Eind februari 2016 becommentarieerde Credo Action, een maatschappelijk netwerk dat zich inspant voor een ware verandering, de volgende gebeurtenis:
Last week, CBS CEO Les Moonves came out and said it: Profiting from hate is not only more important to him than the good of the country — he wants to do more of it.
Speaking on a panel in San Francisco, Moonves said Trump’s campaign 'may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS” and that 'The money’s rolling in, this is fun.' He went on to say, 'it’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going.'
Having the CEO of one of the nation’s most powerful corporate media outlets blatantly admit that profits and ratings are driving the non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage of Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric is not only a damning indictment of corporate media, but also incredibly dangerous for the country. We need to make it clear to Moonves, CBS, and all traditional corporate media that Americans hold them to a much higher standard when it comes to racism and intolerance and the media’s responsibility to accurately and fairly inform the public.
The CBS media executive also riffed briefly about the type of campaign advertising spending produced by such a negative presidential campaign. 'They’re not even talking about issues. They’re throwing bombs at each other and I think the advertising reflects that.'
Een week later schreef New York Times-columniste Maureen Dowd in haar krant van zaterdag 5 maart 2016 over het politieke failliet in de VS het volgende:
The most enjoyable thing about the Trump phenomenon has been watching him make monkeys out of a lot of people who had it coming.
Marco Rubio, a frothy focus-grouped concoction whose main qualifications to be president consist of a nice smile and an easy wit, has been mocking Trump as a con man.
Real estate developers are con men by nature, trying to get what they want at the lowest price and sell it at the highest price, overpromising how great it’s going to be.
As Maria Konnikova, the author of 'The Confidence Game,' notes, con men are created by the yearning of their marks 'to believe in something that gives life meaning… Their genius lies in figuring out what, precisely, it is we want, and how they can present themselves as the perfect vehicle for delivering on that desire.'
It’s delicious watching the neocon men who tricked the country and gulled the naïve W. into the Iraq invasion go ballistic trying to stop the Gotham (bijnaam voor New York. svh) con man.
Bill Kristol (invloedrijke neoconservatieve ideoloog. svh) of The Weekly Standard wrote an outraged column about why there wasn’t more outrage at Trump, who correctly pointed out that Americans were deceived into a catastrophic war.
Kristol, the midwife to three debacles — Dan Quayle, Iraq and Sarah Palin — solicited suggestions for the name of the new party that Republicans will have to start if Trump secures the nomination. How about 'Losers'?
Eliot Cohen, a former W. State Department official who pushed to 'liberate' Iraq, said Trump would be 'an unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy.' And Robert Kagan, who backed the Iraq war, said 'the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.' Max Boot (neoconservatieve auteur) concurred.
It’s amazing, having been tainted by the worst foreign policy disaster in American history, that the Republican national security intelligentsia would unite against a Trump presidency in an open letter, charging that he would 'make America less safe' and 'diminish our standing in the world.' Sort of like the Iraq invasion?
Even though he made some good points, especially about the Trump Steaks shame spiral, it’s pretty rich to have Mitt Romney, the man who called on 11 million people to 'self-deport,' talking about Trump’s bigotry.
Trump was right about Romney. When you lose a race that you should have won by being an inept phony, you can’t call this year’s front-runner an inept phony.
It’s delightful to see the encrusted political king-making class utter a primal scream as Trump smashes their golden apple cart. He’s a real threat to the cozy, greedy, oleaginous (olieachtig. svh) cartel, their own Creature from the Black Lagoon (piratennest vol huurlingen. svh).
For all the Republican establishment’s self-righteous bleating, Trump is nothing more than an unvarnished, cruder version. For years, it has fanned, stoked and exploited the worst angels among the nativists, racists, Pharisees (hypocriete zelfrechtvaardigers. svh) and angry white men, concurring in anti-immigrant measures, restricting minority voting, whipping up anti-Planned Parenthood hysteria and enabling gun nuts.
How lame was it that after saying he was a crazy choice, Rubio, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and John McCain turned around and said they will support Trump if he’s the nominee?
After watching Hillary Clinton, for whom campaigning is a nuisance, and Barack Obama, who disdains politics, it’s fun to see someone having fun. Like Bill Clinton, Trump talks and talks to crowds. They feed his narcissism, and in turn, he creates an intimacy even in an arena that leaves both sides awash in pleasure. It’s easy to believe him when he says that, unlike President Obama, he would enjoy endlessly negotiating with obstructionists and those on the other side of the aisle.
