Gordon says:
>>>>However, if the frontier encounters a numerous and advanced
>>>>people, then the resultant assimilation will be ambiguous.
Yoshie Furuhashi:
> >> One result of ambiguous assimilation is Americanization of politics
> >> worldwide. ...
Gordon:
> >I was thinking of ... that ambiguousness of assimilation
> >wherein the assimilator acquires many of the characteristics
> >of the assimilated.
Yoshie Furuhashi:
> You mean the promotion of "multiculturalism" & the like in education,
> management, etc.?
Well, quote-multiculturalism-unquote is one attempt of the established order to handle the fact of multiculti in the streets, so it's something like that. But imagine if China were a few miles west of California and the United States had annexed it in the way it annexed the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession. Even war turns out to be, among other things, a species of communication and exchange of ideas, culture, goods, microorganisms, and populations. And so the assimilator is assimilated. I think this is widely understood.
As it happens some American nationalists _did_ want to invade and Americanize Latin America (and still do) but preponderance of nationalist feeling seems to have been to draw back from foreign races and foreign ways, to avoid entangling alliances and deal with other nations at a distance -- isolationism abroad and segregation at home. So this would be a problem for those who want to use American nationalism to drive contemporary imperialism.