Of late, I have been watching too many mafioso movies with most, if not all, dealing with former members turning into informants, traitors, or rats to save their own necks.
In Sicily, Italy, the basic rule of the underworld is one learned from kindergarten, “No snitching!” They introduced the Rules on Omerta or Code of Silence.
A mafia godfather, accompanied by his consigliere, meets with their former accountant who was a deaf-mute.
Pointing a pistol in his temple, he asks, “Where is the $3 million you stole from me?” Silence. The godfather asks several times, then the lawyer interrupts, “Boss, know sign language and can interpret for you.”
The lawyer asks, accountant signs back, “I don’t know what you are talking about.” The godfather tells him to ask one last time, or he gets killed.
This time, accountant signs back, “OK! The money is hidden in a brown suitcase behind the garage in my house!”
The lawyer interprets to the godfather, “He says…go to hell……that you don’t have the guts to pull the trigger!”
The ethics of being a gangster is it’s OK to be a killer but unacceptable to be a “snitch.”
On the other hand, during the early Roman Empire, Cicero said, “Thieves have no moral conduct, and cannot trust each other and the norm is they betray each other.”
It seems he must be talking about politicians who are also thieves in a sense, he he. No word of honor in their world. No permanent friends and even family, just allies. Sadly, the ingredients of betrayal, intrigues, cheating, and false hopes have become the usual norm.
The late Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago summed it all when reporters, in 2001, asked about her promise of jumping off a plane if then President Joseph Estrada would be arrested.
“I lied!”
Sigh.
May 1, 2024
