I looked into Zinn’s book and haven’t gotten past the second chapter.

Although there are good laws, good sausages, and good nations, I grant that it can be distasteful to watch them being made. (So it’s a bad idea to blithely endanger the nation we live in.)

Somebody (C.S. Lewis?) observed that it’s a fashionable modern error to believe that the repellent unseemly dimension of an activity captures its essential nature.

Iirc Heart of Darkness is a snapshot of history in process that emphasizes the tragic but acknowledges the fact of progress.