Throughout human history, there has always been a small percentage of people who weren't satisfied to live in harmony with their neighbors and share existing resources equitably. Those personality types have done a variety of things to generally un-level the playing field in their favor so that more of society's goodies roll toward them and.



In the caveman days, you simply stole from the other guy. If he got in your way, you clubbed him. If he still fought back, you might beat him until he was unconscious or even dead. With him out of the way, the caveman was then free to steal whatever previously belonged to the other caveman he had just beaten: food, animal hides, shoes, even his woman.



But these piggies personality types eventually weren't satisfied just stealing the possessions of a few other people. These sickos not only wanted to steal more material stuff, but wanted to make themselves FEEL better by obtaining power. If other people were giving them stuff, swearing allegiance to them, even bowing before them like they were some kind of god, they could then feel better about themselves. "Since I managed to get all these people to acquiesce to me, I must be a superior person," they might think as they swell with pride.



Now here comes the tricky part. In order to achieve that, you have to disempower all of those around you. You either disempower them without their consent (by using force) or disempower them with their consent (using trickery).



In the caveman days, you simply clubbed the other guy. But when civilization developed, so did basic morality, along with concepts of fairness and equality. Then it became unacceptable to just be physically aggressive toward other people to get what you want.



Now it becomes psychological. The greedy sickos have to trick everyone else into following them. How do you do that? How do I get everyone else to willingly let me have 95% of society's resources while the millions of others have to fight over the remaining 5% while I sit back and laugh at them living in the deprivation that I've created? What possible justification could I use to create such unfair conditions?



So before the stealing and aggression can occur, our supposed civilized society now requires that some justification be interjected beforehand into the equation. Look at history. Before I'm allowed to steal and beat or kill people and then take more than my share of all resources, I have to convince at least most of the people around me to willingly obey me. Here are some justifications that have worked in the past: 1) I'm from a royal bloodline and only male descendents of the Meisner family can rule all of you pathetic slobs. 2) I've been ordained by God (or one of his representatives like the Bishop from the Church of England) to rule over all of you. 3) I AM God or your messiah and you should serve me in order to serve God.



After a few thousand years, most people saw through all of that bullshit, so the justification needed to take the path of a boomerang: 1) listen to me while I tell you why your life isn't that great (even though it's probably my fault for fucking all of you over while stealing from you). 2) Next, I, your great leader, focus the people's attention AWAY from himself by using some form of manipulation, usually the classic "divide and conquer" tactic. He says to the people: "if only ______ (fill in the blank), your lives would be better." 3) Final step: now listen to me for a solution. I, your glorious leader, being on your side, want to help you with this (usually non-existent) problem by having all of you take the following action _______ (fill in the blank). Or under Bush, it's "let me get away with doing _______ to solve this problem that Karl Rove has defined for you."



As time goes on and people slowly get more savvy to these manipulations, they have to take more subtle forms.



For example, let's say I want to steal the oil in Iraq. In the good old days (like Europe circa 1600 A.D.), I could simply send my giant army to ravage the land of Iraq, then send the oil companies in to suck the ground dry (after paying me royalties) and sit back and collect the profits (that's how the Saudi Arabian sheiks do it). If my army was able to defeat the other guy's army, then I got to keep the "spoils of war." There were no concepts of morality or justifications required--simply "might makes right." My army kicked your army's ass, so I get to keep all the booty.



But that eventually wore thin and some people grew tired of being used as pawns to fight these silly wars just to make sickos even richer and even more powerful. Nowadays, the American people and the rest of the world PROBABLY wouldn't stand for that. So BushInc first had to interject a justification. They actually did better than that and threw in a hodge-podge of justifications hoping one or more would stick. Let's see, there was Saddam was an evil dictator, he didn't follow UN rules, he had WMDs, we came to liberate the good people of Iraq, and we want to help bring peace and stability to the region by creating a democracy in the Middle East. All bullshit but at least they gave Bush carte blanche to invade. Those excuses seemed better than just brutally attacking because Bush wanted the fucking oil. You know, more "civilized."



