Gottlieb: Yes. It's about humanity and justice; about how common working Americans—or any commoner people—can establish a society friendlier to working people than the pseudo-democratic societies that have been foisted upon them.

I've often wondered why, on the sole planet in our galaxy capable of producing and sustaining life to so many different species, it is the human species—the life form with the most developed intellect of all—that is the most barbaric and the cruelest of all.

Why, in the 21st century are billions of good, trusting people still being allowed to live a life of deprivation when western cultures have conclusively proved humanity can efficiently produce the essentials of survival for all of humanity?

Why, in the United States of America where, presumably, the masses of common people have the power to influence government actions, does poverty, and ignorance still thrive?

This blog addresses questions such as this. It's a primitive attempt to explain my long search for solutions to the troublesome and continuing problems of humanity, and the solutions, which I believe are based upon historical truths and common sense.

Gottlieb: I believe we're all philosophers, to one degree or another. I believe each of us is constantly looking for answers to the questions and solutions to the problems life places before us. It's part of what being human is all about.

As for my interest in answers to questions and solutions to problems, I began my conscious search for both at the end of the sixties. The Vietnam War was still raging and I suddenly realized my two sons were no more than a half dozen years away from being eligible for the draft. It was a sobering thought, and I began to wonder why, in a democracy, a minority of Americans in Washington D.C. had the power to send other Americans off to die in a war that few Americans understood, or wanted.

So I began looking for answers and, today, almost forty years later, I believe I understand life a bit better.

Gottlieb: I've learned a lot, and I suppose you might say the blog is my overview of reality in the year 2000. If told the truths, any thinking person should come to the same conclusions. If given the true facts, it should not be difficult for anyone to determine the cause of mass deprivation and suffering.

A big part of the problem is I wasn't made aware of these truths while in high school, when I should have been honestly informed. Nor do I believe other public school students were given these truths although most young people of high school age are mature enough to understand them.

History books of the past—those written before 1945—are of documented truths, and many thinking people of every era have arrived at the very same conclusions as I now have.

Until this past century the obvious has always been difficult to conceal from common Americans. But now, when so few wealthy and powerful groups have grasped control to the many sources of information available to the American masses, and so many "revisionist" versions of old books have been published, the obvious truth isn't so obvious.

Along the way to understanding, I also developed my own unique theory of humanity that explains what people are, as opposed to what we'd like to believe we are, which offers an answer to the eternal question, "What is the purpose of life?"

Gottlieb: Perhaps! It is complicated, but I'll try to give a simple answer.

Even a superficial look into history books reveals a very interesting truth. People cause people problems, not supernatural gods, not new technologies, and not the capriciousness of nature. The unnecessary poverty, starvation, and illiteracy suffered, by the multitudes of common people over the ages is because some people, somewhere, cause these conditions to exist—or allow them to exist.

It's the privileged elite of Earth who deliberately cause poverty with their excessive collecting of wealth and cause ignorance with their control of mass media and public education systems.

The history books tell us all Earth societies of the past, from the ancient kingdoms of Assyria, Babylonia, Chaldea, and Egypt, to the empires of Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome have been divided into the few who aggressively and forcefully took what they wanted and the masses who remained fearful and passive.

History books tell us the social illnesses of all of those past societies were generated by the self-serving greed and arrogance of rich, powerful citizens who were never satisfied with what they had, but always sought additional wealth and control over the poor, helpless inhabitants of the realm, and always ruthlessly deprived them of sustenance, and often life itself.

Consequently, we have the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the privileged and the common. For all of those centuries the rich and the powerful have bullied and abused the common masses in the most inhumane ways.

Unfortunately, for fear of competition and loss of privilege they, also, deprived commoners of existing knowledge. It is my belief this deficiency of one generation not teaching the next generation all the new knowledge learned in its lifetime is the reason humanity still functions on the lowest levels of greed, lust, arrogance, uncaring and other primitive emotions, rather than on the high, mature levels at which humans were born to function. It's why humans consistently create conflict and wars rather than a peaceful coexistence.

Gottlieb: You're suffering from too much exposure to the fairy tale illusions of the American media. There have been more deadly, brutal wars on planet Earth since the end of WWII than during the forty years preceding it.

Gottlieb: The basic truth of human existence on planet Earth is that primitive bullies will always bully. The Living Webster Dictionary says a bully is "a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing fellow, more distinguished for insolence than for courage; one who bullys or browbeats."

