I have been reading Sammy “The Bull” Gravano’s book, Underboss.
Gravano was just that – underboss – second-in-command of the Gambino “family” of Cosa Nostra, also known as the mafia; also known as organized crime.
As distinct from legalized crime.
He worked for John Gotti, the “Dapper Don,” who was boss of the Gambino family back in New York, back in the ’80s. Gravano ended up turning on his boss – who (according to Sammy) had turned on him, first. Both ended up in prison.
But that’s not the real story of the book.
The real story is the parallelism of syndicates. Of organized vs. legalized crime. Sammy was a “made member” of organized crime. He had to earn the approbation of already-made members, in order to be “made” – as by showing he could get the job done. And he did, which he describes at length in the book.
You get into legalized crime by getting elected – or appointed. 
This is the source of the delusion that legalized crime isn’t the same thing as organized crime. Which is how – and why – it becomes a much worse thing. A demented and for that reason a much-more-dangerous thing. A politician or bureaucrat imagines himself to be a “public servant,” which is an interesting inversion given that servants are servile. They can be commanded – and are expected to obey – while “public servants” do the commanding and when not obeyed, have the legal power to punish those they “serve.”
These “public servants” also believe they “serve” by right – and that it is our obligation to obey (and hand over however much of our money they say). That it is . . . criminal to disobey them.
Sammy “The Bull” knew he was a criminal and – to his credit – never pretended to be otherwise. He killed people – a terrible thing – but never had the gall to pretend he hadn’t done the thing. And he had the guts to do the things he did himself – as opposed to pretending he didn’t because he had someone else do them.
Whatever Sammy’s sins, he was what they call inside organized crime a “stand up guy” for that reason.
Legalized crime – i.e., the government – likes to think of itself as something other than criminal. 
That it does something else when it “taxes” people. That it isn’t robbing people. No honest criminal would ever think such a thing – which is arguably an even worse thing than simply taking what’s not yours but at least being honest with yourself (and your victims) about it. Just as rape is made something much more loathsome when the rapist insists he was merely “making love” to his victim.
Legalized crime tells itself – and you – that it is providing “services,” even when they aren’t asked for. It makes you an offer you can’t legally refuse – while pretending you have a choice because it claims you are “represented” by people you never asked to “represent” you, chosen by other people who represent everything antithetical to you.
Organized crime is more honest in another way, too, in that much of the money it earns it didn’t take. Which it therefore earns legitimately – or rather, morally – via the free exchange of goods and services that people do want and are willing to pay for, unlike “the schools,” for instance. The most infamous contra example of this being what legalized crime styled “Prohibition” – by which it meant the outlawing of the free exchange of money for alcohol.
Legalized crime used violence to enforce its decree – against organized crime, which merely provided that which people wanted and were very willing to pay for.
It still uses violence to enforce similar decrees – as in the case of the “lockdowns” of small businesses, for the benefit of big businesses – which were allowed to remain open and thus got all the business denied the small ones.
Sammy might have asked for a “piece” of the business, but he never would have insisted he was doing it to “stop the spread.”
But perhaps the greatest single example of the unhinged mental state of legalized crime was the prosecution of one of organized crime’s most famous figures, Al Capone – on “charges” of . . . “income tax evasion.” The insolence hypocrisy of this takes the breath away. Capone was put in prison for having “evaded” the robbery that is styled by legalized crime the “income tax.” As if by etymological hocus-pocus the taking-by-force of money becomes something that isn’t the taking-by-force of money. And that it is a “crime” to not hand over what the strong-armed robber says is “owed.” 
Only legalized crime is capable of such dissonance and that is what makes it so much more dangerous. C.S. Lewis explained the nature of this danger when he wrote:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Italics added to emphasize the points.
Sammy and other “wise guys” knew exactly who they were – and exactly what they were doing. They did it without compunction – but also without the unction. It was just business, nothing personal.
And a lot more honest, fundamentally, than what legalized crime does without the slightest compunction and endless unction.
. . .
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Harry Browne used to quip: “The only difference between the government and the mafia are the flags they fly in front of their offices”.
Irwin Schiff wrote the book “The Federal Mafia” and was thrown into to prison for life.
