# The Starving Artist plan to restore America to its former glory! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 26, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960 "2010-03-26T23:14:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2010, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/81 "2010-03-27T23:21:45Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > And for what it’s worth, I agree with you about liquor, and as much as I loves me some hooch, I’d still give it up willingly in order to see it off the market. There is no question that alcohol, like other drugs, has ruined and taken a great many lives and condemned many family members and loved ones to lives of misery. Yeah, because we all know how well it worked the LAST time we banned alcohol!!! ---
**Author:** ![FloatyGimpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/floatygimpy/32/7750_2.png) [@FloatyGimpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FloatyGimpy)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2010, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/82 "2010-03-27T23:33:17Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I have always viewed liberalism as typical of teenage thought and behavior and conservatism as typical of adult thought and behavior. > [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > even though liberalism is embraced by women more than it is by men Hmmm, sounds to me like you don’t hold men and women equal at all. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2010, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/83 "2010-03-27T23:47:23Z")
For a starving artist you’re a real buzzkill, man. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/84 "2010-03-28T00:03:49Z")
> [@FloatyGimpy](#): > > Hmmm, sounds to me like you don’t hold men and women equal at all. Ahem, well, let me explain myself there, **Gimpy** : There’s a difference. Women, in my opinion, tend more toward liberalism because they have traditionally been the ones who needed to be protected and provided for and cared for, and they’ve also been concerned with protecting and caring for their babies and children. So it’s natural, especially given the breakdown in marital and family stability that has occurred over the last few decades, that they’re going to gravitate to a political ideology that proposes to care and provide for them. They are also less combative as a sex, so it makes sense that they would be drawn to a pacifistic ideology like liberalism. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I believe that women have every bit as much right as men to want government to operate the way they prefer. But theirs is a different type of liberalism than the one that has created the problems I’ve been on about, such as drugs, crime, STDs, and so on. Theirs is a more noble type of liberalism in other words, and one that is rooted in common sense from their more nurturing point of view. I would be more likely to come into conflict with them over things like single-payer health care and so forth, rather than the kinds of things that have resulted in problems with drugs, crime, STDs, thug life and single-parent homes. ---
**Author:** ![SecretaryofEvil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@SecretaryofEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecretaryofEvil)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/85 "2010-03-28T00:05:01Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > But does he have old man strength? ([NSFW due to language and violence](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niIQU8_y_7s&NR=1)) While I too found this video amusing, there are a couple of things that should be pointed out about it. First of all, the black dude who caught the beat down is 50 years old. He’s hardly some punk kid, though I think both men seem to be in remarkably good physical condition for their ages. In interviews that followed the fight, the black guy apologized and admitted he was wrong for escalating the situation to a physical level. The white guy on the other hand, makes it clear that he is a raving lunatic. He claims that he served several years in prison for selling drugs and pimping, and that he was riding on the bus to get some weed. Now I think drugs and prostitution should be legal, and I certainly empathize with this man for his obvious mental issues, but it would appear that this 67 year old white man encapsulates everything Starving Artist thinks is wrong with America. Also I highly doubt his behavior was a result of kook professors influencing him when he was 20, since when he was 20ish he was forcibly sent to Vietnam to kill people for conservative ideals. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/86 "2010-03-28T00:13:58Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Ahem, well, let me explain myself there, **Gimpy** : Yes, ladies: you’ve just been informed that the ugly hat **SA** would never be caught dead in really looks good on _you_. Convinced? ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/87 "2010-03-28T00:18:38Z")
> [@SecretaryofEvil](#): > > While I too found this video amusing, there are a couple of things that should be pointed out about it. First of all, the black dude who caught the beat down is 50 years old. He’s hardly some punk kid, though I think both men seem to be in remarkably good physical condition for their ages. In interviews that followed the fight, the black guy apologized and admitted he was wrong for escalating the situation to a physical level. The white guy on the other hand, makes it clear that he is a raving lunatic. He claims that he served several years in prison for selling drugs and pimping, and that he was riding on the bus to get some weed. Now I think drugs and prostitution should be legal, and I certainly empathize with this man for his obvious mental issues, but it would appear that this 67 year old white man encapsulates everything Starving Artist thinks is wrong with America. Also I highly doubt his behavior was a result of kook professors influencing him when he was 20, since when he was 20ish he was forcibly sent to Vietnam to kill people for conservative ideals. Yeah, I’ve been doing a little checking up on this guy myself. This from Wiki: _“Bruso, born in Michigan,[16] is a self-proclaimed Vietnam veteran who has a history of run-ins with the police. He was stunned with a Taser twice at the Oakland Coliseum by police on August 3, 2009, for failing to comply with police officers. He was charged with resisting arrest and taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.”_ He’s druggie and ex-pimp who resists cops and walks around in t-shirts that say “I Am A Motherfucker”. So yeah, I’d say he encapsulates a fair amount of what I think is wrong with America. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/88 "2010-03-28T00:21:23Z")
If **SA** doesn’t have a solution, and it’s not surprising he doesn’t, given the magnitude of the problem he perceives, how about a thought exercise: if you ( **SA** ) could wave a magic wand and eliminate particular things/thoughts/attitudes/qualities that you felt were causing the problems you see in society, which, in particular, would you target? ETA: Be as specific as possible. Saying “liberalism” is all well and good, but what opinions and attitudes within that rather large subset? ---
**Author:** ![SecretaryofEvil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@SecretaryofEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecretaryofEvil)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/89 "2010-03-28T00:27:58Z")
Oh this thing about “gangstas” pisses me off too. If the works of sociologist Sudhir Alladi Vekatesh are accurate, and I think they are, the average member of a street gang is about 17 years old, makes comparatively less than minimum wage for his illicit activities, and commits crimes to supplement his income from a low paying legitimate job. This is pretty pathetic when compared to the fact that La Cosa Nostra gangs had almost the entire police departments of New York and Chicago on their payroll in the 1950s. This anecdote isn’t about Starving Artist specifically, but I feel it’s pretty pertinent to the concept of misguided nostalgia. My mother and grandmother were lamenting about the lack of integrity prevalent in contemporary society when compared to “the good old days.” I proposed that they may have been suffering from some misguided nostalgia, and brought up the fact that the rape rate is 85 percent lower than it was in 1980. This prompted my mother to retort, “That’s because everyone’s on the pill now and just giving it away.” Now let’s say that statement is true. What lesson could one learn from this? ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/90 "2010-03-28T00:31:19Z")
> [@SecretaryofEvil](#): > > I proposed that they may have been suffering from some misguided nostalgia, and brought up the fact that the rape rate is 85 percent lower than it was in 1980. > This prompted my mother to retort, “That’s because everyone’s on the pill now and just giving it away.” > Now let’s say that statement is true. What lesson could one learn from this? That the country could benefit from socialized nookie? ---
**Author:** ![FloatyGimpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/floatygimpy/32/7750_2.png) [@FloatyGimpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FloatyGimpy)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/91 "2010-03-28T00:37:06Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Ahem, well, let me explain myself there, **Gimpy** : > > There’s a difference. Women, in my opinion, tend more toward liberalism because they have traditionally been the ones who needed to be protected and provided for and cared for, and they’ve also been concerned with protecting and caring for their babies and children. So it’s natural, especially given the breakdown in marital and family stability that has occurred over the last few decades, that they’re going to gravitate to a political ideology that proposes to care and provide for them. They are also less combative as a sex, so it makes sense that they would be drawn to a pacifistic ideology like liberalism. