Obviously, organized crime includes activities that are severely morally questionable at best--for example, union racketeering, forcing shopowners to pay protection money, etc. (I am less convinced when people talk about lives being ruined by gambling and prostitution, it seems to me that the people who provide these services are not necessarily any more responsible for destroying the lives of those who partake of them than liquor store owners are responsible for lives being destroyed by alcoholism).
I've stayed out of this, Vito, but I'd just like to point out one thing.
You are from a
very small town in Pennsylvania, where a guy like Don Cardi is from Brooklyn and has known many wiseguys throughout his lifetime. Same goes for me, being Italian-American and having grown up up in the Belmont section of the Bronx. I know these assholes all my life, and I'm almost 52 years old. Chances are, you never met with or had dealings with any mob types. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm just assuming that a non-Italian composer from rural Pennsylvania never had cause to meet with any of these guys. If that's the case, lucky you. I was a union delegate and then a business agent with the Teamsters in Queens for over twenty years, just so you don't think I'm one of these Internet pseudo mob "experts."
Do you think you might think differently about these guys if you had grown up around them and/or maybe lost a loved one to either mob violence or a penal institution?
I enjoy your posts very much, so I'm not trying to provoke an argument. I'm just asking.