Whenever I am confused by some government policy, I simply ask myself, “What would the mafia do in this case” and I am not longer confused.
Best read…, “Ye Shall Know the Truth” by Michael Collins Piper, the truth from his research and understanding about who runs the planet underground surface political structure we think is Politics as usual… The real mafia and the guardians of the Illuminati’s brest plate of economic controls and who they buy to make it look like our votes mean something… LOL 😆, Finding Mr. Goodbar and the who’s who of false justice by the numbers!
The legalized crime of civil asset forfeiture alone rakes in a few billion dollars every year which is more than what organized crime bosses pull in.
In addition to her latest book, Whitney Webb has some quite interesting articles revealing how the CIA, FBI, et al. eventually began recruiting members of organized crime until the two became one entity. Her articles can be found on Mint Press or Unlimited Hangout.
Don’t forget the ring that binds them all: the government monopoly on the production of things used as money.
The biden crime family and syndicate has made legalized crime legal. If you’re a die hard leftist, you are in Heaven.
Obama said “You didn’t build that” and they cheered. Claiming that only through the power of government could anyone start a small business. Talk about hubris! But more to the point, what good did the government thugs do when the cities were burned? What good did the government do when they left small business to rot and allowed big box stores to stay open? How about removing employees from the workforce with stimmy checks, then making them too expensive with generous unemployment payouts, insane workplace “sterilization” requirements, and closing down the K-12 daycare?
When discussing a recession, a common saying is “When the United States gets a cold, the third world gets the flu.” Meaning the downturn will impact weaker economies more than strong. What they seem to miss is that the US economy is hardly monolithic, despite efforts to make everything Walmart and Taco Bell.* A small business is not going to have the resources to handle a downturn as easily as a big publicly traded company, if only because the investment banks aren’t going to let their stock portfolio tank. Of course I’m preaching to the chior here but how many of these very large businesses wouldn’t stand a chance if they had to chase investment capital and loans the same way small business do? ESG? Inclusion in the workforce? That stuff would be gone in a day, along with half the ad budget.
*BTW anyone else notice that the true bad guy in Demolition Man bears a strong resemblance to Klaus Schwab?
Plus, mobsters make interesting cinematic characters: they can often be morally grey or simply victims of their upbringing leaving them trapped in lives of crime
But nobody wants to see a movie about an ATF agent shooting dogs from outside a fence and then claiming their life was threatened. You can’t spin them as misunderstood or morally grey people just trying to survive.
Well, unless it culminates in somebody ventilating them in a heroic last stand or something.
I agree with this, Zach – about mobsters. I think it’s why The Sopranos was such a popular series. Tony had his good qualities. Government workers have none.
Dictatorship In Disguise: Authoritarian Monsters Wreak Havoc On Our Freedoms
We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.
Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: what we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.
Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, disease, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
We have let the government’s evil-doing and abuses go on for too long.
the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.
All the trappings of the police state are now in plain sight.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dictatorship-disguise-authoritarian-monsters-wreak-havoc-our-freedoms
2A importance…..
Australian Gun Law Update;
Here’s a thought to warm some of your hearts….
From: Ed Chenel, A police officer in Australia
Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the real
figures from Down Under. It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own
government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.
The first year results are now in:
Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent,
Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent;
Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!
In the state of Victoria…..alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent.(Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!)
While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady
decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed. There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, while the resident is at home.
Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in ‘successfully ridding Australian society of guns….’
You won’t see this on the American evening news or hear your governor or members of the State Assembly disseminating this information.
The Australian experience speaks for itself. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.
Take note Americans, before it’s too late!
Hollywood makes the movies and has convinced every one the Italians are the mafia. But the real mafia that employs Italians as the muscle is the Khazar mafia, which runs Ukraine and Israel. They commit crimes and blame the victims by inverting reality, like in this video, Albert Bourla (CEO Pfzer) calls the vaccine conspiracy theorists criminals and profiteers, when in fact that is what he is:
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla: People profiting from vaccine conspiracy theories are criminal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NseBs58KxrI
Bourla also did not get vaccinated, then lies as to why. (He did not get vaccinated because he knew the vaxx could kill and harm you.)