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I believe that women have every bit as much right as men to want government to operate the way they prefer. > > But theirs is a different type of liberalism than the one that has created the problems I’ve been on about, such as drugs, crime, STDs, and so on. Theirs is a more noble type of liberalism in other words, and one that is rooted in common sense from their more nurturing point of view. I would be more likely to come into conflict with them over things like single-payer health care and so forth, rather than the kinds of things that have resulted in problems with drugs, crime, STDs, thug life and single-parent homes. You’ll remember fondly the Peanuts comics. They are from the more enlightened past, right? You know how the teacher sounds? Yeah, that’s all I hear when I look at your posts. “Wha wha wha wha…” ---
**Author:** ![SecretaryofEvil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@SecretaryofEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecretaryofEvil)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/92 "2010-03-28T00:39:37Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Yeah, I’ve been doing a little checking up on this guy myself. > > This from Wiki: > > _“Bruso, born in Michigan,[16] is a self-proclaimed Vietnam veteran who has a history of run-ins with the police. He was stunned with a Taser twice at the Oakland Coliseum by police on August 3, 2009, for failing to comply with police officers. He was charged with resisting arrest and taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.”_ > > He’s druggie and ex-pimp who resists cops and walks around in t-shirts that say “I Am A Motherfucker”. So yeah, I’d say he encapsulates a fair amount of what I think is wrong with America. To be fair to Bruso, I’ve seen the video of him getting tasered, it’s available on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWW7NckzRCc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWW7NckzRCc) (Probably not safe for work)and the cops seem very quick to resort to tasers. Bruso wasn’t fighting the cops so much as refusing to get out of his seat. The man videotaping the incident seems to agree, since he verbally admonishes the cops for resorting to such violence so quickly. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/93 "2010-03-28T00:59:21Z")
> [@SecretaryofEvil](#): > > Oh this thing about “gangstas” pisses me off too. If the works of sociologist Sudhir Alladi Vekatesh are accurate, and I think they are, the average member of a street gang is about 17 years old, makes comparatively less than minimum wage for his illicit activities, and commits crimes to supplement his income from a low paying legitimate job. This is pretty pathetic when compared to the fact that La Cosa Nostra gangs had almost the entire police departments of New York and Chicago on their payroll in the 1950s. What do Mafia gangs in New York and Chicago have to do with gangsta culture? Kids in large and small towns all over the country were’t riding around in business suits and machine gunning people and busting up speakeasys. This reminds me of a previous conversation where someone attempted to rebut my complaints about the current 1-in-4 female STD rates by pointing out a statistic that showed high rates in NYC in 1908 or something, and then triumphantly declared that STDs were around long before the fifties. There is really no comparison between Cosa Nostra activity and gangtsa culture, either in number of individual members or widespread adoptation throughout the country. And you make gang membership sound absolutely benign. I wonder how the parents of gang members and the parents of their victims murdered in drug deals gone bad and drive-by shootings and turf wars feel about Vekatesh’s portrayal of gangstas as little more than underpaid 17-year-old kids. > [@SecretaryofEvil](#): > > This anecdote isn’t about Starving Artist specifically, but I feel it’s pretty pertinent to the concept of misguided nostalgia. > My mother and grandmother were lamenting about the lack of integrity prevalent in contemporary society when compared to “the good old days.” > I proposed that they may have been suffering from some misguided nostalgia, and brought up the fact that the rape rate is 85 percent lower than it was in 1980. > This prompted my mother to retort, “That’s because everyone’s on the pill now and just giving it away.” > Now let’s say that statement is true. What lesson could one learn from this? I think anyone who’s willing to be honest about it would admit that it’s a lot easier to get laid and at an earlier age than it was in the forties or whenever they were young. That’s not to say that I think this is necessarily the reason rapes have declined (if indeed they have; that sounds like an awfully precipitous drop in a relatively short period of time) but I can see how she would come to be of the opinion she has. It seems logical to people not up to speed on the motivations of rapists to think that if sex is easier to obtain it voluntarily it will reduce the need to force it. I’d be more inclined to think it’s because rape publicized and punished more stringently now and DNA and other technologies have made it much harder to get away with. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/94 "2010-03-28T01:09:32Z")
