Charles Hugh Smith – Once upon a time in America, no adult could survive without possessing a finely tuned BS detector. Herman Melville masterfully captured America’s fascination with cons and con artists in his 1857 classic The Confidence-Man, which I discussed in The Con in Confidence (October 4, 2006).
An essential component of the American ethos is: don’t be a chump. Don’t fall for the con. And if you do, it’s your own fault. The Wild West wasn’t just thieves shooting people in the back (your classic “gunfight” in the real West)–it was a simmering stew of con artists, flim-flammers and grifters exploiting the naive, the trusting and the credulous.
We now inhabit a world where virtually everything is a con. That “organic” produce from some other country–did anyone test the soil the produce grew in? It could be loaded with heavy metals and be certified “organic” because no pesticides were used during production. But what about last year? And the year before? What’s in the water used to irrigate the crops?
The employment/unemployment statistics are obviously BS. 93 million people aren’t even counted any more–they’re statistical zombies, no longer among the living workforce. If the unemployment rate were calculated on the number of full-time jobs and the true workforce (everyone ages 18 – 70 that isn’t institutionalized or in prison), the unemployment rate would not be the absurdly delusional 5.6% claimed by the bureaucratic con artists.
The corrupts-everything-it-touches bribe vacuum known as Hillary Clinton is still disgracing the national stage, 24 years after she first displayed her con-artist colors. Hillary’s most enduring accomplishment is the Clinton Foundation–a glorification of bribery, chicanery, flim-flam and cons so outrageously perfected that it serves up examples of every con known to humanity in one form or another.
And as she learned from hubby Bill–if the smarmy charm-con fails, quickly revert to veiled threats. “You’ll never work in this town again!”
Hillary would fit right into Melville’s river boat teeming with con-artists. The accent she uses on the marks–oops, I mean audience–changes as readily as the camouflage on a chameleon. Upper Midwest, Noo Yawk, Fake-Southern–what you hear depends on the credulity of her marks. Continue reading