A Sobering Thought

8/9/2023

Having just watched The Irishman, I reflected back upon all of Martin Scorsese's other gangster films and came to the sobering conclusion that America was a much better place when the mafia ran it.

6 Comments

Hoyos

8/10/2023 00:57:15

I see what you’re saying, but I think it’s more the mafia needed a healthy host to parasite off of. It was better so they ran it more than it was better because they ran it.

They’ve been semi rehabilitated in the public consciousness but they were part of the reason we’re in the mess we’re in now. They introduced a tradition of civic corruption that was foreign to “heritage” Americans(for want of a better term), despite positive portrayals in media they were always predatory towards the innocent, extortion, drug dealing from the very beginning, a nasty history of murdering honest union men who didn’t want the mob taking them over for example. Sex trafficking reaching back into its earliest history in this country.

That being said, paradoxically they are better in some ways than random street gangs. Less chaotic; less murderous by the numbers. However they contributed to the general decline greatly by breaking down a lot of social trust and good governance.

Here by the mafia though I don’t just mean the Italian mafia but what used to be called the Syndicate or the Combine. It includes the mafia as the senior partner but also the affiliated Jewish, Irish, and other organizations. To clarify I mean Jewish mob Lansky, purple gang, not some weirdo Jewish conspiracy theory.

Maybe off topic, but we always use the Irish and the Italians as examples of immigrants who worked out for us, but in addition to what became stand up Americans they brought along men who introduced problems that continue to plague us to this day. Again obviously nothing against the honorable Irish and Italians, they have contributed much to this country.

Francis Berger

8/10/2023 08:08:40

@ Hoyos - Good comment. I agree with your point about the mafia and the healthy host. I suppose one way to approach this is from the perspective of lesser and greater evil. The mafia is/was certainly evil, but the evil they espoused is of a different quality than the evil we are experiencing today. To use Dr. Charlton's Steinerian terminology, I would say the mafia was more Luceferic in nature, with some Ahrimanic elements. What ultimately replaced it was purely Ahrimanic -- faceless, soul-destroying bureaucracy.

The aims of mafias as organized crime syndicates also appear to be lesser evil/lesser corruption when compared to the aims of our current totalitarian crime syndicates -- re: the System. With the mafia, it tended to come down to money, power, influence, etc. I don't think that holds true for the people who run the show today -- at least not at the highest levels.

Ironically, America's heritage past is also partly to blame for the rise of the mafia. I'm not sure if the mobs/mafia would have emerged as strongly as they did had the US not signed Prohibition into law. That's speculation on my part, but there's no denying that some of the biggest and most powerful crime families got their start during that time.

It's also interesting that the mafia began to fall apart at about the same time the foundations for globalization were being poured -- dollar off the gold standard, China opening, outsourcing of jobs, collapse of manufacturing, eventual crumbling of communism, etc.

Hoyos

8/10/2023 13:15:22

Oh no argument on prohibition. Desire for cheap labor led to increased immigration from cultures more foreign to the host culture, female suffrage to balance that out, then women drive prohibition. So yes, heritage Americans kind of did it to themselves.

Evan Pangburn

8/10/2023 02:35:47

As a man from Las Vegas, I am well aware of this. In fact it's almost a "meme" among the older folk that have been living here since the 80's or earlier.

Francis Berger

8/10/2023 08:12:25

@ EP - There's that great bit at the end of Scorcese's Casino that touches upon that. After the corporations take over and the busloads of fat, poorly-dressed, mindless American slobs arrive in droves for the all-you-eat-shrimp buffets, essentially killing everything that Las Vegas had been and turning it into an amusement park for middle-class America.

bruce g charlton

8/11/2023 11:41:09

As in so many ways, it was the (Union-caused) civil war that was the root of the sharp wrong-turn in the USA.

Before the mass destruction and mass immigration that followed; the USA was a coherent and 'old country' with many inhabitants in the fourth and fifth generations, and very strong social structures.

The pre-civil-war (including colonial) USA was overall one of the best societies there has been in history - in terms of providing a 'decent' life for nearly everybody.

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A Sobering Thought

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