Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad is a fantastical parade of horrors filled with complex characters that lay the true nightmare of American ideology bare while also exposing the force of ambition in the face of a brutal dehumanization.

Whitehead pulled no punches with Ridgeway, a slave catcher in possession of the protagonist, Cara. On page 181, Whitehead preforms what I call a brain depressurization: the author leads you to a conclusion with a such stealth that revealing the truth causes a cascading realization that leaves you gulping for air. This is Whitehead's horrifying summary of American ideology[spoilers].

“Of course not—it’s nothing. Better weep for one of those burned
cornfields, or this steer swimming in our soup. You do what’s required to survive.” He wiped his lips. “It’s true, though, your complaint. We come up with all sorts of fancy talk to hide things. Like in the newspapers nowadays, all the smart men talking about Manifest Destiny. Like it’s a new idea. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” Ridgeway asked.

"Cora sat back. 'More words to pretty things up.”

“It means taking what is yours, your property, whatever you deem
it to be. And everyone else taking their assigned places to allow you to take it. Whether it’s red men or Africans, giving up themselves, giving of themselves, so that we can have what’s rightfully ours. The French setting aside their territorial claims. The British and the Spanish slinking away."

“My father liked his Indian talk about the Great Spirit,” Ridgeway
said. “All these years later, I prefer the American spirit, the one that
called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and
civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the
lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription—the American imperative.”

To be abundantly clear, Whitehead doesn't paint American colonization in a flattering light here.

Find the book here: slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1351204116