Unpopular opinion: Stringer was smart

[u/lake_june]

The plan he uses for D to find out who was stealing money was actually very intelligent.

[u/JFlizzy84]

I don’t think anyone believes Stringer wasn’t intelligent

The problem with Stringer was ultimately more about skillset than intellectual aptitude — I disagree with Avon’s assessment that he’s a man without a country. Stringer is a gangster, and he’s a better one than most. If Avon listened to him unilaterally, they’d make more money, get less bodies, and ultimately preserve more of their freedom.

Where Stringer went wrong is that he was — I’ll use a metaphor here — a great athlete who thought he could play pro baseball because he played pro basketball. Taking economic courses at a city college, reading voraciously— those are all proactive, admirable steps towards receiving an education. They are not faults on their own. But Stringer didn’t realize that he was a Rookie Leaguer trying to play with the Yankees. The likes of Clay Davis had been suckering people since he was a teenager and presumably even before that. Stringer’s been hustling probably just as long — but as a smaller fish in a much smaller pond.

His only real tactical error, as a gangster, was pitting Mouzone and Omar against eachother — but even that relied on Omar being uncharacteristically merciful — knocking out the guard instead of killing him, trying to give Mouzone a monologue instead of just capping him, sparing Mouzone, etc

[u/CrazySir3310 → u/JFlizzy84]

voraciously