The year is 1996, the movie is Gotti the biographical crime drama about John Gotti. It’s one of the best mob movies out there. It was an HBO movie, but probably should’ve been in theaters. The line: “‘5-10 years from now, they going to miss John Gotti.’”

That line wasn’t just dialogue; it was a prophecy dressed up in a tough-guy suit. The movie understood something that the federal prosecutors and the media-hyped moralists never did: the Dapper Don, for all his flaws and his ultimate downfall, was a stabilizing force. And twenty-something years later, we’re living in a world that feels increasingly unstable. Maybe, just maybe, they were right.

Think about it. Back then, there was an unwritten law on the streets, enforced not by a distant city hall, but by guys in sharp suits who lived a few blocks over. You didn’t mess with the old lady’s purse. You didn’t sell hard drugs on the corner. Petty crime? It was often kept in check by a system that was far more immediate and brutally effective than the slow grind of the conventional justice system. They kept the trash off the streets, quite literally, because a messy neighborhood was bad for business, and worse for the image. The local neighborhood felt a sense of control, an unspoken contract where the devil you knew kept the chaos at bay.

But the influence didn’t stop at the neighborhood deli. The classic, old-school Mafia was a global operation—an underground multinational corporation—that, ironically, often displayed a greater sense of strategic foresight and discipline than some so-called elected officials we have today. They understood logistics, supply chains, and, crucially, territorial integrity. They knew how to make complex deals and keep them, because their word, their “honor,” was the only real collateral they had.

Now, look at the world run by the “legitimate” powers. We have politicians tripping over themselves, passing bills nobody reads, and promising peace while delivering endless polarization and foreign policy disasters. We have city councils that can’t fix a pothole but are experts at raising taxes. The old mob, for all its criminality, provided a perverse, self-serving order. They operated under a clear, hierarchical structure with defined rules. They were transactional, yes, but often far more straightforward in their dealings than the endless layers of bureaucracy and double-speak we endure from our supposed leaders.

In the end, maybe missing Gotti isn’t about wishing for crime to flourish. It’s about longing for a time when there was a recognizable authority, even if it was a criminal one. It’s about a deep-seated frustration with the current state of affairs—the disorder, the chaos, the petty and grand corruption that seems to breed everywhere except where an old-school crew used to operate. The guys who ran the streets used to have a code. You can’t say the same for the guys running the capital today.So, next time you read the headlines—whether it’s about a new spike in street violence or another global market crash caused by sheer incompetence—think back to that line from the movie. The dismantling of the traditional, hierarchical mob didn’t just eliminate a criminal enterprise; it left a massive, gaping void in the structure of power, both on the block and far beyond. This new world, free of the Dapper Don’s rules, hasn’t become cleaner; it’s just become messier, more fractured, and infinitely less predictable. We swapped a self-regulating criminal order for a dysfunctional political one. And that, in the end, is why they were right. Maybe they don’t miss the man himself, but they definitely miss the order he represented. And that’s a truly chilling thought for legitimate society to wrestle with.