Men would talk, as men do, about love and money and power and politics and, acting learned, they would try to outdo one another with their knowledge and their understanding of the political realities and the absurd policies, that bred hate and poverty and genocides. They would ask themselves and one another questions that were often impossible to understand and even harder to answer. Did bad politics breed poverty or did poverty breed bad politics? Opinions were many and varied. Friends argued and sometimes came to blows over their views.