The Ponzi Scheme Of The Century - Tin Men, Donald Trump, And How The Left Created Something Out Of Nothing

Snake oil salesmen have been features of the American landscape for two centuries, hawking every kind of cockamamie products to a credulous public.  Hair restoration, potency, wart removal, piles, and hysteria among other things and not an iota of truth or worth in any of them. Yet the rest of the world has been no different. Disaggregate and deconstruct any religion and the tales are tall indeed and not only that but have served as the foundation for belief and salvation for thousands of years. Given such fantastical propositions as a virgin birth and resurrection from the dead, why dismiss anything else without giving it at least a second look?

A sucker is born every minute, said P.T. Barnum, pulling thousands into circuses and freak shows every Saturday.  You can fool all the the people some of the time, said Lincoln, and some of the people all the time; and fact has not changed since he was shot by John Wilkes Booth in the Ford Theatre. We are given to chicanery, tomfoolery, and downright deception but remain hopeful.  There just might be something in the boasts. 

Recent history has given three of the most canny charlatans ever. Jeffery Skilling made billions at Enron before he helped the entire financial system collapse. Bernie Madoff suckered tens of millions out of Jewish admirers, but the genius of it was when it was all over and discovered, there was not one penny to be found.  There never had been.  All built on smoke and mirrors. 

Rudy Kurniawan bilked millions out of suckered pretentious wine connoisseurs, selling them dreck in the bottles of the world's most famous wines. He knew that the wine would never be drunk, just bought and sold as a commodity, and since buyers believed what Rudy told and gave them, they traded the dreck as though it were Mouton-Rothschild.

Every Sunday megachurch preachers bilk millions out of their faithful congregations, promising them an easy pathway to Jesus Christ and eternal salvation.  Not a drop of truth in it, but the market demand is still higher than ever. 

So it is no surprise that the American Left has sold stories of a fascist, neo-Hitlerian, anti-democratic insurrectionist President to the electorate, and for years over half the country has swallowed them hook, line, and sinker.  There is not one objective, factually based, or even reasonable inquiry in the Left's witch hunt, its political pogrom, its Kristallnacht.  

Comparing Donald Trump - a vaudevillian, gaudy macho man, man of Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the mean streets of New York - to Adolph Hitler, the engineer of the Holocaust, is pure fantasy.  Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz - these have been reincarnated by the President?

A misogynist whose Cabinet is filled with talented women?  An unreconstructed plantation-owning Southern grandee, champion of Jim Crow and segregation? Hardly. 

His executive orders dismantling DEI are nothing more than an end to reverse racial discrimination and a return of the country's ethos to respect for talent and ability.  His denial of transgenderism is only a return to common sense, religious teaching, and the will of the people. 

So how is that the story of a crazed, evil man bent on Soviet authoritarianism, a return to gulags and concentration camps, and a rounding up of every non-binary being in America got started? Smoke and mirrors and the febrile imagination of political fantasists.

As the emptiness of the progressive agenda becomes more well known and as the successes of the President become news, the Left only increases its hysteria, whingeing, and whaling at Donald Trump while even more unhinged yells continue.

Now, the thing of it all is that the Left actually believes in the snake oil they are selling.  Any good con man believes nothing about his product but tells convincing lies.  That is part of the con - enjoying it while knowing you are taking thousands for a ride; but the Left actually believes the feral nonsense, conspires in cabals, recites liturgy and verse, and preaches as though the sky will actually come falling down

'What are we do?' asked Bob Muzelle of his dutiful wife and longtime political companion. 'He is still there', and with that their hatred became even more acute, more rooted, and more horrible every day. 'All those years', said Bob, 'all those years with Martin and Ralph' all but faded memories, smears on a chalkboard, broken windows on a bus. 

Bob howled and cried. For a lifelong progressive this was the end of days, the final hour; but with all that there would be no end to the grief.  He had still miles to go before he slept, evil must be withstood and defeated. 

Of course the angst and agony that Bob felt couldn't even be imagined by the Right, for all the manic raving, St. Vitus' dance, and whirling dervish hysteria seemed only the last fevered paroxysm before it finally disappeared from view. 

Just like the snake oil salesman who left Chillicothe with a purse full of silver, never to return to the flimflammed mob of customers for fear of getting lynched, progressives began scattering, some dumped by DOGE, others who saw the handwriting on the wall, and still others who decided to call it quitting time. 

Some cynics say that all politics is smoke and mirror - campaigns, elections, and time in office without much of substance, a whole carnival of trapeze, lion-taming, and clown shows - but this affair of the Left was far more. The confabulations were more tortured and impossibly twisted than in Washington could remember.  It was every big top extravaganza all rolled into one. 

You have to give it to progressives, however.  This wasn't just a little streetcorner trickery.  No, it all matched Jefferey, Bernie, and Rudy one for one and then topped them. Marvelous.

So did these true believers ever see beyond the scrim, fog, and smoke they had created? True belief is hard enough to crack but when case hardened in folly, almost impossible. 

Bob watched the beautiful blonde women entering the West Wing and wished he had been born later.  What a bad joke it was for him to have grown up with ugly Brooklyn College radicals.  No smoke and mirrors there.  These women were just plain ugly.