> [@SecretaryofEvil](#): > > To be fair to Bruso, I’ve seen the video of him getting tasered, it’s available on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWW7NckzRCc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWW7NckzRCc) (Probably not safe for work)and the cops seem very quick to resort to tasers. Bruso wasn’t fighting the cops so much as refusing to get out of his seat. The man videotaping the incident seems to agree, since he verbally admonishes the cops for resorting to such violence so quickly. I agree. You may find this amusing but another reason I’m cranked at the drug-and-gang culture is that it has given cops carte blanche to arm up and start swarming people over relatively minor offenses, ordering people around and generally acting like assholes. And many times they are far too quick to use Tasers or to shoot people who have “threatened” them in some way. Here in the town I live in a homeless middle-aged woman was shot to death from twenty feet away by two cops for walking toward them with a knife and refusing to put it down. My great-grandfather was a lifelong policeman who battled '30s era bank robbers and got shot several times in the process, and I know from what I learned from him about self-defense he’d have easily taken that knife from her and then taken her somewhere to get the mental care she so obviously needed. ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/95 "2010-03-28T01:19:55Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > Yes, ladies: you’ve just been informed that the ugly hat **SA** would never be caught dead in really looks good on _you_. Convinced? So he’s Rodney Dangerfield and women are Judge Smales? But wimmins can’t be judges can we? I’m so confused. My pretty lil head may just 'splode. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/96 "2010-03-28T01:25:38Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Ahem, well, let me explain myself there, **Gimpy** : > > There’s a difference. Women, in my opinion, tend more toward liberalism because they have traditionally been the ones who needed to be protected and provided for and cared for, and they’ve also been concerned with protecting and caring for their babies and children. So it’s natural, especially given the breakdown in marital and family stability that has occurred over the last few decades, that they’re going to gravitate to a political ideology that proposes to care and provide for them. They are also less combative as a sex, so it makes sense that they would be drawn to a pacifistic ideology like liberalism. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I believe that women have every bit as much right as men to want government to operate the way they prefer. > > But theirs is a different type of liberalism than the one that has created the problems I’ve been on about, such as drugs, crime, STDs, and so on. Theirs is a more noble type of liberalism in other words, and one that is rooted in common sense from their more nurturing point of view. I would be more likely to come into conflict with them over things like single-payer health care and so forth, rather than the kinds of things that have resulted in problems with drugs, crime, STDs, thug life and single-parent homes. My god but you’re a sexist chauvinist douche of a man. Your vision (or version) of Woman is truly disconnected from reality. Clue phone: we don’t belong on a pedestal, especially not a “noble” one and we don’t want to be “protected”. From whom are you proposing to “protect” us? You have moved from Odd but I’ll Give Him the Benefit of the Doubt to Sexist Moron in my book. More disconnect from reality: trigger-happy, testosterone pumped cops are not the result of gangsta culture. Jeebus. Do you ever go outside and interact in the world? ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/97 "2010-03-28T01:35:52Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > You are right, of course. I’ve said as much myself in pointing out how both women and blacks managed to get the vote and make other advances throughout the preceeding decades without turning society inside out. I was speaking of what mostly came to be known as “women’s lib”, which took the angry and adversarial position that men were deliberately out to oppress and mistreat women and deny them their rights, and which was quick to call anyone who disagreed with it or questioned some of its more ridiculous stances - such as there be absolutely no difference in the sexes save for reproduction - sexists and so forth. The anger and stridency and hatred toward men that characterized the women’s movement of the early seventies is what I was referring to with that comment. That’s what you were speaking of, ok. But your views are not congruent with history. Check out this quote, from the same source, about the “rights of woman” document drafted at the first Women’s Rights Convention (in 1840, I think): > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that they have hitherto occupied… > > We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… > > The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world… > > Then came the list of grievances: no right to vote, no right to her wages or to property, no rights in divorce cases, no equal opportunity in employment, no entrance to colleges, ending with: "He had endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life… The ‘angry and adversarial’ attitude you believe is a signature of the '70s women’s lib movement in fact goes way, way back. