Listics

Having run across references to King Leopold twice today, it seems appropriate to record the links.  I first spotted the avariciously genocidal constitutional monarch and personal-colonialist in a list of 20th century killers.  I was seeking a shorter list of despots that the American oligarchs promoted after world war 2, but was - well, not happy - but interested to read of the depredations of the man who inspired Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness." 

Later, reading a review of  Bury the Chains, by Adam Hochschild, I ran across the self-serving royal again.  I don’t know what this all means, except that Chris Locke is writing about Carlyle and Emerson these days, Mike Golby remains hung up on Apocalypse Now, and  I’m impressed with the slow pace of progress in this country when only this week have we arrested someone for the murder of the three freedom riders in Mississippi in  1963.  And, while the importation of slaves to the US was abolished in 1808 (making British abolition cheap and easy), it took more than fifty more years for the US to address the matter of slavery itself, and then abolition only happened as a sidebar to the war between northern industrialists and southern aristocrats for control of the expansion westward across North America.  Any Abe Lincoln fans out there care to argue with that?