There’s been a somewhat incremental uptick here in a couple of recent diaries drawing a few peripheral comparisons between Trump and Al Capone which I find interesting in some ways - and in musing on that idea, makes me wonder if syphilitic dementia — as was the case of Capone’s medical condition before he died — is a contributor to our previous two years of federal policy. But that’s not what this diary is about, and there’s lately been too much unverified speculation about everything from his naughty bits to soothsayers using divining rods to predict when Mueller will finally issue our country’s political salvation (extreme sarcasm intended).
But having given this comparison some deeper thought, I realized that there happens to be a parallel effect that bears a very remarkable resemblance to a phenomenon that manifested itself in the American public’s culture back in the 1920s and 1930s that could very well be predictive of future near-term events. And in consideration of this country’s current penchant to apply “American Exceptionalism” to everything no matter how ridiculously wrong it may be while ignoring the ever- loving hell out of its own history, maybe a brief backward glance of a scant 100 years could lend some insight on how human nature - or at least its American version - somehow never seems to change:
1920s America - Rampant crime and vagrancy in the streets — Veterans of the War to End All Wars with shell shock, battle fatigue... what modern science now calls post traumatic stress syndrome… that “lost generation” either homeless or institutionalized in asylums - and everyone trying to struggle to get back on their feet under brutal post-war conditions; the local politicians bickering back and forth about how to deal with the myriad of financial, economic and domestic issues while the Fed only concerning itself with Law And Order, thinking that the only way citizens can protect themselves under such dire circumstances is to ignore the cries of victim’s families and turn a blind eye to the private ownership of fully automatic weapons. Not an entirely unfamiliar scenario, no? Not quite as dire today, but still most of the same unresolved issues. Getting back to the topic at hand:
As is usually the case when groups of religious politicians try to save the public from themselves by legislating morality, the result is always a dramatic uptick in violent crime, and the 1920 Prohibition Amendment to the Constitution created a whole sub-class of criminals dedicated to delivering to a thirsty public the product they wanted: booze. Entire crime syndicates sprung up, armed with Thompson 45 submachine guns fed by drum magazines with up to 150 rounds of ammunition, shotguns and Browning Automatic Rifles stolen from National Guard armories and turf wars frequently broke out between rival gangs in big cities. Soon, one crime boss realized that illegal alcohol was an actual business instead of a crime and as such had to be treated as a business if they expected to survive the onslaught of public disdain and law enforcement. By negotiating deals between rival gangs, giving generously to local charities and schools and bribing politicians, Al Capone morphed himself from Public Enemy Number One into a new, modernized kind of “Robin Hood” which the local public began to idolize: because of his negotiated business consolidations between crime gangs, street violence was dramatically reduced, booze became obtainable without constant law enforcement interdiction and many people avoided having to use the soup kitchens… that is, under the condition that they frequented the appropriate “establishments” and purchased what they wanted from certain authorized “vendors”.
But, as in almost every human endeavor, relationships built on foundations of hatred, greed and power deteriorate into chaos. When certain member gangs began to believe that they were being deprived of their fair “cut of the action” by Capone’s alcoholic beverage syndicate, violent crime in the form of drive-by shootings, alleyway executions and beatings shot up, and the public eventually became disillusioned with Capone, the corrupted politicians and the lack of law enforcement’s response to the violence. However once Prohibition was repealed, the government began to realize tax revenue from alcohol sales and street crime began to decline while crime organizations saw a precipitous decrease in revenue, which resulted in some “creative financial decisions” by Capone and others. Ultimately Capone was convicted and sent to Federal prison - not for murder, or running a crime syndicate - but for tax evasion.
Another example of cult worship gone bad was embodied in the duo of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow - two young Texas psychopaths on a murderous rampage through the Midwest robbing banks, gas stations and grocery stores, stealing weapons and ammunition from National Guard armories, cars and pretty much anything that wasn’t nailed down. They became the subject of pulp magazine idolatry in the early to mid 30s, during the Depression when the public discovered a new kind of cult-like adoration for them in the gangster film craze. But at one point when their street credibility with the public went south after exaggerated accounts of the Texas Grapevine killings where the vicious, ruthless murders were said to have been execution-style… including a police officer... by Bonnie Parker… law enforcement and the public became of one mind in putting an end to their rampage and their end eventually arrived on a lonely dirt road inside a Ford sedan, with so many gunshots from the law enforcement ambush that the undertaker had difficulty embalming the bodies. Even their funerals and internments were circus-like events.
So where’s the relevance we can obtain for today from these old historical accounts? It’s clear that in every modern age, the notion of a “Robin Hood”- like figure becomes extremely attractive to people when they believe - either real or imagined - that they’re impoverished, oppressed, disadvantaged or threatened, and they tend to idolize people who display uncommon ways of extracting revenge on established authority in displays of strength… usually starting out as strong words, then escalating to violence. Generally, the lower the level of education and personal moral compass, the greater the propensity to elevate thugs and frauds to positions of authority against their perceived aggressors and imbue them with a cult-like following and an almost religious allegiance. And, with the omnipresent media always just fingertips away, the people most likely to abuse the First Amendment as co-conspirators to promulgate the kind of fraud that would-be “leaders” need to obtain power and money through any means - legally or otherwise - flaunts in the face of what ordinary people used to consider to be ethical. Then they throw religious fabrications into the mix and you have a holy war on your hands.
Given how many revisionist ideas are out there today about what constitutes “illegal” or “moral”, I’m not convinced that the word “ethical” is what it used to mean anymore; if someone who calls himself “President of the United States” can threaten the public with biker gangs, renegade police and independent mercenaries from inside the Armed Forces if he loses an election and get away with it, there’s more to it than simply someone having a “bad day”: we now have a law on the books that defines it as “TERRORISTIC THREATENING”.
What are the odds that he’ll beat that rap too?