The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(07-18-2020, 06:37 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(07-18-2020, 03:37 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-18-2020, 03:08 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Yep, Minnesota wasn't the Wild West or at least that's what the James Gang thought before they were completely decimated by a bunch of well armed American citizens (rednecks) who lived in Northfield, Minnesota.

In the gilded age, there was a romantic view of the outlaws being the good guys, and the enemy was the Robber Barons and corporations who were bringing the old independent free life to an end.  Robbing Wells Fargo, a bank, or some rich railroad was a good thing?  Big rich corporate easterners go home?

Not everyone saw it that way, for example the people of Northfield.  Still, for a romantic reading a pulp piece far away, the perspective was understandable.

Yep. The romantic view of famous outlaws went on to include gangsters like Al Capone, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde and so forth until FDR and J. Edger Hoover showed up and began leaning heavy on Democratic governors/mayors to stop enabling them by offering them sanctuary and began taking them out/down one by one.

New technology often gets put to perverse uses. Inexpensive video equipment as recording devices and playback devices became the conduits for child pornography. Computers and wire transfers can be programmed to do large-scale embezzlement. Firearms... what could be more obvious? The automobile was the perfect device for hit-and-run offenses... do an armed robbery in a neighboring state or near-neighboring state, getting to the scene of the crime and returning to one's own state where one lives off the loot. In one's own state one behaves oneself and does nothing to be prosecuted there. Bad people are as adept as putting technology to use as the rest of us.   

It's J. Edgar Hoover who put an end to the practice of offenders crossing state lines to get away with crimes because they happened to be 'clean' in one state. Bonnie and Clyde did that. To a certain extent Dillinger (still the most hated man in Indiana) did that. They typically lived off the proceeds of their crimes in one state in which they did nothing illegal. J. Edgar Hoover made the most of a federal law that made a federal offense of crossing a state line to avoid criminal prosecution. Once the offender was in federal custody for a comparatively minor crime, the crook could be sent to the state of choosing by the FBI for prosecution. So you live in Wisconsin but commit your big crimes in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana? The FBI will let the several states practically bid on who gets him based upon the severity of offenses. If the crime is likely to get one a very long stay in prison or a short stay followed by a few thousand volts in the electric chair... then a case nearly certain to lead to the electric chair wins. There were other tricks, too. Capone was ultimately convicted not of bootlegging and murders but of federal tax evasion. Kidnapping for ransom was an easy way to make money as a criminal until the Feds clamped down.

The 1930's was the peak decade for executions. While Governor of New York State, FDR had signed some death warrants. He never was exactly 'nice' to offenders. Let's remember also that the movie studios followed the lead of the politicians in showing criminal offenders as scum who ended up perhaps like "Rocky Sullivan" (James Cagney) in Angels with Dirty Faces , initially living the high life until their lives take the well-deserved end... the electric chair. Note well that in that movie a crooked attorney (played by none other than Humphrey Bogart) who gets complicity in the crimes of "Rocky" ends up dead in a gangland murder. 

So the outlaws who were heroes in some misguided circles ended up in prison, killed by law enforcement, or 'fried' in the electric chair. That's one way to lose relevance. It's also telling that American propaganda of World War II did much to compare Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo to such gangsters. OK, Mussolini would die of a firing squad after being caught by Resistance forces taking over in northern Italy before the US Army got to him; Hitler offed himself in a bunker a couple of days before the Soviet Army got into his bunker; Tojo would be hanged and not electrocuted. But you get the general idea. 

OK... running afoul of Donald Trump politically isn't close to the sort of offense as the sort of offense that liberals usually find easy to treat as a public horror -- such as human trafficking. Like genuine despots who get away with killing those who run afoul of them, Trump sees dissent as a great crime. Our system never has worked that way and, so far as I can tell, never will. Checks and balances are far better defenses of human rights and civil liberties than is the public love of liberty. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Satan Hussein, and al-Baghdadi never let checks and balances get in the way of their agenda.  Checks and balances do far more to stop a Donald Trump who tries to rule as a despot than a Barack Obama who honors the niceties of the rule of law. 

You tell me, though -- which bleeding-heart liberal politician is giving sanctuary to outlaws reminiscent of  Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Frank and Jesse James, etc.? Several of our most liberal politicians got their political starts as crime-busting DA's who saw no political significance in suppressing drug trafficking, child abuse, spouse abuse, and perhaps auto-theft rings. I am a liberal and I was offended when a relative of mine (by marriage) bragged about buying some stolen tires... in the presence of someone whose car was stolen and my father whose car was broken into for its expensive radio. 

It might surprise you that the criminals are generally apolitical. They simply prefer weak, lax, or incompetent law enforcement that allows them to get away with their crimes... or think themselves smarter than some "dumb cop".