Once he tricked enough people to get them to support him, THEN he sent in the military. He basically did what the caveman used to do. He saw something the other caveman had, he wanted it and didn't want to share or offer a fair trade for it, so he walked right up and clubbed Saddam. Bush is a fucking stupid, greedy, evil little caveman.



So, in a nutshell: that dark, evil side of human nature hasn't evolved in millennia. But as civilization spreads, stealing and beating need to take more "civilized" forms in order to be acceptable so that the evildoer can avoid negative consequences. Folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote,

Now as through this world I ramble
I see lots of funny men
Some will rob you with a Six gun
And some with a fountain pen.



So, if I'm a greedy evil little snake, I won't go far in today's "civilized" world by using caveman aggression to steal from my fellow citizens. So I need to use more modern and "civilized" tactics to steal from others so I can achieve my two goals: 1) get more than my fair share of society's resources and 2) fulfill my sick psychological need to view most other people at a lower status than me.



What are these more civilized tactics? Since this is a capitalistic culture, I need to have people work for me so I can exploit their labor. I have them, through THEIR hard work, generate $100 of income for me. But in return, I'll repay their work for me with only the minimum wage--and keep the rest. I also engage in clear class warfare against them. I keep them beat down and submissive by subjugating them to unpleasant things I will never have to endure: difficult working conditions, poor pay so they're forced to work overtime and get exhausted, threats to lay them off, etc. I subject them to humiliations that I also never have to endure: workplace surveillance, drug tests, and performance reviews (nobody ever reviews my performance). Heck, let's even implant them with some RFID chips so they know I'm REALLY monitoring them. And if they try to improve their lot by, say, trying to form a union, I bring in professional union busters to break their spirits, if not also their legs. I need to use my corporation to absolve me of any personal liability. I need to pay politicians and lobbyists to write laws that allow me to steal legally. And if I step past that line and get caught, I need to use lawyers and bribes to avoid negative consequences from my actions. Then I'm free to rob from others by engaging in various forms of white collar crime, like fraud, price fixing, creating monopolies or other ways to reduce competition, bribery, declaring bankruptcy when I really don't need to, embezzlement, money laundering, tax evasion, insider trading, investment schemes, government kickbacks.



You know: treachery instead of brute force. Like the super-rich and powerful do in today's "civilized" society.



What's sad is these tactics are more insidious and hard to stop. If we saw Bush on TV engaging in a killing spree at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and watched him murder 3000 people, we would all be against him. He could be easily stopped and nearly 100% of Americans would want him convicted and imprisoned. He would be rendered completely powerless (like Saddam is now).



However, if Bush and his cronies planned September 11th in hiding, executed it covertly and then had the FBI (and who knows who else?) cover it up and 3000 people died as a result--it's much harder to point to Bush, accuse him of mass murder and get the American people to believe it and stop supporting him. And when we do try to convince others, WE sound crazy!



Similarly, let's pretend Bush himself went to an Iraqi oil production facility with a bunch of weapons (like a Schwarzenegger flick). He kills a few hundred American and Iraqi soldiers, and then turned his weapons on innocent Iraqi men, women and children. Then, stepping over all the bloody bodies, plants a flag (not the U.S. flag, but one that says "Bush crime family") at the oil facility, grins at the CNN cameras and proudly says in his phony macho cowboy drawl, "All mine!"



All Americans (except some sickos) would be horrified. He would lose all support and no one would let him keep the oil field. But...,



If instead he and his family spend their lives doing questionable deals with slimy Saudi oil sheiks and American oil company CEOs (who fund the Bush crime family's personal and political lives), use Karl Rove to whip up some lies designed to manipulate the dumbest 51% of Americans into an emotional frenzy filled with phony patriotism and divide and conquer tactics (Rove put anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballots of eleven key swing states during the 2004 election just to get the Moral Majority crazies to the polls) to get that dumb 51% to hate gays, immigrants, single mothers, welfare recipients and even liberals." Then have Rove, Condi, Colin, Rummie, etc. create silly lies to go to war then--HEY! YOU'VE REALLY GOT SOMETHING THERE!



If you do all that--you can get away with murder! And he has! God bless America!