1/05/2011
Romancing the gangsters
The front page of Today paper has a full page advert on a HBO movie, ‘Boardwalk Empire’. Words like Dazzling, Rich & Cinematic, Golden Globe Nominations, Best Television Series etc etc. The movie is all about politicians and gangsters with infamous names like Nucky Thompson, Jimmy Darmody, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano etc etc. These were the ‘great men’ of the day, controlling money and all things illegal.
Even without looking at the movie, one can easily guess that it will be about the glorification of the gangsters of days gone by. And they will be well dressed, well mannered, even ill mannered will be in a style of its own, and they called the shot. They make the lives of the people around them sweet or painful. And they could do it by wielding power and money, plentiful of money.
Today such gangsters are probably still around in China, India, Japan, Taiwan and Korea. Maybe some still exist in Asean countries. In Singapore, if we allow the neighbourhood kids to grow up unhindered, and carrying their parangs around, we will have some golden days to come, especially with the two IRs acting as the backdrop. They will graduate from burning cars, painting doors of O$P$ and slashing kids in shopping malls to greater things. In ten or twenty years’ time, we could also produce great gangster movies of our own. But the names will be different.
It is cool to be gangsters. The moral of the story is that crooks can be turned into legends.
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3 comments:
Every other person you pass by on the road, in the malls, in the office, in the hallowed halls of government everywhere in the world is a crook or a gangster of sorts.
The operative word here is "finesse".
Those punks going around slashing innocent bystanders? Why, they are the lowest scums in the rotten food chain.
Nowadays, crooks and gangsters graduate from the best business universities. They drive around in staid chauffeured limos. Those ego trippers in their ferraris or souped beamers? Why they've got no style. Plenty of noise and obsequious panache and nothing else.
Frankly, to survive in this money mad world where cash speak louder than words, everyone has to join or aspire to reach the status of the elite few or wait to perish in the bonfire of poverty and deprivation.
This "Broadwalk Empire" is a must see teleseries.
Some of these fine gangsters are more talented and caring than rulers and leaders.
That means many are better in every sense than politicians; so to say.
The fundamental reason for the existence of "gangsters" is because somewhere in the cuntry's legal code, the government "outlawed" something therefore cause a distortion in the (demand driven) market. Scarcity was created by the govt interference of "banning", and the govt promised punitive "justice" to anyone flaunting the ban.
Therefore the only type of people who will be attracted to this response of govt violence are the really hard-core, devil-may-care, "I kill you before you kill me" , "end justifies any means" type of character -- aka "gangsters".
The biggest gangsters in the world are completely legal: they belong to the POLITICAL CLASS. Once they seize power, they can make any law they like, and thus LEGALISE any type of "immaoral" or "illegal" activity..be it theft, murder, fraud, assault, kidnapping, slavery etc etc.
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