We’ve been appeasing warlords

The rulers whom we supplanted were, like ourselves, aliens and usurpers. We found the Hindoos a conquered people, and, little by little, we substituted one yoke for another.

‘Labor contractor’ sounds so much nicer than ‘slave trader,’ wouldn’t you say?

Some people gain freedom by trading one form of bondage for another.

They were more than kings, now they are less than slaves.

Often, this has only meant a change in tyranny. In other words, one ruling class is replaced by another — sometimes by one that is more efficient and therefore still more capable of maintaining itself — while the poor and downtrodden remain poor and downtrodden or become even worse off.

It wasn't so bad being a slave when your owner was yourself and stood up for you.

He who traffics with a tyrant becomes his slave,
Though he goes to him a free man.

As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!

Once pirates, then traders, the British were now the rulers of millions of people overseas – and not just in India. Thanks to a combination of naval and financial muscle they had become the winners in the European race for empire.

If Obama's a tyrant, he's a pretty tame tyrant. How many tyrants do you know that really suffer because they can't get cloture?

All Servants
Across the heavens that surround this sphere, I write:
It is not the tyrant who is a shameful man,
but the servant of the tyrant.

Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be

It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.