I am personally of the opinion that the only good slave owner is a dead one. John Brown did nothing wrong!

Just a little quibble here — Washington’s teeth were from dead slaves, so he could actually argue they didn’t need them. He didn’t actually have teeth pulled out of living slaves’ mouths for his dentures. That doesn’t make it OK, but it does make it not psychopathically horrible.

That said, the idea that the Father of His Country had a mouthful of dead slaves’ teeth has always been surrealistically horrific.

Hmm, “surrealistically horrific” is a great description for the politics of today, too. Plus ça change…