Then he gets the Israeli Genesis prize, when his efforts are anti-Genesis and harm creation;
——————-
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/culture/1642600578-pfizer-ceo-albert-bourla-receives-2022-genesis-prize
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla receives Israel’s Genesis Prize for 2022
Bourla is the ninth Genesis Prize Laureate, last year’s winner being director and producer Steven Spielberg
The Genesis Foundation announced Wednesday that Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, is the winner of its annual prize for 2022.
Dubbed the “Jewish Nobel,” the award honors “extraordinary individuals for their outstanding professional achievement, contribution to humanity, and commitment to Jewish values” with a prize of $1m.
——————
(Note last year Speilberg got the prize, he makes Holocaust movies and is a known personality in the Hollyweird pedophile cult)
https://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Sinister-Pedophilia-Spielberg-Pedophiles/dp/1980706352
good to see you here Jack. did you ever get a new website?
you will get nowhere with braindead boomers telling the truth about jews. they love jews and also blacks and call themselves conservative but conserving the White race they have no interest in
The Mafia actually had more decency and honor than the government. The Mafia only killed you if you cost them money, not for ideological reasons. The Mafia would shoot YOU in the head if you const them money, but they would NEVER shoot your unarmed wife in the head as she was holding a baby, the way the government shot Randy Weaver’s wife. The Mafia would never barbecue children to death, the way the government did at Waco, Dresden, and Nagasaki.
Nor would the Mafia allow their neighborhood to be flooded with drug addicts, homeless, and illegal aliens, and Somalians the way the government does.
When it comes right down to it, the Mafia was much more reasonable and far less violent than the government is.
Interesting article Eric,
I get the feeling the country would’ve been much better off if we never had a ‘War on organized crime.’ All wars are banker wars and that one was no different. Living in Vegas from the late 80s until 2012 I saw the change. It was a great place to live, until about 94-95, at which point the ‘Mob’ had been pretty much neutered, and rendered irrelevant.
Backed by the bankers and religious mafia known as LDS, the legalized criminals made Vegas into a shit hole not much different than those on the east and west coasts. The voting machines sealed the deal. Working on Aaron Russos gubernatorial campaign was the first time I witnessed a stolen election. Not much has changed, we muppets continue to love the drama of one epic WWE vs WWF smackdown after another.
The Godfather movies were great, so many truisms in those. Read the book in high school, I thought the movie was much better probably because the book was a little long and arduous for my pea brain. For anyone interested paramount made a great mini-series called The Offer. Its about how the Godfather almost didn’t get made. Real good story on how MP and FFC brought the book to life on the screen.
Great article Eric, enjoyed it.
Not to extol any virtues of either system of theft-private criminals are sick psychopaths, as are their cousins in government–both are dastardly. The unspoken contract that originally enabled government as the pre-eminent criminal organization is this; let us milk you on a more or less regular schedule, and we wont take it all and we wont break your legs.
That system worked for a while, when government was much more limited in scope. Heck, if they collected taxes for a few basic infrastructure needs, and protected me and my property from violence, and provided for the common defense, and were strictly limited to that, I probably would pay without squealing too much.
There will always be someone trying to steal, and a gang of thieves will always be around to attract scoundrels. Today’s gang of thieves, though, whew! At least when it was a monarch doing the stealing, they actually cared about leaving enough capital for their descendants, but these democracy lovers, wow, there is no end to their appetites.
The hubris of power, not sure which I would prefer to deal with, the mob or the DC Gang, but one thing is certain: at some point they believe their own bullshit and forget that this, too, shall pass.
“public servants” do the commanding and when not obeyed, have the legal power to punish those they “serve.”
Correction, “have the legal power to kill those they “serve”. Just resist and see. Especially if you at first successfully resist. Even for a parking ticket.
One need simply look at the state’s protection racket versus the Mafia’s protection racket to notice a radical difference. The Mafia will not take enough to put you out of business. They are criminal, but they aren’t stupid. The state will not hesitate to do so. They are likewise criminal too, but they are insane.
“The Mafia will not take enough to put you out of business.”
Yes, they will. Protection rackets don’t deliver nearly as much profit as a bust-out produces. The bust out is accomplished by terrorizing a business owner into making a made guy a partner in the business. The new partner then exhausts the credit line of the business by ordering huge quantities of resellable goods on credit, and then taking the goods to sell outside the business premises.
