Comments by "voteZDLR" (@voteZDLR) on "Valuetainment"
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@shabutir1820 Nah, plenty of people were prescribed Oxycontin pills for instance by their doctors thinking "Oh, it's prescribed! By my doctor! No harm, no foul!" They take their script, and get addicted. Then they go back and if their doctor is scummy he may give them more. Before long, though, that doctor will cut them off because they're now exhibiting "drug seeking behavior". So what do a lot of these new addicts do? They switch to heroin.
Of all the people who are currently using heroin, I would estimate about 70% of them were prescription pill addicts before they were heroin addicts. The modern heroin and fentanyl epidemic is composed primarily of people that fall under these parameters.
I get it, in your world all the heroin addicts in the world woke up one day and are like "Fuck yeah! I'm gonna become a HeRoIn AdDiCt today! Try and stop me, mom! Fuck you, dad!"
If that's the way you think it works then you're a fucking moron.
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GoodFellas is the more realistic mob movie. It's also depicting the mob in a more "modern" light. The Godfather basically showed Mafiosos to be virtuous, chivalrous, knights with a code of ethics and principles of honor. People in the mafia basically are all doing things in a conspiratorial like way to engage in things the government have said should be illegal and then pedal those products/services to people anyway if there is in fact a demand for it in spite of it's illegal nature. Quick, easy money, till you get caught, but that's the contract that basically every organized criminal in history has signed. If you can't handle the thought of eventually going to prison one day, then you need to stop selling your little bullshit dime or dub sacks and go to college. If you in your heart of hearts can look yourself in the mirror and be like "I am willing to go to prison for this" then do it but you may as well go balls to the wall with it and start dealing more in weight vs playing it small thinking you'll be more likely to slide if you stay small enough. If they want you bad enough, they're going to get you one way or another.
Anyway I don't think The Godfather is that good of a movie, and that's an unpopular opinion I realize. I am not saying I hate it, I just think GoodFellas is by far the better mob film. But it tells the tale of a fuckup/rat in the Mafia, Michael Franzese is very much like Michael Corleone, but really that and the fact that the business was kind of forced on him because his father got sick -- Vito never wanted Michael in the business, but nobody else was up for the challenge but Michael so over time we see Michael transform into this cold-hearted motherfucker and I don't think Michael Franzese ever got to THAT point. Then again, I have no idea the full extent of ALL the things this guy is responsible for doing or ordering.
I do think Franzese deserves his own movie, if only because it will be able to say something The Godfather never could -- Based On A True Story.
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In the eyes of the general public, the civilians and the government especially, criminals like Michael and his father John AKA Sonny are just that. Criminals. The dregs of society. But in THEIR eyes, whether it be them or anyone else who gets involved with organized crime, they're just plying their trade. Al Capone has famously said before that all he was doing was providing a service that people wanted, when talking about bootlegging which was how he made his bones early on. And that if he didn't do it, someone else would. In other words, if it wasn't that he may have chosen to become someone who was involved in another business like banking or stocks or maybe he'd just become a plumber. Because really when you think about it, unless there are innocent bystanders in some instances (which is truly terrible) then dollars to donuts if the mob targets you then you likely were a player in the game yourself. It's just business. I mean I personally see them from more of the same standpoint that the law does, and society, because at it's worst organized crime really is a plight on communities wherever it takes root especially in other ways like loan sharking and extortion, etc., but honestly in these guys mind's they're just doing what they are professionally good at and it just happens to be crime. Take that out of the picture and the remarkable thing is that they're more like normal people than we'd ever like to admit. Such as being such a good father that he never missed one of his son's games. That's just the mark of a good father, taken out of context that the fact is he either has murdered people before or has had them murdered. But again, 99% of the time targets are other criminals and it's pretty much a cardinal sin that will beget punishment from the commission if innocent people do get caught up accidentally or otherwise. The best of them went out of their way to see to it than no harm comes to the innocents.
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I guarantee off camera if he like was greeted at the door by Michael who was just in his socks, he asked "shoes on or off?". For one thing he looks like he comes from a family or region that would have an opinion on it, so it shouldn't be a foreign idea to him. I know me personally, the first thing that would pop in my mind as I noticed is: "OK, on a cultural level among other things, I am going to ask if he has a preference on the shoe thing or not -- if only to save my own life, cause, yeah, that's how Mafia works.". Cause some cultures I know like Indian people (well, I had a friend who dated an Indian chick -- she was hot af, too -- but the one or two times I went over there it was a shoes off house for sure) ask that you leave your shoes at the door. But in America no it's not even close to being a standardized thing, I know feet are generally smellier out of shoes than in them but it really all just depends what the priorities of the homeowner are I guess.
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Boardwalk Empire's a great show if you like the characters that are central to this guy's story. I mean he's talking about how his first major case was defending this guy for stealing a car basically and transporting it across state lines -- a felony. And something that is according to him almost always a lost case, and yet he won. Probably some jury intimidation there, but we don't hear that LOL.
Anyway he says that it impressed a guy named Meyer Lansky. Meyer was #2 only to Lucky Lucciano, the man who basically gave birth to the American Mafia at least insofar as having it be a loose organization of gangs that are governed by a body called the "Commission" which was basically the bosses of each family. It gave more organization to organized crime than had ever been done before. And with it, more power... and oftentimes more peace, because each of the heads of the 5 families all must unilaterally agree for anybody from any family who was a made member to ever so much as be touched by anybody. And of course death and destruction comes to those who would break that rule, Henry Hill and his friends come to mind, who murdered made man Billy Batts in Hill's restaurant and then prayed nobody ever found out it was them.
Anyway, Lucky Lucciano's #2 and the "brains" behind it for all intents and purposes was Meyer Lansky. And of course no story about those two would ever be complete without mentioning their protege Bugsy Siegel, who basically was sent to Las Vegas to turn it into the city it is today -- Sin City. A playground for gangsters, celebrities and normal people alike. Boardwalk Empire talks about the roots of that relationship and covers it all in such a great way. For every fictional character/event, there's like 3 or 4 things that are true to life or at least based in truth.
Finally, my favorite allegory about Lucky Lucciano and Meyer Lansky is how they met to begin with. Lucky Lucciano was always a tough guy, a bully even, even in his youth. One of the people he picked on during his childhood was this young Jewish kid, he figured he'd have money and not be able to defend himself. Wrong. Meyer Lansky couldn't fight, but three times or so all within one week Meyer Lansky fought Lucky and his goons. He lost every single time. By the 3rd or 4th time, because he was able to take the beating so well, Lucky was like "I could use someone like you, you got a lot of fight in you. Not enough, but you got a lot." or something like that. He respected Meyer's ability to take a beating, in other words, and his ability to defend himself even when there's no chance he'd win. That was the basis of their friendship and of course their business relationship, with which they made a fortune doing a variety of crimes and scams but most importantly of all running booze -- and heroin, too, that came later. A secret venture all of their own. Lucky Lucciano basically invented the black market heroin trade in America.
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