Sometimes the truth just whacks you like a bullet. We live in Sopranos America. The most popular television program is an accurate mirror of what makes America tick. Criminality is the residue of pre-civilized behaviors. As a society loses its civilized attributes, criminals and criminality become more and more appealing because they are "real" and "authentic" as against the artificial and unreliable promises of an orderly civil society.
Tony Soprano is a mobster who has no illusions about how the world works. While bedeviled by the routine difficulties of family life and modern times, he understands that the fundamental logic of his business is brutal aggression and calculated risk. A simple code of gang loyalty and ferocious opposition to rivals keeps his business running.
How is the Bush Administration fundamentally different from the Soprano crime family? Murder, torture, lies, and intimidation are routine tools of the Bush administration. A top capo of the Bush organization, Scooter Libby (nice mob nickname) has just been sentenced to prison for perjury, but the big boss will probably spring him. Welcome to Sopranos America: a society of organized criminals.
When C. Wright Mills wrote "The Power Elite" in 1956, he didn't know that his definition of "organized irresponsibility" would cross the boundary between corrupt government and organized crime, but he did not envision the extraordinary decadence of the Bush administration.
We have criminals of all sorts in the Bush Administration: war criminals, perjurers, shoplifters, torturers, kidnappers, and extortionists. Americans expect criminality from their government because they view gangsterism as the authentic language of power. The current Republican presidential candidates are competing with each other to see who can represent himself as a more ferocious gangster than Bush.
The paradigm of organized crime is permeating all sectors of society as the model of predatory power is increasingly accepted by voters and consumers. Thus drug companies feel free to conceal negative research findings and energy companies work to discredit global warming warnings. Whatever is good for the local gang is what the soldiers, made men, and underbosses of criminal organizations are expected to pursue.
Welcome to Sopranos America: a society of organized criminals.