Photo taken of the cathedral foundation  in Amalfi, Italy. 

Across the globe, in ancient times, the practice was to sacrifice a life when raising a structure. This sacrifice to the gods was often a human slave in Graeco-Roman times, and the practice was continued in Europe up til the 18th century. Bridges and churches,  in particular, have human skeletons embedded in the foundations, and the nursery rhyme “London Bridge is falling down” contains references to the custom. Even the Brooklyn Bridge is rumored to have workmen purposefully buried in the structure to ensure the stability of the bridge. 

Children, slaves, beggars and lowly workmen were consistently chosen for the sacrifice, grabbed and shoved into a hole in the earth before being covered in rubble or stone. The beneficiaries of the luck these deaths bought were the rich men who built the bridges and the Catholic clergy who commissioned the churches. Apparently, we are seeing a revival of the ritual sacrifice of the poor to buoy the fortunes of the wealthy. 

Luxury Super Yacht, Christine from Charterworld.com 

The maxim, “A rising tide lifts all boats,” has been used most often by supply-siders to defend tax cuts for the wealthy. We see now that they are more intent on riding that tide far, far away from the source of their original success and they intend to thank the boatbuilder by taking away his pension, cutting his salary and his healthcare, closing his childrens’ schools, and freely poisoning his food, air and water. Our corporate leaders, mouthing patriotic slogans,  would rather see the United States become a third world nation rather than to pay a little more in taxes. Or to pay their workers a living wage. 

The grand staircase on Christine. Wonder if there are poor people locked in steerage below.  

Countless lives are being sacrificed in real time to cushion the wealthy from having to forgo that third or fourth car, that extra maid, that week in a Caribbean resort.  Or to buy another East Asian sweatshop to make goods for the Chinese or Indian middle class. They just don’t want to give up their disposable income for the dirty American people, those who have lost their middle class security, those who don’t have jobs or disposable income. Those who don’t matter. Those whose lives are meaningless to them, except to bury under their fortunes.  

With the Republicans as their lapdogs, and the Tea party as their dupes, the wealthy have grown increasingly bold in putting the rest of the population under their heel. Attacks on the unions, on public workers, on women and children’s programs, on public broadcasting, all these new initiatives are designed to suppress spending for any other purpose than for no-bid contracts for energy polluters, weapons manufacturers, pharmaceutical makers and corporate agriculture, just to name a few.  We can see the Koch brothers behind many of the emboldened legislators, but they are not the only super-rich purchasers of government toadies. 

David Koch's mansion in the Hamptons. Wonder who was buried in his foundation. 

Wisconsin is just the first place where the intended sacrificial bodies were to be buried, but the victims aren’t standing for it. Indiana is next and we should expect to have to stand out in the cold in all our states, yell and scream and show these handful of fat old men that we will not lie in the hole they’ve dug for us. Remember that we outnumber them. When the Egyptian people are buying us pizzas to help us keep our resolve, but our own legislators are trying to take the food from our children’s mouths, it’s pretty clear who our allies are. And it isn’t our corporate leaders. They are too busy uncorking champagne on their yachts.