It gets so people accept stealing isn’t a bad way of life. As a profession it has survived since the dawn of the human race as we know it. An ethos against stealing emerged about the same time and the two paradigms run a parallel course of evolution throughout human history and never really reconciled. A felonious president, elected and much admired for his propensity to boss people and make deals, who pardoned January 6 insurrectionists convicted of attempting to steal the 2020 election, accused the pope of being weak on crime. Isn’t that funny?
People seem to love criminals who steal. Ocean’s Eleven. Thomas Crown. Clyde Barrow. The Artful Dodger. Robin Hood. Fitzwilly. The cat burglar portrayed by Cary Grant. Jesse James. Butch Cassidy. Donald Trump. All the legendary, awesome tycoons of the Gilded Age were accused of being Robber Barons. Bernie Madoff has admirers who say, if he’d only done it it this way.
It’s getting to be too cool to swindle people. A whole production line of KitKat bars go missing in transit. A few billion dollars bitcoin disappear in a cyber scam. Isn’t it funny when venture capitalists get snookered by fake start-ups? Cleverer by far to get away with insider trading when everybody is an insider, cleaning up suckers over the internet. Sports bets and prediction wagers. Predatory fun and games to defraud the welfare state. It’s shrewd business-as-usual to milk public office for entitled emoluments.
So what’s a little snatch of the purse? A smash and grab? Quick carjack? Petty larceny? Boosting garments and toiletries at the mall? A little plastic card fraud? Porch pirates? Who really cares?
There is no honor among any of them. Honor is not in style either way. Crime pays. There’s street cred. It can escalate into crimes beyond the pale of mere scams and heists. Mummified disapprobation among the general public does less to stop all the social embezzlement than gives a pass to the clever who get away with stealing through loopholes in the law when nobody gets hurt, that is when there are no deaths or injuries, though there are loopholes for that too.
No honor among those charged to enforce the ethos of not stealing, the police and court systems who chase local burglars and robbers, all the way through the social networks all the way to each neighbor looking out for neighbor, there is an unaccountable sad acceptance that if it goes that officers of highest authority allow or engage in shady ripoffs then how is the rest of society expected with a straight face to enforce property crime when comparatively it becomes not that big a deal.
Long as no one gets hurt.
Ruined maybe. Lawsuits in the courts are where capitalists fight over ripoffs every day seizing and losing millions and billions every year. Marxists who view all profits as thievery steal it back with taxes and welfare and bureaucracy that models our every aspect of civilization.
It’s hard not to align with skeptics who see signs of general acceptance of ripoffs as constant elements of human sociology — i.e. normal behavior. From the very top of the pinnacle of power in this world right now the constitutional chief executive office is held by a convicted felon and con artist, the Lyin’ King.
From the top down there are few exceptions to excuses for bad examples to rave about. Maybe it’s easier to lie on tax returns now that the Internal Revenue Service got the DOGE treatment. Swindlers routinely get presidential pardons because the justice department prosecuted them unfairly under a previous administration. The Supreme Court is mute on that. As is Congress. Ultimately then, certain thievery can be legal and illegal behavior can be elevated above the law.
With impunity. Justice isn’t swift or certain, and punishment is in the eye of the beholder.
Buffalo Kelly 