The business then goes bust and is shut down with all of the profits taken by the wise guy partner. Any virtue assigned to the wise guys is only relative when compared to political crooks. Both are parasites. One thing that is interesting is that organized crime only succeeds when working in collusion with political criminals. Protection rackets only work long term in a locality which disarms citizens with gun control laws. In locales where the citizens are armed, organized criminals have to feed mainly on other criminals.
You are correct Ed. That’s why the CCP makes sure to “invest” in businesses and require a party member or two to be on the senior leadership teams. In the US it’s a little more subtle, where congressmen are permitted to join company boards, and of course there’s the post-term job offers too. I think that’s one of the main reasons why nearly every US run business bends over to appease the military and other government goons, it’s easy money if you have the right connections. And good luck competing if you don’t play that game.
Now that we’re gaining an army of IRS auditors look for it to get even worse. Having a congressman on your board of directors (or their kin in the c-suite) can make a lot of “It would be a shame if…” problems disappear. Not that anyone would ever let that happen in “our” democratic meritocracy…
I attempted to have a conversation online with a self-described, “pro-smaller government” Conservative in order to understand that mindset. It seems, “pro-smaller mafia” fits better.
For example, it seems rather than having The Fed price-fix home values, a pro-smaller mafia Conservative would advocate local zoning boards be the ones with that power.
And, rather than having FedGov dole out favors to corporations to move overseas at the expense of taxpayers, the pro-smaller mafia Conservative would advocate local goobermint do the same on a local basis.
Trying to have a dialog about these ideas is eerily similar to the downward spiral which results when attempting to discuss face-diapers & The Shot with a true covidian.
In the comments section, a fella by the name David Homer described a problem with pro-smaller mafia, the response & exchange(s) was slightly illuminating for me. I won’t be attempting any future dialogue with pro-smaller mafia types in the future, it’s a bit too gut-wrenching:
https://alt-market.us/if-red-states-want-protection-from-collapse-they-will-have-to-build-alternative-economies/
Helot,
What you described re the smaller mafia advocates* was succinctly summed-up for all times IMO back when the Tea Party was a thing, when I saw a video of a Tea Party rally, in which some people were holding up signs and or shouting “Medicare For Americans Only”.
Tell ’em that to be free you must renounce such things as Social(ist) Security and Medicare…and see how fast they become your enemy!
They don’t want liberty, much less the costs it would entail, such as personal responsibility, voluntary association/exclusion, and a free market; they just want a return to the better days of tyranny when the system worked a little better.
It was kinda the same when I briefly ran in Constitutionalist circles- where most were fine with ‘legitimate’ taxes and many other such intrusions on liberty…just as long as it was done in accordance with what the piece of paper said….. Seeing that really caused me to formulate a libertarian/anarchistic philosophy before I even knew what those things were, or had ever heard of Rothbard et al.
Nothing opens ones eyes like stupidity and hypocrisy…. It’s just sad that there are so many who don’t want to open their eyes.
PS.
*= ‘Smaller Mafia” is the perfect term for it, too! Imagine if someone were to say “There is too much organized crime! They are perpetrating too much extortion and theft and murder. What we need, is not to get rid of the Mafia, but just to reduce it’s size, and have it ran on a local level…”
Mafias must have formed after the Fall of the Roman Empire, escaped to Sicily to set up shop. The Praetorian Guard gone rogue or something.
In the 1972 Handbook of Physics and Chemistry, in the section on the history of lead, the information written states that there are stamps of the Roman emperor on lead drain pipes still in use in Rome that were dated 732 Common Era. 1200 years of use to drain water is efficient use of a resource.
Might have changed by now.
You can use radioactive cesium to build an ion propulsion system. It will travel through space 100 times further than conventional rocketry.
Since 1700 CE, thereabouts, there has been a tremendous amount of knowledge gained that can be applied to improve living standards the world over.
Hunting down 100,000 whales each year in the early 1800’s halted when whales were near extinction, peak whale oil was a real problem.
Enter crude oil and its use, the demand increases because people want crude oil refined to usable products, they want natural gas too.
Hydrocarbons are in high demand because they make life easier.
