I think mob stories tend to be gripping. We, especially now so many years removed from the heyday, have a romantic idea about mobsters, always living on the edge. Sure they're on the wrong side of the law, but just barely and they usually keep the violence away from civilians (this is the romantic bit). Some mobsters are bad dudes, yeah, but some are regular Tokyo Joes thrown into a bad situation.
It's easy to take these seeds and blossom them into a tale about an anti-hero you can't help but root for, because you know how it usually ends for people in this situation (in the ground or behind bars), but you can't help but think, will it be different, just this one time?
TV did that for you. This is another situation where you can prove anything if you ignore enough facts so they just gloss over or ignore all the things that don't fit the story they want to tell.
This is also a classic example of how the "entertainment" industry has been used as a vehicle to shape public perception over the last few decades.
When I was a kid the police shows were Dragnet, Adam-12 etc. The good guys won by following established rules - witnesses report, cops arrest, courts handle trials and convictions, prisons handle rehabilitation/punishment.
Today we see cop shows (firefighter, etc) where the same people who should be making the arrests instead take on the role of executioner. It's been portrayed as okay for a LEO (star of the series) to bend rules and ethical mores, to look the other way when they see one of their own fabricating evidence against someone that is already familiar to them in order to take them off the street, and they routinely ignore constitutional protections when it serves them. The whole idea that cops and courts have these options is one fabricated on your TV screen to help build the narrative that things are bad out there and you need to use all the tools, even the unconstitutional ones, to catch the bad guys because - believe them when they say - there's one around every corner and they're after you.
SV assists all this shit by building tools that they know enable invasion of privacy and near real-time surveillance of everyone who buys a gadget or an app.
In the end, your value to society is measured by what you have contributed in the process of making it better for all of us. For many of you on this site out there you have dug yourselves a deep hole and should begin working on a way to fill it in while there is still time for all of us.
I have noticed that too! When I grew up, a show would end with the bad guy being arrested and handed over to the cops. Now the hero kills the bad guy with pleasure. I think this is more and more creeping into society. Following the rules is for suckers, you have to hustle, cheating is almost mandatory (just don't get caught), discussions need to be "won", loyalty can be exploited and faking honesty and values is a recipe for success.
Also: In a lot of older sci-fi movies the aliens had motivations and could be interacted with. In most newer sci-fi movies they are just an evil faceless force that needs to be destroyed. No need for understanding.
I hope you have an opportunity to watch Magnum, P.I. S3E1 “Did You See the Sunrise?” if you haven’t already for a fantastic dramatic representation of the phenomenon you’re talking about. This antihero trope may have gathered significant momentum during this one episode.
It looks a lot like normalization of deviance accomplished over a couple of generations.
Political candidates use similar tactics in their campaigns nowadays where they make unsupportable accusations against opponents knowing that many people will remember the accusation but will not take the time to determine whether it is true. Sling enough mud and some of it will stick. Lying is normalized and rewarded. Unethical behavior gets you farther than being a person who has principles and adheres to those principles while holding those around them to the same high standards.
Society suffers and becomes more polarized when we don't call this out.
Every time Mulder enters a building without getting a warrant I just have to chuckle in admiration. I like how they self-decribed it, "you're like producers with guns!"
I do not doubt that organized crime is a terrible institution. That said, I wonder how much more effective the labor movement in the United States would be if La Cosa Nostra ran labor unions still. Probably just my brain romanticizing the power of those who operated mafia families to be harnessed for good but I think it'd be a wonderful counterbalance to the power of the American oligarchy to have to negotiate with such a powerful violent force over labor issues. Labor seems to have lost all of it's teeth in it's negotiations. Imagine Bezos sitting across from mafia to negotiate peeing in bottles? lol
The era of mob control over the unions was pretty bad -- I remember living through it. The unions needed their backs broken to get cleaned up.
Naturally a certain political party seized the moment and tried to eradicate unions all together, sadly with some success. I hope the tide is turning away from that.
Organized crime does control the unions. There is no other way that hundreds of people get paid thousands a day without there being work for them as happened in NYC.
It's just that they got better about allocation of money. Union leaders aren't living working class lives if you look at them.
Mafia aren't smart and competent. Crime doesn't pay; criminals are in the business because they can't hack it at anything better (or they're an oppressed underclass.)
I don’t know why I read past the first couple of paragraphs — it’s not the kind of thing I usually care about — but it was gripping.