George Washington Was Apparently Incapable of Carrying Out the Activities of Daily Living

A new exhibit all about the human beings that the first president of the current republic enslaved personally is opening on Independence Mall. Amazingly, it is the first national monument acknowledging the millions of enslaved people on whose backs rests the economic prosperity of the southeastern and south central United States.

Thanks to Eric for this link to a BBC slideshow of a ceremony commemorating the 200th anniversary of the end of slavery in the British Empire being interrupted by an activist demanding an actual apology and reparations. Apparently a ceremony in which the Queen lays a wreath at the feet of a statue of a white man is not enough. [The nerve.]

Slavery ended over a hundred years ago. Why can't everybody just move on? Oh, that's right, our government never apologized or tried to make ammends in any kind of meaningful or substantive way for allowing the forced captivity and labor of over half the population in the former attempted confederacy plus few border states. It would be worse if there were fabulously wealthy transnational corporations occupying the best real estate in the middle of our cities that became that way [gained their "starting capital"] partially through the slave trade, while in the shadows of their soaring glass towers, impoverished children and underpaid teachers struggled to learn with old books in cold, leaky, dangerous schools and they didn't do anything to help.