This Stuck With Me...

"I remember once hearing a speech about what it meant to be an officer of the CIA and the man who gave this speech talked about the struggle to control civilization and how we're always fighting the same fight. He used the Dark Ages as an example. And he talked about how on the one side you had the pragmatic King who was greedy and power hungry and basically took advantage of people whenever he could. On the other side you had the idealistic Church forcing everyone to follow the same rules, believe the same things, all that. Neither the King nor the Church was ever completely right or wrong. Both sides ended up doing terrible things to get what they wanted, really terrible things. But, the point of the story was this: That this struggle from the Dark Ages had been going on forever. That the Church and the King might take on different forms and philosophies, but that they would always fight each other, pragmatists and idealists. And that most times you're better off standing on the sidelines and letting them duke it out. But every once in a while one side or the other decides that it might be better to just blow up the whole world just to get its own way and when that happens you can't stand on the sidelines anymore. You have to pick a team." ~Brenda Lee Johnson