They Almost Got Away With It

Light reflecting off the curvature of the Gulf led Golem to see some things he might otherwise not have seen had he been in an enclosed structure such as a room. It was this new way of living — outside of walls, that gave Golem room for a view. As he looked at the sea, it was reflected to him that he was on a voyage, while lying in a hammock tied to two eves with air above, below, and all about him. The creaking noise that the ropes made as they chaffed against the grain, gave rise in him of the sensation that he was on a ship traversing a sea of infinity. Back and forth he rocked, and the hammock creaked out an image of a thousand black men shackled in chains on a great ship crossing the Atlantic, carrying men as product like cattle for meat—transporting a cross section of DNA that would become twenty million souls fighting for their rights, as his forefathers had done against England—the continuation of a vicious, ongoing, ingrown circumstance of men against men, one group preying on the other, justifying their actions in the thought that it had once been done against them.
Then there was the idea that he had seen in a novel — Native Son — that perhaps this struggle for individual actualization was a struggle that many made, regardless of race, creed, or color, against those who held the reins, made the decisions, and in general schemed against the human race, guided by the sole objective of getting gold and riches, without regard for the shackles they place on the arms and legs of society as a whole. Enron.
For a long time they had gotten away with it through the guise of capitalism and the preservation of wealth, but technology and education was making the masses smarter and less willing to part with a quarter of their wealth in the form of a myriad variety of taxes.