There is a lot of demand, that is why there is supply.
Hydrocarbons will still be around for a long time. If it takes millions of years to form them, just stored energy from the sun that becomes usable for humans all because of human ingenuity, hydrocarbons will continue to exist for millions of years as long as the earth will be here, even if it is hit by a 40 mile wide asteroid.
The earth’s molten core heats those old kelp beds from millions of years ago into petroleum, rock oil. There are immature oil formations and mature oil formations. Immature oil formations have ample amounts of natural gas.
Some want to stop oil, Stop Oil wants to stop oil. Good for them, more power to them. All Stop Oil has to do is stop using oil all by themselves. Fat chance, not gonna happen. Duplicitous hypocrites want you to sacrifice, they deserve want they don’t want you to have. Some animals are more equal.
We need to stop oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, potassium, phosphorus, sulfur, iron, copper, gold, silver, uranium, plutonium. polonium, platinum, everything, just ban everything, not just oil.
Ban ultraviolet light. Nuke the Van Allen radiation belts. Stop light and heat from the sun, it is the sun’s fault for all of the coal and oil, my God, get a grip, somebody has to do something.
Do something to stop it all. Nuke everything, just a better world.
How come there are no Stop War movements?
Seems to make more sense than to stop oil, which makes no sense.
Peace
The CIA is the hit man for Wall Street banksters and why the CIA always installs right wing dictatorships in tinpot nations.
Imagine you are a wealthy industrialist like Rockefeller. You are still a private citizen with no army. So what to do when you covet the copper mines in Chile? Hmmmm. Use your lobbyists and CFR and TC (trilateral commission) to form a international hit man organization called Central Intelligence. Fund it with taxpayer money so you are not out a dime. Staff this organization with former military, the gung ho types who love to kill, soldiers of fortune.
Give the agency full secrecy cloak, have them go in and overthrow the democratically elected guy and put in your guy, who is right wing and will allow you the industrialist to buy the copper mine. No commie or socialist will do, you do not want the profits going to the natives at all. Zero for them and all for you and your trusts.
Use a soft glove first (read Economic Hit Man) and warn them if they do not “voluntarily” turn over their national wealth to Amerikan Bankers then you will stage a military coop. While you engage in all kinds of dirty deeds and such, you have your boys at the New York Times write all the propaganda you want to give the public a cover story.
That is how Amerikan Capitalism really works. And get this, they are also the ones who set up Communism, as a way to stop other nations from competing with them. Yes Virginia, the Commies were created by the Capitalists to stop competition.
It’s a big club and you are not in it – George Carlin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso
Excellent, Eric!
Probably the most distressing distinction between the elected mob and the other kind, is that the vast majority of ‘good citizens’ believe that those politicians do have the right to practice their crimes, and that those crimes are actually benevolent- and that anyone who opposes them is bad. Such people even delegate their own authority by means of voting, to these criminals- so essentially the state criminals are doing what they do in the name of 100+ million people.
The public’s belief in this charade is so well cemented into their consciences that they truly believe that if you try to avoid robbery, you are “cheating the tax man” [Which is tantamounbt to saying that we are ‘cheating’ the mugger if we do not hand over all of our money when coerced to do so]…or that it is immoral to disobey the posted sign that specifies how fast you may drive, etc.
It is truly a religion- the worship of The Beast. And when The Beast punishes members of the opposing mob, they are thought even more highly of, for ‘protecting’ the people from the very same things which are somehow not crimes when committed by the elected mobsters……
PS. Eric, since you’re reading the book…. Any idea where Sammy was around ’69-’70?[i.e. in jail…or active in NY, etc.]
The reason I ask, is because my late Aunt Mary worked as the executive secretary for one of the owners of the NY Jets at the time- and she came to realize the involvement of the mob in the sports scene. She would tell me this story in which she was once outside, and this big car pulled up with a mafioso and his wife and kids in it (All looking so squeaky clean and nice and family-friendly!)- She mentioned who it was…but I’ve forgotten over the years…but I do seem to remember her mentioning Sammy’s name. Of course, I can never be sure now if it was him, but I’m wondering if if that could have ever even been possible at the time.
