Grifters

The details of my life are quite inconsequential.

— Dr. Evil

This week the video Plandemic proved its box-office mojo.

Before YouTube deleted the video, over eight million people watched.

Plandemic stars discredited NIH researcher Dr. Judy Mikovits, who claims that two eugenicists, Mr. Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci, are plotting to take over the world.

Plandemic “recast a pusher of discredited pseudoscience as a whistle-blowing counterpoint to real expertise,” a political scientist told The New York Times.

As P.T. Barnum observed, Americans are suckers for self-proclaimed "truth-tellers" like Mikovits.

They fail to see these messiahs for what they are: grifters.

Since Plandemic was released Monday, Mikovits' $22 book Plague of Corruption has reached the very top of Amazon’s list of print best-sellers.

And before the video's release, she cashed in on a fundraising campaign—halted last Friday by GoFundMe—that backers of QAnon were publicizing.

"Conspiracy theorists are winning," writes Jeffey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic. "America is losing its grip on enlightenment values and reality itself."

But that's nothing new.

Americans have always been targets for grifters.

Take, for example, George Bickley.

An accomplished con artist, in 1854 Bickley founded the Knights of the Golden Circle, a membership organization dedicated to expanding slavery by annexing Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean.

Membership dues were paid by checks made out to "President General of the American Legion," who was none other than George Bickley.

Or take, for example, Robert Welch.

A retired candy manufacturer, in 1958 Welch founded the John Birch Society, a membership organization dedicated to combating a "furtive conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians."

The society was in fact a pyramid scheme: members had not only to recruit other members, but buy an inventory of books they were supposed to sell to prospects.

Or take, for example, Charles Manson.

A small-time thief, pimp, jailbird and drug-pusher, in 1968 Manson founded The Family, a California commune with over 100 members.

A year later, he persuaded a band of his stoned-out followers to murder everyone living in two Beverley Hills homes, because their owners had ripped him off in a drug deal.

Or take, for example, Glenn Beck.

A former disc jockey, alcoholic and drug addict, in 2002 Beck founded Mercury Radio Arts, a right-wing multi-media company. The company is named after Orson Welles' Mercury Theater on the Air.

Although he cites the muck-raking hero of Citizen Kane as the explanation, Beck in fact chose the company's name because he admires the way Welles hoodwinked all America with War of the Worlds.

The word grifter—meaning con artist, thief, swindler, or flim-flammer—dates to the early 20th century. 

It blends the words grafter and drifter.

A grafter profits through shady means.

A drifter is rootless.

That's rootless, not ruthless.

Grifters are the ruthless ones.