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/98 "2010-03-28T01:39:10Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I agree. You may find this amusing but another reason I’m cranked at the drug-and-gang culture is that it has given cops carte blanche to arm up and start swarming people over relatively minor offenses, ordering people around and generally acting like assholes. And many times they are far too quick to use Tasers or to shoot people who have “threatened” them in some way. Here in the town I live in a homeless middle-aged woman was shot to death from twenty feet away by two cops for walking toward them with a knife and refusing to put it down. My great-grandfather was a lifelong policeman who battled '30s era bank robbers and got shot several times in the process, and I know from what I learned from him about self-defense he’d have easily taken that knife from her and then taken her somewhere to get the mental care she so obviously needed. I am not exactly sure that the reasons you assign to the (mounting) abuse of police power are simply down to the “drug-and-gang culture” for as in the example you gave, I doubt that was the thought process in the cops mind’s. I’d be more prone to blame the increasingly authoritarian climate that permeates the US – certainly not something I’d blame on liberals. That said, I do agree that uniforms in general are getting away with way too many excesses for it appears that the consequences just aren’t there anymore. Mind you, I am saying this as someone who got pulled over while driving three times in my last 12 years Stateside and the “worst” I got was a policewoman’s phone number. But I am well aware that’s very much an exception to the rule. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/99 "2010-03-28T01:40:59Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > What do Mafia gangs in New York and Chicago have to do with gangsta culture? Kids in large and small towns all over the country were’t riding around in business suits and machine gunning people and busting up speakeasys. […] There is really no comparison between Cosa Nostra activity and gangtsa culture, either in number of individual members or widespread adoptation throughout the country. I think his point is that, while they call themselves “gangsters” and act and talk like they’re hot criminal shit, they’re really petty small timers who inflict the same or even worse violence on society than mafiosi did back in the day, except they do it to secure an existence which is barely above the dole, nevermind “the good life”. In comparison, organized crime was, well, organized. It was a business, and the people doing it lived very comfortably off of it. High risk, unethical, but high rewards. They didn’t shoot each other over a pair of Nikes or a rock of crack. > [@](#): > > And you make gang membership sound absolutely benign. I wonder how the parents of gang members and the parents of their victims murdered in drug deals gone bad and drive-by shootings and turf wars feel about Vekatesh’s portrayal of gangstas as little more than underpaid 17-year-old kids. How are the two related ? And how does the age of the people involved make it “benign” ? If anything, I’d say 17 year olds gunning each other down, having turf wars and drive by shootings is \*more \*shocking than grown men doing so. At that age, they should be busy fuckin’ , not frontin’. > [@](#): > > I think anyone who’s willing to be honest about it would admit that it’s a lot easier to get laid and at an earlier age than it was in the forties or whenever they were young. It sure ain’t easy for _me_, and I’m still [del]a teenager[/del] [del]young[/del] in my twenties. Shutupshutupshutup, 29 is still “the twenties”. I’m NOT old ! ---
**Author:** ![SecretaryofEvil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@SecretaryofEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecretaryofEvil)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960/100 "2010-03-28T01:45:21Z")
[quote=“Starving\_Artist, post:93, topic:533960”] What do Mafia gangs in New York and Chicago have to do with gangsta culture? Kids in large and small towns all over the country were’t riding around in business suits and machine gunning people and busting up speakeasys. This reminds me of a previous conversation where someone attempted to rebut my complaints about the current 1-in-4 female STD rates by pointing out a statistic that showed high rates in NYC in 1908 or something, and then triumphantly declared that STDs were around long before the fifties. There is really no comparison between Cosa Nostra activity and gangtsa culture, either in number of individual members or widespread adoptation throughout the country. My point is, despite “gangsta culture” gangsters today wield considerably less influence over society than they did 60 years ago. Teenagers who join gangs and can’t shoot straight certainly are a detriment to society. However, well organized criminal syndicates who control politicians and cops are far more dangerous. My point is that despite this “gangsta culture” you think is so prevalent, gangsters are less of a threat to society today than they were 60+ years ago. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-starving-artist-plan-to-restore-america-to-its-former-glory/533960.md?page=6)