When The Godfather (The U.S.) Makes You An Offer You Can’t Accept
I’m not an expert in international law, but I have a pretty good idea from the streets of what is acceptable and what is not. And the general principle there states that if someone throws a first punch then he started it. Furthermore, the person who threw the first punch is now a fair target for a punch from the guy who got sucker-punched. In fact, it’s generally acknowledged that when you sucker punch someone, the other guy has the right to kick the living shit out of you. Because it’s a punk thing to do and there is no such thing as a preemptive punch.
If you get knocked out by someone who sucker punches you, you are the victim. If you get knocked out by someone you sucker punched, you got what is coming to you. The only time this does not apply is if the sucker puncher hangs out with a really bad crowd who will come after you with baseball bats. In this case, the rules don’t apply because you are dealing with lawless hooligans. We call such people gangbangers or mafiosi. Our country has laws to protect us from such people, and international law has — or ought to have — laws protecting countries from such criminal behavior. The International Criminal Court and the International Court Of Justice both have cases currently against the sucker puncher for previous crimes, but the mafia’s lawyers are trying to tie things up in court while their goons are trying to intimidate prosecutors into dropping charges with thinly-veiled threats of violent reprisal.
There is one further wrinkle to this argument: Suckerpuncher has long been accusing the guy he sucker punched of giving aid to the other people Suckerpuncher sucker punches. In fact, Suckerpuncher has been accusing the guy he jumped of aiding all the people in the neighborhood Suckerpuncher has control over, and seeing how this territory was given to him by the Big Don, Suckerpuncher feels it is his right to brutalize and shakedown everyone that lives there. Suckerpuncher is in a privileged position because Big Don Salvatore “Sammy the Assassin” is his Uncle. Suckerpuncher is, as they say, a made man.
There’s an element of truth to Suckerpuncher’s accusation. Suckerpuncher’s target has long been giving pocket change to the victims of Suckerpuncher. Truth be told, he’s even slipped some of them a shiv or some brass knuckles for them to defend themselves. In such a brutal game, sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s the victim and who’s the aggressor, although Suckerpuncher drives around in a limo while those who live in his neighborhood have been reduced to eating out of the dumpster behind the local pasta restaurant just to survive. Still, Suckerpuncher is making the claim that he’s the victim and that he’s only defending himself. And that mostly works, because justice typically sides with the strong, and Sammy The Assassin is not only strong but ruthless.
There’s just one problem: Sammy the Assassin is guilty of every single crime Suckerpuncher is accusing the guy he suckerpunched of. In spades. Sammy has been sending weapons of all sorts to his buddies in other neighborhoods to go after HIS enemies, and then plays it off like his hands are clean. There is not a crime Suckerpuncher can accuse anybody of for which his Uncle Sammy The Assassin is not doubly guilty. In fact, the crimes of Sammy The Assassin have been so many and so egregious, that the people paying him tribute for so long can no longer afford what he’s charging for protection. He’s putting them in an impossible position. In ages past he made them an offer that they couldn’t refuse, now he’s gotten so drunk with power that he’s making them offers that they can’t possibly accept.
It’s not that anybody’s eager to confront Sammy The Assassin and his nephew, Suckerpuncher. It’s just that they’ve gone so far over the top that they no longer have any other choice.
And besides, people are sensing Sammy and Suckerpuncher are not the badasses they used to be. Easy times have made them soft. And privileged. And nobody likes paying tribute to soft, privileged gangsters.