On one level life has always been about the powerful and the weak. The powerful do what they want. The weak do what they're told. The rules of human society are made and the odds of personal success are stacked so that each group has no choice but to become more of what they are, powerful or weak, rich or poor, rulers or ruled. Ancient Egypt or Western New York, no different.
Life is simple.
Things bumble along. But once in a while that relationship gets extreme. Not content to bumble along in wealth and power, at too many tragic points in history the strong have moved beyond merely dominating the weak and become determined to dehumanize them, to strip them of their identity, language, culture and destiny. To destroy them. The Khmer Rouge, the Nazis, the United States and the Native Americans, African slavery.