Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

[YOtoLI]

Is there anyone left alive that can back this guys story or did he wait til everyone in the crew was dead to start talking? not saying he wasnt there, but is he embellishing his importance?

[Angelo Santino]

Ivan and Sonny raise some interesting ideas regarding criminality. As much as I'd like to think I'm an organized crime expert, at least in some aspects, criminal theory is something I'm lacking.

With my post about the social club, that's not by any means the entire picture. My mistake if I made it sound like that. Rather I was describing the bottom level, the entry point for street criminals. The other side would be your semi-legitimate members, but unless a member already has that before entering or the member is a Tommy Gambino with deep connections, they are a declining percentage. Back in the 1900's you had doctors and lawyers and a failed politician who were mafiosi, some even bosses. But to purely call these people 'legitimate' is misleading since they love to press their thumb on the scale to skew things to their advantage. Joseph Bonanno tried to sugarcoat it by explaining how if someone opens a business in the same neighborhood as the made man's business, the poor sap has to pay tribute or face problems. That was the "legal" mentality, you can see it with the Concrete Club in the 80's, it's dealing in a legitimate industry but it's still illegal and unethical. But even so, this form of criminality requires some level of knowledge and sophistication that you generally don't see in the social club. But notice how the Mafia as an entity has room for everything, that's because it's largely organic and hierarchy aside, the criminal components are more horizontal in nature.

[FriendofFamily]

I didn't see anything that was really out of line. It all looks very probable and very similar to situations we saw in Northeast Ohio
Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Youngstown.

[Ivan]

criminal theory is something I'm lacking

Don't bother unless you want to hear a bunch of sheltered upper middle class douchebags whine about how cops are evil and how people like drug dealers are the real victims, and how crime is never the fault of criminals.

I had to find out about this the hard way. (The "hard way" as in, taking out student loans to pay tuition for criminology courses. Trust me, that's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.)

[Wiseguy]

criminal theory is something I'm lacking

Don't bother unless you want to hear a bunch of sheltered upper middle class douchebags whine about how cops are evil and how people like drug dealers are the real victims, and how crime is never the fault of criminals.

I had to find out about this the hard way. (The "hard way" as in, taking out student loans to pay tuition for criminology courses. Trust me, that's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.)

Amen to this ^

[Ivan]

criminal theory is something I'm lacking

Don't bother unless you want to hear a bunch of sheltered upper middle class douchebags whine about how cops are evil and how people like drug dealers are the real victims, and how crime is never the fault of criminals.

I had to find out about this the hard way. (The "hard way" as in, taking out student loans to pay tuition for criminology courses. Trust me, that's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.)

Amen to this ^

Haha, you went through that experience too? I was only 17-18 at the time and didn't know better. I figured a "criminologist" was, like, you know, a scientist who studied crime.

[BillyBrizzi]

criminal theory is something I'm lacking

Don't bother unless you want to hear a bunch of sheltered upper middle class douchebags whine about how cops are evil and how people like drug dealers are the real victims, and how crime is never the fault of criminals.

I had to find out about this the hard way. (The "hard way" as in, taking out student loans to pay tuition for criminology courses. Trust me, that's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.)

Amen to this ^

I've had the same experiences in Holland when I studied Sociology back in the day. A lot of Nature vs Nurture debates and 90% of the class were dead set against Nature all the time, you couldn't even debate with them. It was always society who made people kill, steal and destroy.

A lot of universities in the Western world have an almost dictatorial leftist culture. They only want democracy and freedom of speech when it suits them, when elections don't go their way or somebody says something that they don't like they easily can become violent. A fairly recent example of this in the US, were all the riots that took place at certain universities because certain groups weren't happy that Ben Shapiro came to give a lecture. Freedom of speech? Only when it suits them it seems..

[Wiseguy]

A lot of universities in the Western world have an almost dictatorial leftist culture. They only want democracy and freedom of speech when it suits them, when elections don't go their way or somebody says something that they don't like they easily can become violent. A fairly recent example of this in the US, were all the riots that took place at certain universities because certain groups weren't happy that Ben Shapiro came to give a lecture. Freedom of speech? Only when it suits them it seems..

More truth.