That's The Bad Guy
We can learn from Tony Montana as he reprimands the judgmental conformists watching his life unravel.
One of my favorite movies in high school was Scarface. Though I was never really sure why at the time, I've always loved gangster movies. The time period has never mattered. I like the Capone-style prohibition era films, the coke kingpins in the 70's and 80's, and even the more present day offerings. There's just something about the character and the values of the tax-dodging "bad guys" that I've identified with. This isn't to say that I'd be a gangster in a different life by any stretch. But I believe the true classics in this genre are so much deeper than good guy vs bad guy stories.
These stories will teach us about government, life, leadership and business if we let them. How can you watch The Godfather and not be blown away by Vito Corleone's measured balance to his operation. Or his ability to listen to someone like Tom Hagen for risk assessment rather than pull a Sonny and make an impulse decision that leads to his demise. If you take Vito out of a life of crime and put him in charge of a pizza place, he'll still be wildly successful because of who he is and what he's made of. Tony Montana has some of the same characteristics, though not all of them.
We love these gangster films because they usually have classic lines that we know and recite. The one from Scarface that will probably be the first repeated in a conversation among fans is Tony's blaze of glory quote near the end.
"Say hello to my little friend!"
Tony Montana
There are other great quotes from Tony throughout the film that we can learn from. Many of them pertain to trust and the integrity of a verbal agreement but it's a few scenes before the film's end where Tony really drops the knowledge. It's the dinner scene when Elvira leaves Tony that we get the good stuff. The whole scene is great, but this part stands out to me:
You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be. I emphasized that in the graphic for a reason. I can't think of a line from Scarface that is more fitting for our current time. As Tony berates the other wealthy patrons in the restaurant for being conformist and judgmental, he finishes the quote by saying "you need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say 'that's the bad guy."
That's the bad guy.
Is Tony Montana a bad guy? I don't know. Probably. After all, he sells drugs and kills people. But if that's the goalpost, wouldn't that mean Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are bad as well? The point is, we all see things from a different vantage point. I see what is happening in our medical industrial complex and I'm terrified at the profound lack of integrity from so many organizations that demand the public's trust. The FDA, the CDC, and mainstream media immediately come to mind.
I'm baffled that Hulu, a service with roughly 43 million subscribers, has recently released a mini-series about the opioid epidemic called "Dopesick" that is getting great reviews and viewer attention. Though Purdue Pharma is often painted as the big offender in the opioid problem, Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer have both been scrutinized for their involvement with opioids as well. To the company's credit, Moderna was not deeply involved with opioids. That said, it's probably only because after a decade of trying, Moderna was literally unable to successfully bring a pharmaceutical product to market before COVID. So that's fairly concerning for different reasons.
We know the history of these companies. It isn't a secret. And we know how bad these businesses have harmed the public in the past. And yet, here is America, like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football, falling for it again with these drug companies. It's beyond comprehension to me. Are we just not collectively thinking (as individuals)? Or is it that we just don't have the desire to stand up for what we believe in anymore? Is the American spirit truly dead? Outside of my new kindred spirits, who are now sacrificing careers to stand up to private/public tyranny, who will be the "bad guy" with us? I know many of you who got the shot actually hate what is happening right now. Who will have the guts to be what they wanna be?
Who are you? Can you answer that? What are your values? What are you passionate about? What if money as you know it doesn't exist tomorrow and we all start at zero again? Would you feel duped for getting a shot you didn't want just to save a shitty paycheck? Maybe the best question is what has to happen for you to take a stand? The opioid crisis was one defined by addiction in adults. This time it is far more wicked. They want to inoculate children to protect them from a disease that has almost no risk of seriously harming them.
Teens are more likely to die by suicide than they are from COVID. Yet we're doing very little as a society to protect them from that. To the parents out there, jabbed or un-jabbed, I sure hope your line is giving experimental injections to 5-year-olds.
Maybe that makes me the bad guy. Or maybe it's what you needed to hear.
Reading recommendations
Margaret Anna Alice - Letter to a Scientifically Minded Friend
Glenn Greenwald - The Masking of the Servant Class
Aaron Siri - One Brave ICU Physician Leads to a Dozen More
Johanna Neuman - Britney Spears, Kyrie Irving, and Vax Mandates
Igor Chudov - VAERS Data is NOT Fake and NOT Made Up
Mary Beth Pfeiffer - Horse Bleep
First off, I am honored to be included in your list of recommendations—it looks like I’m in good company!
“Who will have the guts to be what they wanna be?”
Ever since I started writing to unmask totalitarianism and awaken the sleeping before tyranny triumphs, I have been growing increasingly emboldened, and it is a liberating, exhilarating feeling. I never thought I might be able to do this full-time, but now I know I must, because it has become an all-consuming passion, and everything else pales in significance given the high stakes we are facing.
“Are we just not collectively thinking?”
I would say that is the *last* thing we want to do as that is what has gotten us into this mass hypnosis mess. Here’s one of *many* salient quotes on this from Gustave Le Bon’s “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind”:
“[A]n individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself—either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd, or from some other cause of which we are ignorant—in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotised individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotiser. The activity of the brain being paralysed in the case of the hypnotised subject, the latter becomes the slave of all the unconscious activities of his spinal cord, which the hypnotiser directs at will. The conscious personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment are lost. All feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by the hypnotiser. Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a psychological crowd. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case, as in the case of the hypnotised subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity.”
Also, I think you would appreciate Robert Gore’s “Everything I Know About Business I Learned From The Godfather.” I am grateful for his work at Straight Line Logic (https://straightlinelogic.com/) and am thankful to have him as a subscriber and friend.