Today, we consider anyone picking on a smaller, less able, opponent a bully. But we recognize, also, there are people who unite and organize their strengths so that their group may exert greater force to defeat or intimidate smaller or less able groups. It's how there originally came to be kingdoms and empires, kings and emperors, aristocrats and peasants, rich and poor.

Since the death of the feudal system and the advent of "money," and the necessity of common serfs to sell their labor in exchange for money, rather than for the right to work the land as their parents and grandparents had done, people with money, and the people who control a nation's money supply, have proven to be the bullies of all societies. Today, in the 21st century, it is still rich, privileged people who control the power of all Earth governments. It is still the rich and privileged citizens of a nation who cause its common citizens to suffer unnecessary deprivation and misery.

Gottlieb: Bingo!

Let's get realistic, shall we? The American war for independence more than 200 years ago wasn't fought—as the history books imply—to free ourselves from a cruel, oppressive king, which is the usual reason for a "people's" revolution. The American Revolution was initiated by privileged Americans who were tired of sharing the wealth of the North American continent with the British king and his associates, and by men who didn't want to share the costs for fighting the French and the Indians. These same privileged Americans were responsible for the writing of the Constitution of the United States. As far as we know, the records verify that commonor Americans were absent at the meeting in Philadelphia. Actually, few even knew the meeting was being held.

Can any thinking person really believe that those men who sat behind closed doors—and withheld James Madison's records of the meeting from public view for more than forty years—wanted to share their wealth and wealth-making opportunities with the common farmers, craftsmen, and laborers of the colonies any more than they did with the King of England? If so, it would be the very first time in recorded history.

Gottlieb: Because I've read many original and "non-sterilized" histories and biographies, and I know what the records really say. Besides, it's been many years since I've believed in fairy tales.

I'm not saying the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were evil men. They certainly were no more evil than any one who looks after his, or her, own self-interest. But, you see, a true working democracy would have forced those men to share their wealth-making opportunities with common American citizens, for a democracy follows the wishes and needs of the majority, not the minority. In the late 18th century, however, the privileged of the United States, as everywhere else on the planet, were in the minority.

As they are today, still.

So rather than create a true democracy, those privileged men used their greater command of words to produce a document that seemed to provide a democratic form of governance, but really entrenched the privileged American class more deeply in control of the American political system. Most modern history books don't reveal this truth, but a knowledge of true history and a little common sense does.

Why is it that, today, more than 200 years after the birth of U.S. "democracy," the American society is still hostile to common working families? Why, in the 21st century, are common workers still fighting for a fair return for a day's labor? Why has it become more urgent for the women of common working families to work, today, than it was at the beginning of the last century? Why do you think the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer? Coincidence?

Gottlieb: From the ratification of the constitution to the market crash of 1929, wealthy, privileged Americans abused their economic and political advantages by denying common working Americans the right to unite and to form labor unions—the right to try bettering their lives.

By law, economic intimidation, and brute force, rich citizens of the United States fought off the demands of working Americans for a fair wage, for better working conditions, for a shorter work week. History books tell us these truths.

They also tell us that as early as the ending of the 19th century, the oppressive "capitalist" system was in deep trouble, for despite the increased efficiency of the factory and its production line methods, the masses of American citizens couldn't afford to buy the products rolling off the assembly lines, as they weren't being paid much more than starvation wages.

The market crash of 1929 brought the conflict to a head. In 1932, Americans threw out the Republican president and put in Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal Administration. Even before Roosevelt had won the presidency, almost all of the leading economists of the country had begun to publicly acknowledge it was time to regulate the capitalist system, and that only government was capable of doing the regulating.

The massive amounts of public money poured into the economy during the last half of the 1930s by the New Deal and its liberal, socialistic policies eased the devastating consequences of an unregulated and inequitable capitalist system, but didn't eliminate them. It was World War II that saved the capitalist system in the United States. It was World War II that gave the American elite the time needed to form postwar strategies to save their selfish economic system.

The euphoric aftermath of a victorious war, along with an economy bloated by the infusion of massive savings, which working Americans couldn't spend during the war—as there were few products to spend it on—drove all thoughts of regulating capitalism from the public mind. Nothing had changed, however, unregulated capitalism still dominated the nation. Rich Americans were still rich, but with an increased political power, for during the war years corporate executives had assumed positions in government to help allocate materials and set production schedules, and professional politicians had grown accustomed to their presence.

