It is a very male world.  Women are there to be seen and not heard.  It would be absurd to suggest that any woman should be able to exercise any real power outside the bedroom or kitchen.  (And she may not be safe or alone in one of those.)

The basis of the arrangement follows the feudal pattern, which in turn followed the protection rackets run by Athens and Rome.  ‘I am your man.  I serve you.  You protect me.’  Homage (honour or respect shown to someone publicly) and allegiance (loyalty or commitment to a superior person or cause) – then protection (keeping someone safe from harm). 

There were, at least in theory, mutual obligations, but it is obvious that the whole structure rests on a basis of inequality – something that the French mistakenly thought they had abolished after 1789, until Napoleon set them right with a whiff of grapeshot.

The hierarchy is both unwritten and complicated.  It has evolved over time.  We might fairly describe that evolution as ‘tribal,’ because it comes from and is identified with people who identify as part of a group that is like a sect, clan, or tribe.  Indeed, in our miserable argot, they practise a kind of ‘identity politics’.

At the top of the pyramid sits, or stands, the leader.  (The Italian word is duce; the German is fűhrer.)  It is the custom that he gets there by force or deception, or both.  (It may be said that this system has one thing in common with the common law that underlies our whole constitutional fabric – it all comes from custom, which becomes convention in a governmental or constitutional context.)

The inarticulate premise is that power goes to the strong.  Vae victis.  (In Kenya it is called ‘my turn at the table’.)  Violence and termination are, after all, the final arbiters.

These people are above, or at least outside, the State and its laws.  In fact, it is their rejection by, or of, the State that is their raison d’être.  They want more than the State can offer, and the resulting conflict is therefore both deadly and inevitable.  They are the alternative State.

Not in any order, they are concerned with respect, standing, loyalty – personal loyalty – all subject to the instinct of revenge. 

One problem with the vendetta is that it perpetuates itself.

But the overriding goal of each association, and its leader, is to get and maintain power.  Power brings respect.  Each depends on personal loyalty.  And any act of disloyalty is likely to be met with immediate revenge – that may be as terminal as it is brutal.

Servitude brings groveling and sycophants.  That induces more egoism in the leader, and leads to the corruption that inevitably comes with power. 

The world view in the clan is very different to that outside.  Deception is everywhere, because truth holds no value.  Indeed, the very word ‘value’ is problematic.

In the outside world, this kind of group aspiration – such as in a political party or football club – turns on trust.  But that is not so in these outsiders.  Hardly anybody trusts any one else.  The body is held together by greed and fear.  Indeed, the time to get really nervous is when someone above you expresses gratitude, or even affection.  Sincerity is wholly alien.  (A football coach, Tony Shaw says, knows that he is on the skids when the committee says it has ‘full faith and confidence’ in him.)

If you do some good in their eyes, you may on a good day get some prize.  That is in the discretion of the hierarchy and ultimately the leader.  But woe betide you if you get it wrong.

And don’t even mention due process

The boss may talk of God, but his ego is too big to allow that kind of competition.  God is just a useful tool to help shepherd and shear the flock.  All the big hitters from Caesar to Napoleon and Putin knew that.  You just form a meaningless alliance with God’s representative on earth.  (One thing is certain – God won’t make the women restless.)

Most of the members or followers are nuts or crooks, but they have rejected the world that has rejected them.

So, although this body may look so powerful, it has fragility built into it.  But it can survive in one way or another if the State is not strong enough to contain it. 

And people are attracted to it because it offers them something they cannot get from the State, a body that they regard with contempt, in large part because they think it does not show them respect.  Jealousy is not a force for the good of the community – communion, even.  Not least when you stigmatize those better than you as elites.  Green eyed jealousy is made flesh.

Ultimately, the whole sordid shebang comes back to the egoism of its members.  Communal bodies built on that premise are like fortresses built on sand.

What am I speaking of – the Mafia of Mario Puzo and The Godfather trilogy, or a Trump Cabinet?  Or Putin and his oligarchs?

(Michael Corleone hugged his brother Alfredo before committing the primal sin.  Alfredo was shot in the head, from behind, while saying ‘Hail Mary!’  What better way to go out and join the fishes?)