“The blackest despair that can take hold of any society is the fear that living rightly is futile.” ~ Corrado Alvaro, Man is Strong
You know we’re living in strange times when people start reminiscing about the mob. More than once I’ve heard someone say they miss the days when gangsters kept the old neighborhoods safe. While I don’t share their fondness for criminals, I do understand the sentiment and share their disdain of government.
Yes, they were thugs—but they had rules (so they say). That’s more than can be said for today’s ruling class of corrupt bureaucrats. At least the gangsters were a little more honest about what they were.
Like taxes, protection money sometimes bought you something—protection from them. The social contract is broken: we pay, but the state no longer delivers safety or maintains adequate infrastructure. Instead, our money disappears into the sinkhole of bureaucracy while the essentials crumble. This is legalized extortion.
Crime goes unchecked, filth piles up, and the cost of living spirals—civilization decays. Law-abiding citizens are over-regulated and persecuted. Those of us who follow the rules get screwed.
And when the state refuses to hold up its end of the bargain, people will inevitably look elsewhere for protection—even if that means turning to those outside the law.
Here’s the dark truth: longing for “the gangsters” isn’t nostalgia, it’s desperation. It’s the grim belief that today’s authorities provide less order, less safety, and less stability than yesterday’s villains. Expectations have fallen so low that politicians are compared to mobsters—and the mobsters come out looking more reliable. That’s not admiration. That’s indictment.
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, September 6th, Our Lady's Saturday