Gangsterism

I meant to comment, and forgot, in the last post that New York, to take one example, has had many gangs, many gangsters, many mafias.  Over time, you have no doubt had rival Italian gangs, but you have also had Irish gangs, Jewish gangs, and now you have Russian gangs.

Self evidently, they fight with one another.

But to the point, if you hate the Italians, the Russians do not become saints because they are killing Italians.  It’s a fight over stuff and territory, and the geopolitics of gangsterism do not change when the people pursuing said politics still think like gangsters.

After World War 2, the Russian gangsters simply said “Eastern Europe belongs to us.  If you don’t like it, invade us.”  And just like that, the Russian Empire was expanded, the Russian gangsters had more power over more people, more potential to inspire terror, more things to steal, more swagger to their walks.

Very, very few people see with their own eyes.  It is not a particularly difficult thing to do, but we are trained from an early age to see through the eyes of those who want to speak for us, through the eyes of “experts” who, like all human beings, can be corrupted in many ways, not least through vanity, money, and complacency.