Gottlieb: More illusions! Salaries and wages may have risen, but so have prices and taxes—neither employers nor politicians have sacrificed a thing. The reality is that without the proliferation of credit cards, American workers would realize how poor and underpaid they really are. If the current generations of American workers had learned their American history, they would recognize that easy credit to the working class is nothing more than an extension of the old company-store strategy to keep workers fed, constantly in debt—and removed from thoughts of revolution.

The reality is that common American workers, today, still end up with proportionately little after paying for the necessities of life and all the useless garbage they're programmed to want.

Why do you think there are so many mothers in the work force? Or such a great need for child-care centers? All that has changed, today, is that American industry has made an end run around the American labor movement by shifting factories overseas where it can get the near slave-like labor American workers refuse to provide, and morning papers are no longer filled with reports of angry, dissatisfied American workers and disruptive labor strikes. Little else has changed.

Let's dig for a few more historical truths.

From the exploration and development of the North American continent to the beginning of World War II, the American rich and powerful—who were the English rich and powerful in the beginning—have been no different than any rich and powerful people of past Earth societies. They have been arrogant, selfish, cruel, ruthless, and uncaring of the health or welfare of common, working people, whether farmer, craftsman, or laborer. This is an undeniable truth of history.

Traditionally, wealth in the United States has been restricted to private wealth, which until the end of World War II was restricted to a small, elite group of American families; the privileged elite. Their wealth was normally channeled through personally owned companies or "corporations."

At the end of the 19th century, however, lawyers created the "trust" and informed their many wealthy American clients that by pooling some of their resources and legally joining forces they could wield a greater economic force not only in the marketplace, and in their battles against working Americans, but they could also exert more influence within state and federal legislatures.

Public pressure eventually forced politicians to pass "antitrust" laws. These, however, were merely laws to pacify the public: they accomplished little, as records show corporations steadily grew in size during the first half of the 20th century.

But we have all heard the corporate swan song that the function of a corporate executive is to guarantee profit for corporate shareholders and welfare of the corporation, not the welfare of the people and, certainly, not of the republic.

It should be no surprise, therefore, to see the laws passed by the New Deal to protect working families from the ruthless oppression of American wealth slowly , or eliminated, by the forces of greed."

Why should common working Americans be surprised when Republican politicians pass laws giving large tax breaks to rich Americans, while removing Roosevelt's economic "safety net" from millions of working families? Why should they expect anything else?

Despite what so many of the younger American generations believe, traditionally, the Republican party, first and foremost, has been the political representative of very rich Americans. Always! Can a leopard change its spots? So, why should anyone believe Republicans have changed their ways now that the rich and their giant conglomerates have a firm grip on the American political process?

Gottlieb: It's true, alright! However, remember this is only one person's overview of the economic and political situation of our republic today as gleaned from the history books—plus a lot of thought and a little common sense. The Establishment's journalist whores will argue against it with their marvelous abilities to twist words, but they can twist only words, not historical truth, at least, not the truths of those old, un-revised books.

Which now brings us back to a question asked at the beginning of this interview. "Why does it seem as if the fate of so many billions of people is to suffer a lifetime of misery?"

The logical answer is that in hierarchical societies ruled by organized, military forces— individuals and smaller organized, or disorganized, groups are subordinated, helpless, and will endure whatever the elites of such a society want them to endure. This is the way of Earth people.

The question to be asked—but never is—in pseudo-democratic societies such as the U.S., presumably, governed by laws and, presumably, controlled by the majority of common citizens who, presumably, hold the political power to make any laws they want, why are the privileged elite still in control? Why aren't the masses of common workers wielding their power?

The simple answer is, because the Constitution of the United States denies common Americans direct participation in government, and because commoners allow their political interests and votes to be split into many different "factions." Working Americans support different political parties, and are focused upon their individual causes: universal peace, civil rights, women's rights, environmental rights, healthcare rights a right to this and a right to that. Their political power is diffused—and useless. Members of the American wealthy, however, have always been unified in purpose, regardless of their political party's name: Federalist, Whig, or Republican. The rich have always voted for policies to enrich themelves, and strategies to keep the common masses divided.

The only legal, logical, and peaceful way for working Americans to take control of their society and to enjoy better lives, is to fuse together as the "commoner party" " or the "worker's party" or some such easily and clearly identified banner—and win the election for the White House.