Small Town America And The Ghetto - Only The Trash Is Different

Pharoah Jones was the King of Anacostia, Washington's deepest inner city - a neighborhood of endemic crime, drug abuse, single parenthood, truancy, gangs, and violence.  Yet, there is money to be made everywhere in America, and it only takes enterprise, ambition, and intelligence.  There is a bell curve for every population, and Pharoah Jones was on the bright side of it.

Jones' empire was impressive, a large conglomerate of drugs, prostitution, extortion, trafficking, and money laundering.  He had partners in the Sinaloa cartel, the Kingston crewes, MS-13, and the Gambino family.  He was Washington's version of Frank Lucas, the Godfather of Harlem who a few decades ago ruled as vast an illicit empire.

Both men never hid from the law, so secure were they in their protection, their cover, and their network.  Police, judges, magistrates, city council members, federal agents all were either on the payroll or intimidated into silence.   

As such Pharoah Jones was never seen without his full-length white ermine coat, 24 karat gold chains, South African diamonds, Angolan emeralds, and Indonesian cultured pearls.  His ride was a Cadillac Escalade, chopped and channeled with silver spinners.  It was an armored lowrider, triple enameled black with red and purple trim, tinted glass, wet bar, and complete quadraphonic hi-tech sound system. 

He had houses on Washington's Gold Coast, Palm Beach, St. Barts and St. Tropez.  His millions were secure in offshore accounts in Aruba, Bimini, and Antigua. 

He had two wives, three consorts, and Fulani and Egyptian concubines.  His children were too numerous to count, but when he did, he showered them with gifts, promises, and gold.  

Now, the rest of Anacostia was a shithole - a pestilential, god awful, miasmic slum - but the perfect address for a man of Pharoah Jones' enterprise.  Even SWAT teams were reluctant to go there, so well-armed and fearless were the street gangs.  The last time that the forces of law and order went in to Anacostia, they were ambushed, encircled, and fired upon with the most modern Soviet, Israeli, and South African automatic weapons, grenade launchers and rockets.  They were forced to withdraw after taking many casualties. 

An emissary from Anacostia sent to the Mayor's office and the FBI, warned against any such intrusions into what he called 'sovereign territory', and offered generous gifts to both to encourage compliance. 

Pharoah Jones, through a combination of intelligence, street sense, business savvy, and canny risk analysis, was one of the most respected and feared men in The Nation's Capital. 

Seymour Babbidge, Senior Vice President of the Chillicothe (Ohio) Savings and Loan was not unlike Pharoah Jones in that he managed a not insignificant empire.   Although small town America was limned as the heart and soul of the nation, the repository of family values, propriety, rectitude, probity, and social harmony, it was nothing of the kind.  

While there were enough proper merchants, doctors, teachers, and farmers to maintain the image, the real Chillicothe was in the hands of Seymour Babbidge who built a billion dollar financial empire with the same savvy, instinctive sense for weak links, gullibility, credulousness, and greed as Pharoah Jones.

Years ago he saw a lucrative opening - his bank had profited from one of Jeffery Skilling's Enron creative financial instruments. It was the ideal cover - as were a hundred other small, independently-owned institutions across the country - for Skilling's ingenious schemes; and thanks to that interest, Babbidge, selected as point person for Enron, was the first to benefit.

Skilling quickly realized that he had a diamond in the rough in Seymour Babbidge. Babbidge quickly understood the ins and outs of the Enron 'creative' network, and was to be the 'facilitator' with other independent banks affiliated within the Independent Bank Association. 

There were men like Babbidge throughout the system, men willing to take a few risks and unprecedented steps to make unaccountable, tax free money, and they formed 'the network of the willing' as Skilling had called it. 

Before long hundreds of millions of dollars were passed first through semi-legal institutional channels and then through the hands and offshore bank accounts of Babbidge operatives.  Like any good scam, investors were paid off, but lightly, while the bulk of the profits went into the pockets of Babbidge's men. 

Now, just like the residents of Anacostia, the good people of Chillicothe knew - or certainly suspected the goings on behind closed doors at the Chillicothe Savings and Loan. The remarkable returns on their investments, as small as they were, were indicative of something bigger. 

This complicity was based on a more fundamental moral corruption.  Behind the scenes of Midwest propriety, faith, and fidelity the same disregard for social mores found in Anacostia, existed in Chillicothe. Husbands and wives cheated on each other with regularity.  

Infidelity was so brazen that after church on Sundays, husbands virtually strolled into the arms of their lovers under the transparent cover of 'playing eighteen holes' while their wives entertained their paramours in the rooms of the Farmington Arms. 

Druggists cheated a little here and their on their taxes, lawyers overbilled, butchers kept their thumbs on the scales, and furriers sold otter as mink. 

On the surface, Chillicothe seemed as it was supposed to be - a place of courtesy, bonhomie, and good faith.  Men tipped their hats at ladies walking by, opened car doors for them, smiled broadly, and wished them well.  Children were all well-behaved and if not scholarly, at least good students. 

Daniel Goldhagen wrote a book about Germans' complicity with the Nazis during World War II.  The Germans had to have known about the concentration camps, the gas chambers, and the ovens, Goldhagen said, but they kept quiet.  The Nazis were doing what they had wanted to do long ago. 

The principle behind the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was based on the assumption of complicity - no regime can stand without the support of the people.  There are no such thing as innocent civilians in warfare.  Dresden was incinerated on this assumption. 

The people of Chillicothe were no fools, and as mentioned, many made out quite well at Seymour Babbidge's bank.  They, like the Germans, had to know but did nothing. 

This is all to say that while family values are not exactly a scam, they are a convenient cover for a society which since the age of snake oil salesmen has had scams, cons, and Ponzi schemes in its blood. 

This is not exactly a bad thing, for American capitalism is based on the same credulousness, consumer ambition, and social dynamics used by crooks.  'A sucker is born every minute', said circus impresario P.T. Barnum, and how right he was.  Everyone wants to believe that the freak actually has two heads, that the promise of fifty-percent risk free return is real, that the stock broker is your friend. 

'Caveat emptor' does not apply just to dry goods, but to American life in general.  The ethos has not changed, just the marketplace.

It is unlikely that either Pharoah Jones or Seymour Babbidge will see the inside of federal prison, but Skilling, Bernie Madoff, and Rudy Kurniawan have, so you never know. 

Meanwhile Babbidge is enjoying life skiing at Gstaad, wintering in the islands, and treating his mistress like the princess she really is. 

And Pharoah Jones?  Same deal, different venue.  Both real Americans.