She promptly quit working for the Jets! She went on to be the exec secretary for the conductor/arranger Andre Kostelanetz, where she stayed employed for a number of years. Safer working for a Russian! (Surprised that she lasted with him- between the temperaments of both of them, there would often be sparks! But she was a damn good secretary, and they were hard to find…even in the 70’s!)
http://www.quickmeme.com/statism-dangerous
Ha, Yukon! Larken Rose wrote a book entitled The Most Dangerous Superstition or The Most Dangerous Religion…on this very subject.
AND, if you had paid “protection” money and someone busted up your store, you could bet a ball pein hammer on a kneecap that the perp would pay for the transgression.
Unlike legalize crime (GovCo) showing up and giving you a piece of paper and saying “call your insurance company”
Compare to the modern day drug war.
Drug dealers do not pull people over or harass people about drugs. Government gangsters will pull people over and harass people about drugs. And if they find drugs, then it gives them a “right to steal” everything they can from said “drug dealer”.
Those that are innocent and know their rights may have to continually flex them on the side of the highway as I have had to do before just because “drug war”.
Long story as short as possible, a SC AGW pulled me over just after crossing the state border. Continually kept asking to search the vehicle. I kept saying no. He pulled the “if you have nothing to hide” BS to which I responded “You are on a fishing expedition”. “Sir, I’m with the drug interdiction team and this highway is used to traffic drugs”. He asked to search again and I said no. He then threatened to run a dog around my vehicle to which I told him the dog isn’t gonna find anything. “Am I free to go?” At that point, he said I was free to go but not without him riding my ass all the way to the county line.
What went wrong and caused the AGW to treat me that way? I thought it was because when the AGW asked if there was anything in the vehicle he “needed to know about”, I probably had a look on my face that said “I may have something in the vehicle you want to know about”.
I was about to tell him what it was, but before I could could respond, he starts tearing into me. “Mr Not-Mr-Smith”, “what you have been arrested for, what have you been to jail for” in a very accusatory and abrasive manner. As soon as he did that, I saw the tone and attitude of the AGW and decided NOT to inform AGW about the handgun in the glovebox next to him as he is treating me like crap through the passenger window.
At the time, my state did not have reciprocity with SC. So when approaching the state line, I would remove my weapon and toss it into the glove box to comply with SC law. At the time, if my state had reciprocity (which it didn’t), I would have been legally bound to notify the AGW of the weapon. But since it wasn’t on my person and in the glove box, I did not have to notify the AGW of the weapon. I wasn’t ready to deal with such a nuance at the time and under pressure, I took a couple of extra seconds to think/respond and the government gangster, a drug team mule, immediately thought it was drugs and went off before I could say anything.
As I said, I thought it was the look on my face that gave something away. After my return from my service call, I saw everyone that was pulled over was being searched. I saw at least 5 vehicles, both directions of travel, that were pulled over and being searched. As I drove by them all, I couldn’t help but think that they should have just said NO.
Interesting, informative, and illuminating tale, J.
Thanks for sharing.
…And, for being cool & just saying, “No.”
Keep on, keepin’ on.
**”He pulled the “if you have nothing to hide” “**
I’ve always imagined that if the pigs ever tried that on me, I’d respond by asking the porker: “What’s your address?”- and when he fails to give it, I’d say “Oh, so you like YOU’RE privacy, but if I exercise my right to such, I suddenly ‘have something to hide’?” [Yes…I would say that…which is why I try very hard to avoid interacting with swine. Hell, they don’t even like me before I ever even open my mouth…]
Yah, Nunzio. You’d just be asking for it if ya did that. The cops head would would swell & swell, like The Hulk?
Anyway, I wanted to work a comment about, ‘The Godfather’ series into this thread,… wondered how many young people today even know a smidgen of it.
But, I couldn’t. The Tucker Carlson bit in the background about Fetterman is kinda distracting… wow. Idiocracy. It just keeps growing.
Hehe, Helot, I’m 60 years old and Eye-talian, and I’ve never seen the Godfather! (And my mother owns a copy on DVD).
Nunz!
How can a wop like you not have seen The Godfather! I recommend correcting this as the film is brilliantly put together. According to Sammy Gravano, a real mobster, the mobsters loved it for it accurately depicted their life. I love it because it accurately depicts the hypocrisy of legalized crime, which pretends to be different than organized crime. And is – in the sense that it is “legal” while organized crime isn’t!
