Living in a mob town

“That’s a nice little town you have here. It’d be shame if something were to happen to it.”

Imagine we live in a small town. We’ve got a neighbor who’s a bit of an asshole. It’s complicated. This neighbor tells everyone how great he is, and he’s done some good things for the town in the past—quite a while ago—but he’s really been a pain in the ass lately. Like the last 50 years or so. He’s pretty rich and he owns a lot of the local stores—or buys from them—so it’s kind of hard to reason with him.

To be honest, he’s kind of got a stranglehold on the town. He mostly gets to do what he wants, which is mostly getting more stuff and more power. It’s kind of hard to see how the town’s ever going to get him under control or get rid of him.

We’re kind of just waiting for him to die or kill himself doing something rash or stupid. Fingers crossed. But man, God may love fools and drunks, but she also loves the hell out of bastards, too. Those guys just lead charmed lives sometimes.

But I’m getting off-track here.

So, what does this guy, our neighbor, do? Well, sometimes, he just goes into other people’s property—stores or homes—and just takes their stuff. Or sometimes, he just takes over a business—forever or for a while—and then exacts tribute from the previous owners. He just up and says “this is mine now”. It’s kind of like the mob, honestly. It’s not a good situation, but it’s what we’ve got.

Or sometimes he ruins someone else’s business and kind of accidentally ends up with a new business that replaces it. People just kind of have to put up with it. Hell, they think that maybe they can get in on the new business. Their greed overwhelms their principle every time. Rich, powerful people get away with doing shit that others don’t. Why try to fight it?

How does he get away with it? Well, he’s got a lot of money, friends, and guns. Does he need anything else? Nope. We’re just monkeys down from the trees, man.

It’s kind of understandable, though. People have a hard time crossing him or stopping him or even reprimanding him because (A) it doesn’t seem to help, because he doesn’t give a shit what anyone else thinks—it only matters that he still thinks he’s God’s gift to the town—and (B) he has his fingers in so many pies that, if you cross him, you’ll be cut off and probably destitute and thrown out of town soon enough.

So, it’s kind of go-along-to-get-along or starve in the wilderness. Not a lot of people are going to opt for the latter.

So, it’s a problem, but the town is kind of used to it. They pay fealty and ignore his bullshit as best they can. It’s pretty pathetic how into it a lot of them are, though. They can barely remember that they’re even in thrall to this guy—it’s just been that way for so long, that they don’t even question it.

It gets worse, though, because this guy’s behavior kind of makes it seem like there are no rules, when what’s really the case is that there are no rules for himself, but there are definitely rules for everyone else—especially anyone who isn’t a close friend of this guy.

If you’re not in good with him, then things don’t go so well for you. Especially if you have something that he wants. In that case, you might want to stay out of sight and keep to yourself, as best you can. Good luck with that, though, because he’s honestly got eyes and fellow travelers everywhere.

God help you if you think you can try to work with this guy on a level playing field. That’s really asking for trouble. Also, God help you if you were to act like him, say, by taking over a business that’s not yours. Nobody’s going to be glad-handing you and telling you that it’s just boys-being-boys and what-can-you-do and letting you just keep whatever you managed to steal.

No, no, they’re going to all gang up on you and try to impress that other goddamned sonofabitch, who’s going to be the first one to scream to high heaven about how it’s unconscionable that anyone would even think of doing something like that, when he just did the same fucking thing last year. And one of his fucking buddies is doing it right now. Hell, he himself is probably going to do it again next weekend.

But, man, when any unsanctioned upstart gets too big for his britches and starts trying to act like one of the big dogs without permission—hoo-whee!—that’s not going to end well. You’re going to get the whole sanctimonious, hypocritical bullshit. The whole town will act as if no-one had ever done anything like this before. It’s an unprecedented act of criminality! (They’ll say.)

Sure it is, but only if you have a selective memory—which you’re strongly encouraged to have, if you want to survive in this town.

It’s not that it’s OK to take someone else’s stuff (obviously), but damned if that asshole neighbor who gets away with everything wasn’t also up to his eyeballs in that same dirty business and kinda/maybe/sorta/mighta forced the upstart’s hand, just a little bit, oopsie.

Maybe if the upstart had just been able to do business unobstructed—maybe if they weren’t worried that king asshole was going to just up and steal the whole business for themselves—maybe things wouldn’t have gone down the way they did.

Now that other asshole—the upstart one, not the God’s-gift-to-our-town one—-is sitting in that business, pretending everything’s fine, but it’s not. They should say sorry and get the fuck out of there. Retreat is the best option, but it’s probably not going to happen. It probably won’t even be allowed to happen until a pound of flesh can be extracted.

Who knows? It doesn’t matter now. To be clear: we’ve got no love lost for anyone who steals someone else’s shit. Mob behavior is mob behavior, right? Fuck ‘em all.

But king asshole’s penchant for taking everything for himself makes it really hard to stay out of his way. If he wants what you’ve got, he’ll find a way. You can either roll over like everyone else—or you can fight. Either way, he’s going to end up with your shit, if he wants it. He really doesn’t care how much of the town gets ruined in the process.

It’s about the principle, man. You’ve got to show everyone who’s boss. Plus, you want all the toys for yourself. That’s how you know you’re winning.

And, man is it annoying to have that motherfucker just cheering everyone on to pile on and beat the shit out of the upstart. Again, considering how no-one had ever given a shit when the king asshole had done it himself a dozen times before. It’s almost too easy, right? It would be infuriating if we weren’t all just so used to it.

Different strokes for different folks is the way of the world, I guess.

The problem really is: we kind of want to stop the upstart asshole, but then we end up supporting the original asshole? Isn’t there any way that we can condemn ‘em both?

We kinda want a town without any mobs, but that doesn’t seem to be on the menu. Instead, most of the simpletons here just throw their support behind the big guy and help him squash any upstarts. They buy his bullshit and conveniently forget everything he’s done, leading the charge against the upstart as if it’s the first time they’ve ever seen a crime on that level.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s wrong when anyone does it, but those other assholes really aren’t helping. We should squash the upstart’s ambitions, but we could get some fucking perspective and stop pretending like it’s never happened before—and like it won’t happen again. And, when it does, it will almost certainly be perpetrated by our big old king asshole.

Like, why is it that we go after the upstart and we end up making the other asshole even more powerful? Hell, before all is said and done, that asshole’s probably going to end up with the stolen business himself and we’ll probably end up thanking him for it.

It’s a mess. But that’s our town. Always has been.