Last week, Sam Bankman-Fried made all sorts of headlines for the wrong reasons. People discovered that this man was evidently a scam artist. People like this seem to be popping up everywhere here in the United States lately, even in the Oval Office. And some still seem to act shocked - Shocked! - that such scam artists continue to pop up and make news.
Personally, I am tired of this fake shock. There is one definition of insanity that I feel fits, the one about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. More than any other nation, we seem to produce exactly these kinds of con artists. They seem to populate our headlines almost every day. They also seem to always make it into positions of power, where they then have power over many thousands, and sometimes millions, of lives. Just off the top of my head, I can think of some. Donald Trump, who has to be the absolute master con artist of all time. Bernie Madoff. Tom DeLay. Martin Shkreli. and now Sam Bankman-Fried. Many who participated in - but were not necessarily publicly exposed - for their actions which led to the Great Recession almost a decade and a half ago. If I really thought about it, there are probably a number more who I can think of, but who did not immediately come to mind. And if either you or I were to do any kind of serious, honest and objective research on the topic, we probably will find many, many, many scam artists who have affected our society, and who simply seemed to have been forgotten.
We all know that they exist. In fact, we know where many of them seem to congregate and do the most damage: particularly in Wall Street and in Washington, especially the marbled halls of Congress and, increasingly, the Supreme Court and the White House. And I, for one, am tired of pretending that this is not the case. The problem is that everyone thinks that "their" politician is okay, but it's the other guys who are a problem. I am from New Jersey, and let me tell you: I do not either like or trust Bob Menendez or Corey Booker. Both exemplify what is wrong with powerful politicians these days. And both are absolutely more interested in obtaining and then keeping power than in actually helping the public.
Below is a link to a humorous article by Andy Borowitz about the latest scam artist to grace our headlines. The flavor of the moment in such topics, if you will. Yes, this time, I am referring to Sam Bankman-Fried. Today, anyway. Tomorrow, there will be some other corrupt idiot making similar headlines. It is inevitable.
For now, it seems that society still wants to pretend to be shocked by such headlines, even if they happen over and over again. Until we reach a point - assuming we ever reach such a point - when we actually grow tired enough of con artists to actually do something about it, and recognize that our idol worship of the rich and powerful and famous is itself a huge part of the problem, than we certainly can expect many, many more of these scam artists to gain power and hurt our society. We have a relative lightweight scam artist in the Oval Office right now, although we had perhaps the biggest and most notorious heavyweight scam artist of all time in there just before him. My expectations would be that we will have many more scam artists to come, as well. They will continue to rise and fall in places like Wall Street and Washington in particularly. Since we have to endure such nonsense, might as well learn to laugh about it, and about our own pretend shock when they inevitably make the wrong kind of news headlines.
Here is a link to a recent Andy Borowitz piece from The New Yorker, with headlines that would not seem out of place in The Onion. Check it out:
World Shocked That Man Running Business Based On Imaginary Money Might Be Fraud By Andy Borowitz December 14, 2022
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/world-shocked-that-man-running-business-based-on-imaginary-money-might-be-fraud
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