You’d hardly know it from the wall-to-wall coverage of the George Zimmerman case, but there’s another trial going on that’s at least as worthy of national attention. That’s the 32-count federal racketeering indictment against James “Whitey” Bulger, a Boston mob kingpin linked to at least 19 murders, captured in 2011 after 16 years on the lam.

Bulger, a former “Top Echelon Informant” for the FBI, is a monster, but he’s hardly the only villain in a story where “gangster government” leaves the realm of metaphor. As Boston Globe reporters Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy explain in their riveting new biography of Bulger, the Irish mobster ruled South Boston for nearly two decades, “protected by the arrogance and corruption of an FBI and a Justice Department that tolerated murder as an acceptable price of doing effective law enforcement.”

President Obama continually derides “cynics” whose distrust of government stands in the way of all the good things it can do for us. It’s wrong, Obama told college graduates in May, to think of government as “some separate, sinister entity.”

When Government Meets Organized Crime: Corrupt FBI let mobster Whitey Bulger keep killing—and it cost innocent lives.

Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice (Google Books)

Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss (Google Books)

James “Whitey” Bulger

We need a larger, more powerful, and less accountable government. Forward!

Ozymandias.

Forward!

Unfortunately, it seems that the future Aldous Huxley predicted in 1932, in Brave New World, is arriving early. Mockery, truculence, and minimalist living are best, then enjoy the decline. However, we do need a Revolving Door Tax (RDT), learn what Members of Congress pay in taxes, and prosecute politicians and staff and their “family and friends” who profit from insider trading. Oh, and pay “public servants” what they are worth.