In ancient times people used to believe in magic. Magic was the science of ancient times. If somebody had a breakthrough in science many people probably classified that as magic. People would do anything to create magic spells especially to appease the gods. They would offer up human sacrifices and even do the most unthinkable things like sacrificing children. The bodies of children have been found throughout the Andes Mountains, these are children who were sacrificed. It is hard to believe even ancient people could believe the sacrifice of a child was a good thing. This probably worked the same way politics works today. The people in charge probably never had to sacrifice their children and people in the population were probably cherry picked for this suppose honor. There is something you find out when you live long enough and that is there are two different levels of society. The top level contains the people who want to give all the dirty jobs to lower level, this just seems to be human nature.

When the American Civil War broke out many of the soldiers listed were immigrants just coming into this country and poor people. The people in the top level said to themselves, how can we keep our children out of this war, so they decided to have their cronies in Washington enact a way of doing this. It turned out to be very simple for them, for a few hundred dollars you could buy your way out of being drafted. In those days the lower echelon of people didn’t have much money so they were stuck. Many of the people in the upper levels would go out on hills and mountains and watch these poor soldiers battling for their life and they would regard this as entertainment. When you think about it, was this much different than the ancient people sacrificing others to their gods? These people were sacrificing people in their place to fight the enemy and most couldn’t have cared less.

There has been a type of silent war going on for thousands of years between the rich and powerful and the rest of humanity. The rich and powerful usually are able to push their wills on others for a period of time. Sometimes the time period can last for hundreds of years, or it can last for a much shorter period of time. After this happens there is usually some sort of social uprising which then deposes of these people for a while, but then they reemerge. There are two very good examples of this, one is the American Revolution and the other the French Revolution. In revolutionary days the United States was controlled by England who in turn was controlled by the banks and the powerful. Eventually we managed to shed England, but it wasn’t long before the rich and powerful in this country took over. The same was true in France when the people revolted there. They had been controlled by the royalty and also the banks and even though they put a lot of those people to death, it wasn’t long before the rich and powerful were able to control that country again.

When we look at our government closely, we can’t help but see how completely divided it is by the interests which back senators and representatives. We also have to wonder about a government which passes exceptions to laws for themselves. They have exempted themselves from insider trading and civil rights violations among other things. Much of what happens in the government is never seen by the average person. There are some clues however which we should all be aware of and one of them is there has to be something wrong when Congress meets the middle of the night and passes legislation. This has happened quite a few times and that is quite a few more than it should have. When parties fight over doing something they are not really fighting over principles. It is hard to believe such a thing as principles even exists in Washington anymore. They are fighting over differences between the people who are backing them and their agendas. It is hard to believe, but true, some of the bills introduced in congress are written by special interests and not by the congressman and it has been said some bills have been introduced where the Congressman who introduced them wasn’t familiar with everything in the bill. This is not the type of representation we are supposed to be getting. Some people say Washington has always been like this, but to those people I have to reply it seems there was more humanity in previous times. People used to talk about how when times got tough a district leader might help them out some way. I don’t hear people talking about this anymore. There are plenty of stories where people were helped with bags of coal for heat and given food, because in the old days the political parties felt they had to give back a little to the people, but apparently this feeling has disappeared.

I think today much of what happens in Washington DC can be summed up by the word “gotcha.” Both parties have been playing gotcha for years now. I remember speaking to a politician was said to me he was very happy, because he stopped someone from getting elected who had given him a hard time thirty years ago. I asked this person, did the person who you stopped know you did it? He replied no. I asked him if this gave him satisfaction even though that person didn’t know he had interfered with him. He said all that matters was he was able to get even. I can’t understand how anyone could get any satisfaction this way, but getting even seems to be a very important thing in politics, even if the person doesn’t know who did it to him or her.

It doesn’t seem this conflict between the rich and powerful and the rest of us will ever get any better and as a matter of fact technology might make it even worse as different augmentations to the human body become available for a price. It may come down to those that have get and those that don’t have do not. Nature has shown us there are those animals which are on top of the food chain and those which are at the bottom and some people believe this is true for humanity and that is a shame. Unless we can get some people to think differently the cycle will continue.