Kingdoms

There once were two adjacent kingdoms, a Blue Kingdom and a Red Kingdom.

The Blue Kingdom had a great diversity of people, with rich people and poor people. The Red Kingdom lacked such diversity, and consisted of mainly rich people.

The rich people in the Blue Kingdom had lots of friends in the Red Kingdom, and decided they would like to become a part of the Red Kingdom.

They could abandon the problems of the Blue Kingdom that they helped create. They could be around people more like themselves. Most of all, they could forget about the poor people in the Blue Kingdom.

For years, decades, they had tried to forget about the poor people.

“If we don’t see them, we won’t feel guilty about not helping them,” they said.

Years ago walls of separation had divided the rich people from the poor people, but the walls had been removed. The rich people missed the wall.

“If we become part of the Red Kingdom, it will be sort of like having the wall again,” they said.

The poor people in the Blue Kingdom heard of the plans of the rich people, but they just laughed.

“The rich people will never leave their homes that overlook us,” they said as they looked up at the mansions on the mountain.

“That is good, because their taxes are helping to build our schools and pave our roads,” they said.

But the rich people in the Blue Kingdom heard this.

“Why should we care about schools and roads for the poor people? We can concentrate on better schools and roads in the Red Kingdom, and our lives will be better,” they said.

But the rich people did not have to leave their mountaintop homes to join the Red Kingdom.

Instead they just voted to take their homes and land with them. They could stay in their homes and continue to look down on the poor people.

“This is almost like having the wall again,” they said.

That made the rich people happy.

Not really, but they thought it did.