If you’re a student of history or of the social sciences, you’re probably quite familiar with “imperialism” as a concept for understanding relations among social actors. Less common, but far more unsettling, is the kind of imperialism that you can tune into and watch live on television, like what we saw at the recent State of the Union speech.

It was a scene that one imagines must have happened in Baghdad’s parliament, when Saddam Hussein had his legislature rubber-stamp his brutal attempt to conquer Kuwait. President Trump, in a speech laced with bold-faced lies, and of the rambling character one expects from a post-Soviet dictator rather than the leader of the free world, proudly proclaimed his intention to coerce the people of Panama into surrendering their sovereign territory, by taking the Panama Canal.

In a moment that sent chills down my spine, what looked to have been the entire Republican delegation gave this screed a standing ovation. That was not the appropriate reaction to any man, much less a president who swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, telling you that he intends to conquer the soil of another nation.

As Americans, we are supposed to hate tyranny. Territorial conquest is something to be ashamed of, not aspired to, precisely because conquest entails the imposition of tyranny upon another person. When you give a standing ovation to a man saying that we should conquer territory from another country, particularly another free and democratic republic such as Panama, you, by implication, endorse the idea that we should countenance tyranny, so long as it enhances some kind of “national glory.”

Well, since we’re fine with tyranny under certain conditions, why don’t we just heap all our constitutional rights upon the pyre of “national glory,” like so many vanities on a bonfire? Goodbye, free speech! Fare thee well, protection against cruel and unusual punishment! I’m getting tortured for saying mean things about the president, because some barking moron wearing a MAGA hat told me that it would bring glory to the nation.

In other words, if you stood up and applauded for that Panama Canal comment, you’re a real piece of work. So what to my wondering eyes should appear, but our very own Sen. Susan Collins, partaking in that standing ovation, when the president told us all that he intends to steal territory from the very brother-nation that we helped to free from the shackles of tyranny so many years ago, the Republic of Panama.

If Sen. Collins had any conscience at all, she would do the following:

1. Apologize to the people of Panama. The people of Panama are not serfs or slaves, but free and equal citizens of the very same republic that we helped them win from Colombia. By sacred treaty obligation, the canal is every inch a part of that illustrious republic as the homes of ordinary Panamanians.

2. Take the Ukraine flag off her lapel. It is the very height of hypocrisy to support the president when he threatens to do to Panama precisely what Vladimir Putin has done to Ukraine. Sen. Collins is no friend of Ukraine.

3. Resign. Applauding these kinds of remarks is not only a violation of oath that Collins has taken in her capacity as a senator, but it brings great shame upon every single person who lives or has ever lived in Maine.

Sen. Collins has already embarrassed us all before, making our great state famous the world over as the place represented by that senator who always expresses how she’s “very concerned” about the Trump administration, but then does precisely nothing to right the wrongs that she has enabled.