Opera buffa

 America's leading crime family could do with less vendetta and more omerta.  My understanding, based largely on movies, is that crime bosses never used to talk on the phone (Casino and GoodFellas) and strenuously objected to being photographed even at a wedding reception (The Godfather).  Every time Trump opens his mouth he incriminates himself a little more, and the behavior of his foot soldiers live-streaming their crimes is just weird.  

Whining to the media was also unthinkable, but here's Fredo on the Sean Hannity Self-Pity Party, vowing revenge like a Verdi father:  "It violates the Constitution, it's unethical, it's wrong..." he declared, referring to Letitia James doing her job as attorney general by enforcing the laws of New York State.  (Perhaps Merrick Garland will do something similar before his enterprise has to be called Voterdammerung, the Twilight of Democracy.)  Fredo promises -- what else? -- a lawsuit, although James should check her bed for severed horse heads every night.  Whaddaya gonna do when your accountant not only quits mid-investigation but publicly retracts ten years' worth of financial statements?  It may be too late to take the accountant on a little trip (The Untouchables).  How about your consigliere "negotiating" to testify at the January 6 committee?  When he's babbling about "gobbledygook...supported by about a thousand pieces of evidence" which may be in his bedroom or possibly his den?  (I still think he's living in a Motel 6.)  

Right on cue the Family got its media whores yelling about how Hillary Clinton ordered up wire tapps on Trump (with her authority as a retired Secretary of State) to make it look like he was colluding with foreigners with obviously fake names like Lavrov and Kislyak, solely to undermine him, because she just can't accept that she lost in spite of her three-million-popular-votes margin.  

Hey, you want distractions?  You got distractions!  The whole impending invasion of Ukraine?  Nah, just to take our minds off the yuge Hillary scandal.  The Trump-inspired "uprisings" in Canada?  They desperately need to be liberated from Trudeau's tyranny so they can become American!  And why didn't Joe Biden stop the riots in the summer of 2020?  Not yet being President is no defense according to Judge Pirro, who likes a drink occasionally.  Think of it as the ballet in the opera's second act, the one you use for napping.

One thing the old-timers never did was threaten judges.  (Or kill cops except corrupt ones -- Godfather again.)  Probably not school boards or public health doctors either, because who but a strunz would do that?  And yet here's the US Marshals Service reporting more than 4,500 threats to federal judges last year.  Some states are increasing security for state and local judges.  Pazzo!  But this is a new kind of organized crime.  Even Murder, Inc., never tried to overthrow the government.