In my mind there are three basic types of villains in the world.
You have your Bond Villains, they are larger than life world shaking monsters where the downfall is a plan too big for them to handle. Big ideas require big organizations and eventually someone slips up and alerts MI7. And then Double-O-Mueller shows up.
You have the cartoonish and campy Batman villains who are focused on smaller goals but with much bigger egos. They are too flashy to sneak by the rest of us forever. That and the desire to show the world they are better than Batman and smarter than everyone else is their downfall.
And then there are the thuggish Sopranos villains. It’s greed that gets them.
Most real world villainy, rather than day to day crime, comes from people who are mix of two of these archetypes. Russian oligarchs tend to be a mix of Bond villain and Sopranos villain. International Narcotics smuggling attracts these types as well. Flamboyant con men tend to be a mix of Batman villain and Sopranos villain. They tend to have cons built around their own personalities and suited to their odd aesthetics. When you mix campy Batman-type with the Bond-type you end up with something like Dr Evil from the Austin powers movies or the villains from Despicable Me.
Most of the cast of scoundrels in the Trump Russia investigation are a mix of either Bond and Sopranos or Batman and Sopranos. They were all greedy. It’s whether the Ego getting too big or the Plan too grand that separates them.
- George Papadopoulos: Pure Sopranos. He gets beat slapped by Paully Wallnuts and turns state.
- Paul Manafort: part Bond, part Sopranos. He wanted to be elegant and sophisticated but had too much Don in him to do it. It was his greed that gave the plan away. Case in point: https://people.com/politics/paul-manafort-ostrich-leather-jacket/
- Alex van der Zwaan: Bond villain. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a death laser in storage somewhere. Too much paperwork to conceal.
- Michael Flynn: Bond villain. He just found it too hard to juggle his work for Turkey with his work for the US. Flipping to the good guys like the guy who got pulled into the caper and had second thoughts was a fitting end to this chapter.
- Michael Cohen: Sopranos with a touch of Batman. Just listen to that phone call where is describes his revenge as “disgusting” and wonder what his theme would be. Mucus Monster? A radioactive hairball coughed up by Catwoman?
Roger Stone is special. Roger Stone is all three. Roger Stone is the in intersection of all three. He is a batman villain, a Bond villain and a Sopranos thug. He is as campy as anyone in the Batman comics down to the Richard Nixon ink on his back. As thuggish as any Sopranos heavy with his thinly veiled threats and yet somehow. He was able to maneuver in the big leagues with Oligarchs, foreign intelligence and see his Don become POTUS.
The he blew it. It was the absurdity of the plan, the greed and the ego. This chapter will be amazing.
Lived and worked in MD/DC for the first 40 years of my life, so I’ve got some experience with law firms who interact with people like Stone. If you research Black, Manafort & Stone, you’ll see the shitbags they represented and the ratfucking they engaged in … Manafort and Stone should have been in jail 30 years ago. Still, they’re both going away now.