Waarom ik mevrouw Dowd's uiteenzetting citeer is omdat zij Donald Trump kwalificeert als een 'con man,' oftewel 'oplichter.' Welnu, het begrip 'con man' is typisch Amerikaans en is afgeleid van 'confidence man,' tevens de titel van Herman Melville's roman The Confidence-Man (1857), een meesterwerk waarvoor de waardering na meer dan anderhalf eeuw almaar toeneemt, aldus de Amerikaanse hoogleraar Robert Milder, gespecialiseerd in negentiende eeuwse Amerikaanse auteurs. Milder stelt dat 'Long mistaken for a flawed novel, the book is now admired as a masterpiece of irony and control.' Op haar beurt meldt Wikipedia dat:
The novel is written as cultural satire, allegory, and metaphysical treatise, dealing with themes of sincerity, identity, morality, religiosity, economic materialism, irony, and cynicism. Many critics have placed The Confidence-Man alongside Melville's Moby-Dick and 'Bartleby, the Scrivener' as a precursor to 20th-century literary preoccupations with nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism.
Omdat Melville, naar mijn mening, één van de grootste Amerikaanse schrijvers is, en de 'con man' een prominente rol speelt in de geschiedenis van het zogeheten democratische Westen ga ik dieper in op dit begrip. Een consumptiecultuur, waarin iedereen in dienst staat van de verkoop aan de ander -- van tandenborstels en buitenlandse reizen tot aan ideologieën en identiteiten -- is maskerade een onmisbaar onderdeel van de hedendaagse façade. In zijn beroemdste boek, Moby Dick (1851), laat Melville kapitein Achab zeggen:
Alle zichtbare voorwerpen, man, zijn slechts bordkartonnen maskers. In iedere gebeurtenis… zit een onbekend maar met rede behept element dat zijn grondtrekken toont van achter het redeloze masker. Wil een mens slaan, sla dan door dat masker heen! Hoe kan een gevangene uitbreken als hij niet door de muur breekt? Voor mij is de witte walvis die muur, vlak voor me geschoven. Soms denk ik dat er niks achter zit. Maar het is genoeg. Hij daagt mij uit, hij werkt op mijn zenuwen; ik zie een godgeklaagde kracht in hem en een ondoorgrondelijke boosaardigheid die deze staalt. Dat ondoorgrondelijke is het vooral wat ik haat, en of de walvis nu werktuig is of aanstichter, ik zal mijn haat op hem koelen. Praat me niet van godslastering, kerel; ik zou de zon slaan als ze me te na kwam. Als de zon het ene zou kunnen, kan ik het andere, want je hebt hierbij altijd iets als eerlijk spel, al beheerst competitie de hele schepping. Maar zelfs dat eerlijke spel gebiedt mij niet, kerel. Wie staat er boven mij? De waarheid kent geen grenzen.
Ook The Confidence-Man heeft als thema de agressieve bezetenheid van de Amerikaanse cultuur, de mateloze beheersingsdrift van, in dit geval, de 'con man,' die voortdurend het vertrouwen van zijn slachtoffers schendt. De Amerikaanse hoogleraar Engels Gary Lindberg schreef al onmiddellijk in de introductie van zijn studie The Confidence Man in American Literature (1982) dat:
Er is geen enkel domein waarin de 'con man' zo actief is als in de politiek en de mainstream-journalistiek. Dit is dan ook de belangrijkste reden geweest dat een zwarte 'con man' als Barack Obama door de witte financiële elite naar werd geschoven en vervolgens met de slogan 'Change we can believe in' door de media kon worden aangeprezen als de beste keuze voor president, die het noodzakelijke vertrouwen in de politiek zou herstellen. Lindberg:
'con' in everyday American usage applies to far more than a certain kind of swindle. Furthermore, it has a different value attached to it, a compound of admiration, amusement, and connivance (oogluikend toelaten. svh). Confidence men of the narrow sort officially defined (and disowned) by the dictionaries have themselves appeared with unusual frequency in the backgrounds of works of American literature… and one could begin by speculating why they turn up so often. But to ignore the ambivalence between definition and usage is to miss the complex appeal of the confidence man and thus to overlook his infiltration of the very centers of American values and of works of literature…
