[JumpCrisscross]

> whether or not there are pre-existing beings to wrest control from

Maybe, maybe not. I question the relevance of a moot hypothetical.

> seem to be saying that manifest destiny that doesn't harm pre-existing life is fine

I'm saying if there is nothing living--let alone sapient--is harmed, it's not analogous to Manifest Destiny in a fundamental way. We have no cultural memory of colonising terra nova. So we're analogising to conquest, which I'm arguing is reductive.

This is closer to the first people to leave the African continent. Or first humans to get on boats and colonise North America and the Pacific Islands. Something motivated those people into the unknown, and while an element of that is preserved in Manifest Destiny, it's--I'd argue--in a corrupted form.