I know, right, Eric?!
My mother keeps begging me to at least take a look at The Godfather…. Even though it’s not my idea of entertainment, naturally, it is such a cultural icon, I am somewhat curious. Should’ve tried watching years ago, ’cause now-a-days it’s almost impossible to get me to zone-out and sit in front of a TV….can’t even bring myself to watch the great old classic movies and TV series I have on DVD that I love and often think of. It’s just so hard to just sit there after you’ve become acustomed to not doing it for so long. Maybe I’ll give it a try if I get snowed-in in the winter or something.
[In a militant Edith Bunker voice]But I don’t care what you say, you can never make me watch Star Wars!!!!! 🙂
RE: “[In a militant Edith Bunker voice]But I don’t care what you say, you can never make me watch Star Wars!!!!!”
Ha!
You’re sumthin’ else, Nunzio.
I have an uncle that’s never seen Star Wars, either.
That’s: two people, some Millennials, probably all of Gen Z, and a jungle tribe in South America. ?
Yah, settle in, in front of a fireplace, with maybe some booze or do some knitting & binge watch ‘The Godfather’ series.
Or, at least the first flick.
…It’s not, ‘Scarface’.
At least Scarface takes a blowtorch to the phony drug war narrative that even Godfather plays semantics with.
Helot,
Booze? Knitting?! What would I knit, a barf bag? (Who do I look like, Rosie Greer?).
Hey, my niece’s beau (50’s) has never seen Star Wars either!
Hey, The Godfather, I could see…but GF II…even my mother threw that one out! (I think she just likes the GF because it has a lot of stereotypical Italians….same reason she likes Moonstruck and House Full Of Strangers…which I call House Full Of Dagos. Hey, ya gotta love Edward G. Robinson [a.k.a. Emanuel Goldenberg] playing a wop!).
Don’t bother. Your instincts are correct. Though I spent more time than I’d like to admit watching the stuff years ago, I can’t sit in front of a movie, any movie, anymore. Just like everything else Hollywood produces, their “mob” movies are just more fakery mixed with narrative to be “accepted.” These stories served a purpose. That is to make normies think the popo are “necessary” to protect them from the “criminals.” Sure, they might weave in some ambiguity to tease those that see through it but they never address the distinction between the gov’t gang and the non-gov’t gang. The legal monopoly on violence.
Most people’s entire point of reference about the mob is movies or some second hand gossip. Truth is, many mobsters, especially the ones folks know by name, like “Lucky” Luciano and Whitey Bulger, for example, were gov’t agents/informers/berserkers. They were necessary to create fear when society was somewhat freer. Especially 100 years ago but even through to the 80s. Now that we approach unlimited totalitarian gov’t, such characters aren’t necessary and haven’t really been for years, maybe 20 or more. When was the last time you heard of a “famous” mafioso? Nowadays it’s shadowy cross border “cartels” or MS-13 transporting “fentanyl.” All gov’t ops as well, serving the exact same purposes.
Good points/observations, Funk Doctor Spidock, ‘Cept this:
“That is to make normies think the popo are “necessary” to protect them from the “criminals.””
At least My take from, ‘The Godfather’ was just the opposite.
I dunno about anyone else.
…Especially, once you got more into the series.
Wish I woulda watched it earlier in life. It explains much, imho.
Er, at least, things made more sense, anyway.
The notion of the necessity of police, or even gov’t generally, is so ingrained into folks that even portrayals of corruption serve to buttress the root premise rather than diminish it. It plays into the “if only I or other top people of honor and integrity controlled the apparatus, right and good would triumph.” In other words, the “untouchables.” Wait, wasn’t that the title of another popular Hollywood confection in the genre?
Ya know what it is too, Funk? Pretty much any movie made in my lifetime seems to just be a series of cliches strung together. In a sense, all movies rely on cliches to set a scene and tell a story, but at least with many of the old black & white movies, they were much less obvious, and less uniform. The newer the movie, the more ‘cliche’ the cliches get, and the more obvious and boring. A wedding scene; an airport scene; riding in a car…they all look the same- just different characters.
