Just re-read ‘Scarface and the Untouchable: Eliot Ness and the Battle for Chicago‘* by Max Collins and Brad Schwartz. * An excellent book based on a load of research. Also if you, like me, you cannot abide the superficiality of American culture, its overweaning self-importance, its breeding of corruption and racist colonialism it provides some useful background.
Of course my home, the UK, is not completely innocent of these traits (e.g. smugness and a creepy shift to the right side of politic aka the wrong side!) but America has for some time been a sad nation in search of style and humanity.
In a casual moment a while back I watched the movie ‘The Untouchables’ with San Connery and Kevin Costner and realised it is a load of baloney. I went back to the book that I read a few years ago and the authors confirm that the movie is BS. The story they tell is much more interesting and bears little relation to Hollywood’s ideas about prohibition crime as depicted in that movie (though some of the pre-war noir movies are well worth watching and more accurate).
Takeaway:
What is striking is the character of Capone. A murderer yes, famous for killing three of his gang byt swinging his own baseball bat and then having his cronies shoot them until they were not quite dead but what stands out, and it quite chilling, is how closely Trump’s attitudes and beliefs so like Capone … him but without his intelligence or style! Trump is a black void, preferring corruption over honesty, confusing sycophancy for proof of self-worth and a less than hidden disdain for the law.
At least, the very least, Capone had brains.
Mind you, The US legal system and its enforcers were significantly to blame as well – the stories about Chicago’s mayoral elections of the time are eerie because of their similarity to contemporary US politics (e.g. Mayor Thompson). Lies and graft, lies and graft. I am not sure that much has changed in the years since.
The overall conclusion of the book is pessimistic: the effort to fight gangster crime, to stymie its flourishing, is fruitless:
“There are a thousand Dillingers … and a thousand Capones who know better than to write checks. The Bureau of Investigation is designed to prune the criminal tree but the tree goes on flourishing.”
Posted to Twitter and BSky:
Just re-read ‘Scarface and the Untouchable’. Relevance? What stands out is that Trump is so like Capone but without his intelligence or style!!
Capone’s moral compass was bent but at least he he had one! Trump is a zombie. Never honest, never kind, always greedy.
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Posted to BSky
The new vanguard of crooks, liars and traitors swindling their way into the political mainstream is depressing. A good case study is to be found in ‘Scarface and the Untouchable’.
Paradoxically, fighting gangster crime is like pruning a plant to make it stronger.