Goodreads Doesn't Have It, Data Migration: 30 Years a Slave
Truly excellent book. He lost two children when the female master grew angry at his wife's dignity who said, "You shall not flog me." So she flogged her just to do it, and started doing it more and more because she was just a disgusting woman. She was the one who cooked her three meals; the woman she flogged, while raising two children. The babies died at around 1-3 years old it looked like because her milk was weak enough raising them while cooking three meals, and then when it added the bodily cost of flogging, it was too weak and the babies died. Apparently cruelty like that destroyed the credit of the slaveholders, and that women like that were some of the worst that the most unlucky were held to. What is really disturbing about this book is how when the Unionists are breaking up the rebel Confederate camps, a lot of the slaves are deep in Stockholm Syndrome and saying how they resent them splitting up their "happy homes", but then later these same slaves try to escape to Canada. It looks like Canada also failed Louis Hughes in a similar way, so I'm in good company. Canada is not all it's cracked up to be, it failed a lot of greats, Hughes among them.
Ironically I was speaking on the same slaveholding type corruption in the African warlords and oligarchs that fit exactly this pattern towards other women as described in the original chapters. Blacks were as capable of doing it to other blacks as whites were; but in the African case it was also met with gross incompetence that needs constant global support to even stay basically in power. Not that similar isn't true of a nation that has had to be bailed out by Germany and China more than once, but it's Germany and China's fault that they keep subsidizing the failing governments. They have no right to complain with these Deutsche and Musk deals. They are their own complaint, showing how yet again communist and post-communist logic isn't strong enough to say no that anti-corruption empowers one with.
The spirit of someone like Hughes' baffles me. How he can keep so even keeled about some of the most disgusting content blows my mind. He is still knee deep in slave attitude; this cannot be helped, it is clearly not safe for him to speak on how he might truly feel and the anger of it. It is stilted but beautiful writing. What really broke my heart is the fact that the whites didn't want blacks to hold any opinion other than the positive. It was a sign of a Confederate to have this struggle, ironically something people have been saying they have seen on Trudeau, with a consistent allergy against blacks "speaking truth to power" being the main complaint against the Confederate. It just goes to show Canada has not been what it's propositioned itself to be in many cases, and has failed many people who thought that it was better. It wasn't. This shows how slaveholding was a narcissistic addiction, and that they literally got high from the power addiction to the point they would put their own body in jeopardy to keep the high. In fact, McGee, Hughes' owner, died transporting the slaves unable to accept his time owning them had come and gone and he could no longer afford them. He died due to power-addiction riddled logic causing him to think he had abilities he didn't have in the high, and transporting the slaves to trains eventually killed him.
I think Hughes' final paragraph is the most important. "I have endeavored, in the foregoing sketch, to give a clear and correct idea of the institution of human slavery, as I witnessed and experienced it--its brutality, its degrading influence upon both master and slave, and its utter incompatibility with industrial improvement and general educational progress. Nothing has been exaggerated or set down in malice, although in the scars which I still bear upon my person, and in the wounds of spirit which will never wholly heal, there might be found a seeming excuse for such a course. Whatever of kindness was shown me during the years of my bondage, I still gratefully remember, whether it came from white master or fellow slave; and for the recognition which has been so generously accorded me since the badge of servitude was removed, I am profoundly and devoutly thankful."
It was also very concerning to see how Frederick Douglass was backed so much by his publisher but his original book failed to even sell one or two copies in apparently post-slavery union America. This shows a lot of people were fakes who were ambivalent about the end of slaveholding. I think that's the most disturbing finding of all; when allegedly Union populations or Canada fail to show strong backing for exactly the perfect case of what they're allegedly trying to fight against. That's the most disturbing part of all, the fakes and frauds just doing it for looks. One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This does pretty good in speaking to that sort of joke of a liberal, who does everything to be seen as doing it in the eyes of others, but when the eye of social virtue is gone, they immediately, profoundly and embarrassingly flunk. It is disturbing to the point it is vomitable how prevalent that kind of narcissism is in the liberal community; putting on a show only to profoundly flunk in delivering. What's the point? Someone should do a more rigorous research on the situation where One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This left off, at least in that part. Trying to pull the "privileged" line about voluntary and involuntary self-harm was a "really, this is not the time unless you have a more thorough explanation that will actually resolve the phenomenon" moment.
But really, it is those compulsive moments, those inabilities to stop the compulsive abuse, the compulsive power addiction, the compulsive narcissism, the compulsive liberal-for-the-looks but then not actually buying the books..that lose the wars and hand the government over to complete nightmares. So I wish One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This had spoken more on what they mean by compulsive, involuntary self-harm and abuse because often that translates to that abuse just happening to someone else if you are unfortunate enough to be identified with by an involuntary self-harmer. Usually it has to do with the same pathways behind literal addiction, and that the compulsive abuse is hitting both the self-harm and actual addiction pathways. I wish they had spoken more on it instead of just applied narcissistic logic to it. All these "this was not the time to nitpick like that" become clearly about self-harm. The punishment, the taking away of rights...the fact that Hughes' wife got the one nightmare woman who was the worst that you were truly unlucky to have as a slave in the holding woman, the real nightmare woman that was the odd one out in terms of cruelty...it needs more research.
But this book proves that these abusers who subjugate other people are addicts and are addicted to the power high and should be viewed and treated as addicts, but this time of power.