If we want to understand the geniality (genot. svh) with which Americans refer to 'conning,' we must recognize how the confidence man carries out some of our central aspirations. He is radically entangled with the myth of the 'New World.' But our traditional understanding of that phrase (uitdrukking. svh) prevents our perception of the confidence man's role. What does 'New World' most readily call to mind? Wilderness, frontier, the natural environment. And by implication the move to the New World has familiarly been taken as a metaphor for discarding the past, regaining youth and innocence, encountering a fresh countryside. When we associate a representative character with this notion of the New World, it is thus likely to be a pioneer, a frontiersman, or more imaginatively, an American Adam in the wilderness. But what about the social situation implied by the concept of the New World? European settlers did not literally begin again when they arrived in the Western Hemisphere. Only rarely could they cast aside their habitual ways of seeing in order to encounter a truly fresh world. They brought with them artifacts, books, designs, tools, manners — all the models of the social world they had left behind. And their descendants continued to import such models. Instead of reinventing 'civilization,' they imitated, burlesqued (een klucht ervan maken. svh), adapted, and jury-rigged it (noodoplossingen ervoor verzinnen. svh). And instead of renegotiating the entire social contract, they simply introduced more fluidity (buigzaamheid. svh) into social relations, so that even though people were still born into unequal positions, there were surprising possibilities for the individual to move about. Thus, when we examine 'New World' as social concept rather than natural image, one of the major propositions characterizing it is that class background is not fate. What this means for the stereotypical pioneer is that one can leave society and start a new life in an unspoiled landscape. What the same proposition means to the confidence man is that one looks at society itself with a freshened sense of opportunity, recognizing that while the majority of people are still predictably shaped by inherited institutions and manners, some people are not.
In een permanent fysiek en psychisch gemobiliseerde maatschappij, waar ontheemde immigranten en hun nakomelingen onvermijdelijk vervreemd waren van elkaar, kan de oplichter telkens opnieuw met een schone lei beginnen. Een voorbeeld daarvan geeft de Amerikaanse auteur Shelby Steele in zijn boek A Bound Man. Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win, verschenen in januari 2008. Steele die net als Obama een zwarte vader en een witte moeder had, schreef in het laatste hoofdstuk, getiteld 'The Visible Man' over de identiteitsloze Obama:
Barack Obama emerged into a political culture that needed him more as an icon than as a man. He has gone far because the need is great. But this easy appeal has also been his downfall. It is a seduction away from character and conviction… The challenge for Barack Obama is the same as it is for all free people: to achieve visibility as an individual, to in fact become an individual rather than a racial cipher… When he finally lurches away from this falseness, there is no self to guide im toward toward a meaningful life. Probably the greatest debilitation (verzwakking. svh) in black American life is that our history of masking — once so necessary to our survival — has caused us to overvalue the manipulation of white people and to undervalue the evolution of our individual selves.
Shelby Steele slaat de spijker op de kop wanneer hij stelt dat de mens, zwart dan wel wit, pas vrij is wanneer hij erin slaagt 'to achieve visibility as an individual,' en op die manier een 'individu' wordt. Zodoende slaagt hij erin geen massamens te zijn die alleen zijn geconditioneerde reflexen kan gehoorzamen; pas dan kan hij niet telkens weer door een 'con man' bedrogen worden. Professor Lindberg betoogt dat door de collectieve vervreemding van de ander en van zichzelf 'the confidence man' naadloos 'fits into the New World,' hetgeen
will be apparent if we turn from the emotionally charged phrase 'New World' to the more objective concept of migration. What has demographically characterized the United States throughout its history has been an unusually extensive pattern of migration. Not only have immigrants continued to arrive from other countries but later generations born in this country have themselves tended to move about within the larger society. This repeated movement has had some obvious consequences. It has made many Americans restless, unstable, thirsty for novelty. It has loosened family and community bonds and has encouraged people to dwell imaginatively in the future. Institutions that depend on stable residence… have lost their power, and personal facility (vaardigheid. svh) has been given a correspondingly wider field. In social relations this ceaseless movement has weakened the familiar patterns of identification. Instead of relying on family background, class habits, inherited manners, many Americans have had to confront each other as mere claimants, who can at best try to persuade each other who they in fact are. It is easy to see how a con man can slip into such a situation and exploit it. Simon Suggs's famous motto sums up the issue — 'It is good to be shifty (onbetrouwbaar. svh) in a new country.'
