Hawaii is a US state, and a legitimate one at that. To justify this claim, I will be using master morality, originally proposed by Nietzsche.
For the past ten centuries, humanity has been in a continual state of glow-up, with scientific, mathematical, and moral progress being made at increasing rates. However, due to different social structures, some societies have made greater advancements in these fields, giving those societies greater influence over their peers. Historically, this influence was exercised through trade and conquest.
For example, the British Empire used superior shipbuilding and firearm technology to build the first truly global trade network, and to spread civilization to native peoples. While conquest and colonialism are seen as distasteful practices to our morally advanced society of today, people must realize that for global advancement to happen, advanced societies must be allowed to influence less advanced societies.
On the dawn of colonialism in the fifteen hundreds, many native Americans embraced Christianity as an alternative to the oligarchic religious structures of their own culture. European imperialists were by no means morally righteous, but for every disease they brought to the Americas, they brought twice as many advancements, and each of those advancements had a lasting effect. If lesser empires (such as that of the Aztecs) were left to their own devices, we would still have human sacrifice in the twenty-first century.
Connecting this to the annexation of Hawaii, while the overthrow of the queen was bad, Hawaii is now much better off as part of the Union. As of twenty-twenty-four, Hawaii has a gross domestic product of one-hundred and fifteen billion dollars. Additionally, due to the tourism industry, Hawaii is the happiest state of the Union. This would not be the case if Hawaii was still a monarchy.
