Segment of a political cartoon from the 1890s, titled “A Confidence Trick.” JM Staniforth 1895.
Recently on Facebook, an attractive young woman – or so I judge from the picture accompanying her message – asked me to accept her as a Facebook friend. She assures me that she’s positively enthralled with the messages that I regularly post at that social-media site. And so she really, really wants to get to know me better. (Hint! Hint!) How lucky I am, a man in his mid-60s, to catch the eye and spark the interest of a beautiful young woman! Who knows what delights await me if I befriend her?!
This “friend request” reminded me of the many e-mails that I (like many others) have received over the years promising me instant riches in exchange for helping some third-world-country innocent person escape injustice. For kicks, I saved one of these e-mails that dates back to November of 2011. Marked “URGENT,” it’s from one Mitchell Joy. Although I’d never before heard of Mr. Joy, he wrote to me from his home in Ghana with assurances that he knows me to be a man of impeccable character. Mr. Joy, unfortunately, was in desperate need of my help. But he would make it worth my while. He assured me that together we could both be of great benefit to each other.
Mr. Joy, you see, very tragically had recently lost his saintly father, Coleman, who was a successful and upstanding businessman worth tens of millions of US dollars. But Ghana’s nefarious government threatened to block Mr. Joy’s access to Papa Coleman’s money. Mr. Joy was of course desperate to get these funds out of Ghana ASAP before they would be confiscated from him and his family and lost to them forever.
That’s where I was to come in. Having been assured by certain nameless worthies of my integrity, Mr. Joy wanted to use my US bank account as the escape vehicle for his $25 million. All I had to do was to send to Mr. Joy my bank’s name and routing number, and my checking-account number. Within days $25 million would have been deposited therein, half of which I was to transfer to Mr. Joy when he arrived in the US sometime in the next year. I was to keep the remaining $12.5 million, as just payment for my goodness and willingness to trust and assist Mr. Joy.
What a deal! I’d become rich as I promoted justice by keeping the Ghanaian government’s greedy paws off of assets that rightfully belonged to Mitchell Joy and his kin.
I would have used my $12.5 million to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. It was, I was assured, for sale.
Although the frequency of receipt of such e-mails has trailed off in recent years, they still arrive from time to time. And while the details of the schemes to separate me from my money differ from e-mail to e-mail, the writers of each of these messages claim to be champions of righteousness who, if I join their cause, will materially enrich me.
Obviously, it doesn’t remotely dawn on me that “Mr. Joy” is anything other than a vile scam artist. Ditto the lovely young female stranger on Facebook. Who trusts such strangers? What kind of credulity must someone possess to think, upon reading messages such as the one from “Mr. Joy,” “Oh wow! This perfect stranger wants access to my bank account so that he can fill it with plenty of money! How lucky I am!” How imbecilic would I have to be to believe that a fetching young lady is so desperate for physical companionship that she must pursue that companionship by befriending on Facebook a man whom she’s never met and who’s old enough to be her grandfather?
Fortunately, good ol’ American horse sense ensures that almost all Americans immediately recognize the “Mr. Joys” of the world to be con artists. Messages from “Mr. Joy” and his legions of fellow rip-off artists are immediately deleted. The same is true, I’m sure, for nearly all such Facebook messages from beautiful young women professing their sincere desire to become intimate with older men.
But where is this horse sense at election time? With the November election fast approaching, websites, television, radio, newspapers, and local streets are bursting with pleas from perfect strangers asking me to trust them with my wealth and liberties.
“Vote for me and I’ll make your life better by building more roads for your use – and at no expense to you! Under my plan, only people richer than you, who now don’t pay their fair share in taxes, will pay for the roads!”
“Elect me and I’ll improve your well-being by reducing the cost of medical care and improving its quality!”
“Once in Congress, I’ll work tirelessly for you and all Virginians!”
These television and website ads are also filled with clips – obviously staged – of the candidates talking with school children, shaking hands with senior citizens, listening earnestly (usually while wearing hard hats) to factory workers, commiserating with ordinary townsfolk at the local diner, and playing touch football at community picnics. We’re supposed to believe that these office-seekers are singularly special and caring servants of others. We’re supposed to feel confident that we can trust these individuals with power as well as with access to our purses.
Perhaps some politicians are indeed especially caring and trustworthy servants of the public. But surely we shouldn’t presume these people to be such rare saints merely because they tell us that they are such rare saints. We don’t believe the Mitchell Joys of the world when they boast to us of their sincerity and trustworthiness. Nor do we feel proud of ourselves when the Mitchell Joys stroke our egos by telling us that they know us to be unusually laudable and worthy. We know that the Mitchell Joys are lying through their teeth as they attempt to lure us into a trap. And we know the same about the fresh-faced blonde young lady who insists that she’s oh-so-charmed by some older-man’s Facebook posts.
Strangers asking for bank-account numbers do differ in some ways from strangers asking for votes. But I’m struck by the similarities. In both cases, individuals who we don’t know and who don’t know us seek to gain our trust so that they can then gain open-ended access to our wealth. In both cases, the strangers seeking our trust proclaim there to be a special, personal connection between them and us. And in both cases there is every reason to distrust these proclamations.
It’s too bad that the same horse sense that stoutly and successfully counsels us to dismiss the “Mr. Joys” of the world, and the eager young ladies on Facebook, abandons so very many of us at election time.
