A Boston Story

William Rivers Pitt, a Bostonian, on the Stanley Cup and Whitey Bulger:

The story of Whitey Bulger is a Boston story, right down to the roots, but it is also an American story, one that has been repeated ad nauseam through the years. Criminal acts are committed, nests are feathered, and the occasional body thumps into the bottom of an unmarked grave. Instead of justice, however, there are backroom deals, payoffs, and cover-ups. It is the story of Congress, of the courts, of corporate America, of a political and legal system that has been utterly corrupted by those with no honor or decency, who are motivated by greed and a lust for power, and who operate beyond the reach of the law because they are protected, coddled, and insulated from justice.

Compared to the criminals and confidence men who rule this country, Boston's Whitey is less than a cipher. He killed nineteen people, while the powers-that-be can lay claim to corpses beyond numbering. Whitey ripped off drug dealers, while the powers-that-be rip off every single breathing person in the land. Whitey is is jail, while the powers-that-be who outstrip his bloodthirstiness by orders of magnitude walk around free and easy. Whitey's version of "organized crime" is a child's game compared to what these people do, day after day, without any fear of ever being brought to justice.

But in the end, Whitey Bulger is a metaphor for all that ails America today, and it will not be changed unless we the people change it. More than a million people took to the streets here to celebrate the Bruins. Imagine what might happen if crowds of that same magnitude took to the streets of Washington, New York, of every major city in this country, to demand that the Whitey Bulgers who are the real power in America be brought, at last, to true justice, and that the John Connollys who protect and enrich them are chased from their cozy positions and run out of town on a rail.

Gee, sounds like a revolution! Didn't one of those start around Boston once before?