George C. Scott was a great actor with many wonderful films. Patton inarguably topped the list and was unforgettable. Yet and still, for my money a close second was a far lesser known production titled The Flim Flam Man, in which Scott plays an aging grifter in the rural south, who takes a young AWOL soldier under his wing and teaches him the fine art of fleecing those in search of an easy buck.
Mordecai Jones teaches his increasingly disillusioned protege just how many there are fully prepared to cheat their way to a windfall. Jones shows young Curley Treadaway that, while “you can’t cheat an honest man,” more greed and “24 carat ignorance” exists than the young man ever thought possible. The story concludes after Curley, intent on redemption, sacrifices himself to help his old mentor escape jail and get out of town. The final scene has Jones exactly where he began, hopping a freight, presumably toward another town with more greedy marks he can teach expensive lessons to.
Of course, what makes the film so good is Scott’s performance, creating an empathetic antihero the audience can love, a scoundrel with wisdom and a soul. His victims elicit no sympathy because they get what their greedy inclinations deserve. Curley’s melancholy grows as he realizes so many of his peers are partial to greed and dishonesty, that good men are a rarer commodity than he imagined.
Who knew when I first saw The Flim Fam Man as a child it was a harbinger for political pestilence that would bedevil my country as an adult? What imagination could foresee an entire culture of con men and women feeding off the “24 carat ignorance” of millions from every corner of America. Failed DJs, perennial political losers, fringe journalists and financial fraudsters, all carving out territory ripe for fleecing. Virtually unlimited pools of ready victims, whose only requirement is acknowledging their grievances are legitimate, their nastiness and resentment fully understandable. A grifter’s dream…..the golden age.
Turns out the “silent majority” Richard Nixon lauded were more than willing to open their wallets for the right cause that touched their cold cold hearts. All they desired was validation, a narrative that made them the heroes for a change. The world that was passing them by at a frightening rate, both scaring the bejeezes out of them and making them madder than hell, needed to make sense. What they didn’t understand was bad… wasn’t it?
Two fat balding misanthropes with a fondness for fiction, and big chips on their rounded shoulders answered loudly and often in the affirmative. Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh were visionaries in their belief of the enduring loyalty media platforms could create with messages tailored, not to how things are, but to a simple storyline, a sad saga of oppression, White men the heretofore silent and stoic victims. Turns out Archie Bunker only wanted to know other Archies were out there. Ignorance was no vice, it was merely a starting point for continuing education, available 24/7 and designed solely to reinforce existing biases.
Current events and the history that informed them could be made to fit comfortably into a narrative that always ended up at the same place, with the same conclusions. And make no mistake, get them to trust you as a compadre and they’ll make you take their money. Gold, identity protection, real estate opportunities, retirement planning, timeshares, home security, preparing for Armageddon when Obama was President, enjoying MAGA’s economic miracle with Trump, not to mention countless prosperity gospel megachurch prophets and 501-C3 political non-profits, an endless flow of cash from suckers too good to be true, ready to believe all things too good to be true. True patriots MAGAing in unison, paying what is necessary for liberty. Forget “build it and they will come,” simply validate it and they will pay! What started as a fledgling alternative news channel for former Nixon diehards who still believed those commies at Kent State got what they had coming, ended in the White House with Donald Trump…. the first Fox/AM POTUS.
Robert Mueller served 12 full years as FBI Director from 2001-2013 under Presidents from opposite ends of the political spectrum. A decorated Marine Captain in Vietnam, it’s hard to find anything but praise for his long career of public service…. except within the Fox/AM universe. Sadly, that’s now enough for just about half of those polled to doubt his team’s investigation will produce findings fair to President Trump.
Even as one Trump crony after another has faced indictments, most pleading guilty quicker than a quarter horse race, rats fleeing the sinking ship of Trump for President 2016, Fox/AM maintains a separate reality for its viewer base. The narrative is constantly refreshed as needed, facts that don’t jibe with its direction omitted with prejudice. What looks like an organized effort to actively aid an enemy’s successful attempts to corrupt the integrity of our Presidential election process is fully eclipsed by the astounding proposition a deep state coup is underway, directed by a lifelong Republican who nonetheless favors Hillary Clinton enough to corrupt his efforts at her behest.
Roger Stone, whose indictment and arrest portends the clearest, most indisputable link yet to the Trump campaign’s active collusion with elements of the Russian government to swing Decision 2016 Trump’s way, is being defended as a martyr for freedom. Stone, who has always taken pride in an amoral pursuit of results at any cost, seems amused by the concept. In fact, Stone actually boasted of his Wikileaks connections after an initial hack into Democrat National Committee files in July of 2016, and gleefully predicted successive email dumps, more it seemed to brandish his credentials as the sleaziest of dirty tricksters than anything else. Through intermediaries, fellow Fox/AM universe grifters Jerome Corsi, himself under the Mueller microscope (he claims his precise predictions of the dumps were simply the result of uncanny intuition he has always possessed), and right-wing radio host Randy Credico, Stone kept apprised of Wikileak’s intrigue and announced coming public dispersements of embarrassing information that never should have seen the light of day. Direct contacts with a Trump Campaign higher up, said to be Steve Bannon, could be called a smoking gun but for the fact that Stone et al never really hid their activities in the first place!
Of course, no measure of overt shamelessness matters much to the suckers of the Fox/AM universe, who old Mordecai Jones no doubt would have sapped for every last red cent. Whether it happens in a back alley in the dead of night, or 5th Avenue during rush hour, they’re reserving judgement until Rushbo and Mark Levin instruct them throughout the day, and Fox prime timers reiterate the messaging come evening. That’s where we are, a bloc of saps there to be taken. But instead of Three Card Monte, or a swift bait and switch, this is the long con that tragically hurts us all; it’s as dangerous as it is laughably inane. Mueller time is finally here; the question is whether almost half of us believe what he has to say. BC