Simon Suggs is de protagonist van het boek Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs, van de humorist Johnson Jones Hooper, een politieke uiterst actieve Amerikaan die in 1861 werd benoemd tot secretaris van het 'Provisional Confederate Congress.' Zijn Suggs is het prototype van de louche 'con man,' die
Johnson Jones Hooper invents a character of some complexity to which the reader feels an oddly disinterested attraction. Suggs is deplorable, conniving and a swindler. Yet Suggs' acknowledgement and acceptance of his own depravity lends a sort of honesty to his characterization that connotes a peculiar sense of respectability. Suggs is representative of everyman's search for identity as he tries on various roles within his society.
Maar het onbetrouwbaar zijn 'applies to more than swindlers,' aldus professor Lindberg in zijn boek The Confidence Man in American Literature:
If the confidence man is representative, it is not simply because American demographic patterns created the perfect milieu for him. We must now return to the honorific phrase 'New World.' In the popular mythology all the restless activities of continuing migration were interpreted as gestures of creation: making a new nation, making new villages and towns, making new selves. If the immediate premium was placed on technical skill and contrivance, the larger enterprise was sanctified by a dazzling sense of promise. What counted was not who one was but who one could become. Why notice the uncleared stumps in the roadway or the half-finished portico and empty rooms when one could already almost see the promised boulevard lined with mansions? Self, town, and nation were matters of faith, and the act of faith — the acceptance of promise — came to be the definitive New World transaction. It is also, of course, the central transaction in a confidence game. Thus the confidence man not only revealed and acted upon the opportunities created by migration in the emergent American society; he also played to its prevailing promissory (veel belovende. svh) tone.
Degene die werkelijk gelooft dat 'the sky the limit' is, en die meent dat de mens de maatschappij en de natuur naar zijn hand kan zetten, is vanzelfsprekend een gemakkelijk slachtoffer van de eerste de beste oplichter. Dit verklaart ook waarom het populisme in de politiek momenteel zo'n succesvol is. In een anonieme massamaatschappij is, temidden van alle charlatans, degene die het meest belooft natuurlijk het populairst. Vertrouwen en humbug zijn al ook sinds het begin van de moderne tijd onlosmakelijk met elkaar verbonden. Een moderne samenleving waarin kennis niet berust op eigen ervaring, maar van horen zeggen, is per definitie een vrijplaats voor de 'con man.' De massamedia bestaan zelfs dankzij de 'con men' in de politiek, economie, de kunsten, de financiële- en zelfs academische wereld. Kijk alleen maar naar het aantal Nederlandse politici, bankiers, kunsthandelaren en hoogleraren die het afgelopen decennium door de mand zijn gevallen.
Their potential value is in making in making things visible that would otherwise remain inconspicuous (onopvallend. svh), or in showing the relations between situation, characters, and values that would otherwise seem isolated from each other… What the confidence man celebrates in American life is the delight of entering a series of roles and making them work.
Maar de zelfbenoemde 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder is niet in staat om buiten haar eigen verpolitiekte werkelijkheid te denken en ziet daardoor niet in dat de VS gekarakteriseerd wordt door 'the loss of traditional authority, the imitation and burleske of foreign models, the impersonation of identity,' waarbij het woord 'impersonation' moet worden opgevat als 'an act of pretending to be another person for the purpose of entertainment or fraud.' Professor Lindberg benadrukt daarbij dat inmiddels:
Instead of offering opportunities for imaginative individuals, the con game now appears as the socially normal pattern of behavior, and the question is how one can hold onto one's inner being in a field of competitive and soul-less con men… What the con man lights up in the social world around him is apparently going to be with us for some time to come, and it might pay us to see what he's up to and why we have honored him for getting away with it,
aldus bijna een kwart eeuw geleden deze Amerikaanse intellectueel. Anno 2016 weet de overgrote meerderheid van de Amerikanen exact wat de 'con man' van plan is te doen, namelijk hetzelfde als alle andere zwendelaars altijd al deden, daarbij geholpen door de mainstream-media en hun gezagsgetrouwe opiniemakers. Zo verkocht de 88-jarige Koude Oorlogsprofeet met het meeste aanzien in de polder, H.J.A. Hofland, in De Groene Amsterdammer van 15 april 2015 zijn 'Hillary' als 'de ideale kandidaat' voor het Amerikaanse presidentschap. In de virtuele werkelijkheid van de 'con man,' waar 'appearances are extremely important' staat voorop dat 'opportunity expands as judgement becomes less stable.' Meer over de oplichters later.
'Con Woman' Hillary Clinton, 'Fighting for Us,' haar mond een grimas, haar ogen lachen niet.
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