are still useful idiots out there who deny that the US is an empire. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio just gave another explicitly pro-colonialist speech, boasting that the US is a "continental empire". He proudly identified the origins of the US empire in the colonization of North America. He totally erased the Indigenous peoples who lived there, referring to it as an "open and wild land" at the time of colonization. Rubio waxed poetic on the "American frontier spirit", with no mention of the millions of Native Americans who died in the largest genocide in human history. Rubio also praised the genocidal colonialists Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés. Rubio traced the origins of the US empire back to Alexander the "Great", whom he heroized for "conquer[ing] the entire known world". The US empire has tried to do exactly the same, on top of many millions of corpses. (This is the official transcript of Rubio's speech: state.gov/releases/office-of…)