Then there’s the unreality of it all. The world created in the movie is the world as the clueless Hollywood liberals imagine it to be- showing their ignorance. And if anything that you actually know anything about is portrayed, or if a story is portrayed that you know actual facts about, you just see how eroneous what is being portrayed in the movie is. They’re literal fairy tales for adults.
Once you see what’s behind the curtain, you can not unsee it, and it just no longer works. Not to even mention the obvious messages (propaganda) which is being are being pushed. Ya just can’t go back.
RE: “fairy tales for adults”
Yes! How-freaking-evah; cautionary tales, do serve a purpose.
Hi Nunz!
The Godfather is worth watching. It’s not Woke. It conveys some harsh truths that – once upon a time – the good movies did. The characters and the acting – especially Pacino as Michael Corleone – all excellent.
A good example of the ambiguity I mentioned is the scene where Tom Hagen tells Sonny the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor because of the U.S. oil embargo and Sonny angrily calls him a “Jap lover.” The harsh truth is layered under an overt but very common reflexive jingoism. Could go either way in the mind of the masses. I think that’s why the harsh truths portrayed didn’t/don’t challenge the great majority of people’s basic premises.
Passing thru a TSA checkpoint at the airport several years ago, I noticed the agents using a sniffer dog to check bags and so forth. Much beyond the typical gate rape scanners in use at the time, as now. Out of curiosity and just to make conversation, I asked one of the agents what the dog was looking for. His not surprising response was a curt “Why, do you have something to hide?” My calm but courteous response was “Not as far as you know.”. The gasps from the proles queued up behind me were audible, and it sure flabbergasted that particular AGW, without repercussions to me. I left that station just a bit pleased with myself that day.
Comments like yours, Eustis. Gives me hope for The Remnant.
Hi Eustis,
Excellent! Resistance is not futile. And what you did was just that. Resistance need not be physical. The most profound form is an inner commitment to truth rather than a servile acceptance of lies. Solzyhenitsyn wrote about this and when I read what he wrote many years ago, it made a lasting impression on me. I am happy to see it appears to have on you, as well – even if you haven’t read him yet!
‘The real story is the parallelism of syndicates. Of organized vs. legalized crime.’ — eric
When I was a teenager, there was said to be a Dixie Mafia which operated in our crooked little town, and across the South.
One evening, the local cops were tipped off that a couple of Dixie Mafia guys were going to burglarize a furniture store that night. Instead of making an easy nab of the suspects, the cops instead set up a Bonnie-and-Clyde style ambush with a team of snipers.
As the burglars began to ease their truck out of the parking lot, half a dozen cops opened fire, peppering the vehicle with dozens of rounds and killing both the targets.
What surprised me was the reaction after the story and grisly photos were published in the local paper: not a peep of protest from citizens, legislators, prosecutors, or judges. If the cops decided to just rub out a couple of small-time burglars caught in flagrante delicto, it was their privilege and judgment to make.
That is, in a war between two mafias, the townsfolk leaned toward the uniformed one.
Well, they don’t teach children to respect the authority of people in the mafia all throughout their lives
Unless they actually live in a mafia controlled area
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Chicago under Capone was much safer then than today. The city today under the demonic/psycho Mayor Beetlejuice resembles a free for all war zone not to mention other major cities headed under the anti-freedom leftist politicians. At least organized crime restraints itself for maximum efficiency will leftists politicians operate on a scorched earth policy.
RE: “Chicago under Capone was much safer then than today.”
Comments like this, articles like Eric’s, all cause me to think of Mike ‘in Tokyo’ Roger’s descriptions of how the mafia works in Japan. Such a contrast with America today.
No one, in Japan, steals packages left in front of a business in Japan.
The mafia is also useful sometimes to people who aren’t billionaires
And much more competent on average than your standard government functionaries
Excellent points Eric,
Only legalized crime has the power to seize everything you own and throw you into a cage. I’d much rather deal with the real Mafia any day.
Creepy Joe’s handlers are no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=ZtL6kbYiP-w
Good article, Eric.
At least Al Capone didn’t force anyone to drink his moonshine while Xiden and the Marxists forced the jab or be fired and lose your income.