Once upon a time

I have been watching a show on Netflix about the Russian Tsars from Peter the Great on and it occurs to me that they often define the once upon a time we see in fairy tales.

Bigger than life. Homes that are unrivaled in excess details.

Seemingly unparalleled love stories with religious drama, political drama, peasant uprisings, wars at sea and on land. Fighting Napoleon - - you name it they had it.

And most of them were aware that if they wanted to maintain the once upon a time lifestyle of the rich and famous it required serfs.

For every Snow White who returned to a castle, hundreds of people had to live a life of endless labor and squalor. Dwarfs were not singing down in the mines and they did not come home squeaky clean. Instead they more than likely came home with black lung. Sleeping for a hundred years probably sounded like heaven to parents who were burying most of their children before their fifth birthday and watching the others grow bent by rickets, TB and other diseases of the faulty lifestyle imposed by poverty. Dropping them off in the woods to fend for themselves might have been their best bet.

It is easy for people who have everything, to take the rest of the world for granted. Andrew Carnegie once said, "The man who dies rich dies disgraced." He believed the wealthy had a debt to society. There are still people who feel this way: Jimmy Carter, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and some others, but that is not the trend, nor the way of most of America's wealthy. They feel entitled even if they just inherited that money and they will do whatever it takes to keep it, all of it, and more if they can get it.

As the gulf between the rich and the rest of us widens, people become frustrated and angry.They look for the whys and wherefores they can understand and that is when the fairy tale turns ugly. Instead of Bolsheviks we have White Nationalists and KKK and other groups setting out to try and change things their way. Hate becomes a religion.

There really is no happily ever after in a fairy tale. It is only a tale of delayed repercussions.