Ah. I see that the Trump administration has managed to pull the same thing as the Bolsonaro administration did.

Waow (basedbasedbasedbased)

The country is Brazil.

If you are unfortunate enough to live in the favelas (aka: Very very poor in a big city), you’ll be under their thrall.

But the little secret is that… They end up being not that different from the government. They have their own ‘laws’, and if you follow them, you’ll be left alone. Their protection rackets become like taxes, except instead of going to jail for not paying, you’ll get tortured – And you might even benefit from them in a way.

A friend of mine tells a story about doing social work in a favela, and how after years of neglect from the government resulting in kids from the place not getting vaccinated, the local crimelord bought the vaccines with his own money and had his own paralell vaccination campaign for everyone that was properly paying their protection money. Hopefully you won’t catch a stray bullet when the illegal liege lord of your neighbourhood-fiefdom is at war with the police or another neighbourhood-fiefdom’s illegal lord for the umpteenth time that year.

If you are not in the favela…

… Well… If you buy weed from a dealer or borrow money from illegal lenders and don’t pay your bills, they’ll probably abduct you and break your legs.

If you do none of those things… You might get pickpocketed or mugged, but that is honestly the extent of interactions that I, a rich boy from the third world, have had with the criminal factions of my country. Muggings. Being threatened and told to hand over my phone (which I did, I’m not stupid). Having a gameboy swiped from my bag while at an anime con.

Inhabitant of a 3rd world country here

I don’t think “kidnapped and tortured by the government” is a thing we’ve done much of since the US stopped funding our far right dictatorship in the 80s (and the military immediately fucked off and ‘let democracy take its course’ when the funding dried up).

… Let us not speak of what our criminal factions get up to though.

I think they were trying to make a joke and failed