UNpatriot Games

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The Profit in Prevarication...

I grew up in the antique business, and in my antique business days, all of the antique dealers loved to purchase items from local hucksters who routinely brought pick-up truck loads of “antiques” to the downtown area and if possible, play one dealer against another. It was often a scene of cat and mouse, as dealers watched them work the business district, considering when might be the most opportune time to strike. The “pickers” had their own strategy, always going to the big spenders first, and forcing the others to “pony up,” or be left out.

Sometimes the dealers would get too excited and enthusiastic, loving the sense of opportunity, and ignoring the fact that what they were ravaging through was a truckload of junk. Or worse, a carefully crafted trap.

This game always included a certain inevitable element of bluffing, acting and other poker skills, and sometimes there was outright lying and even counterfeiting. On both sides. The dealers had to act like they did not care, that the items were common, of little value. They were only dispassionately gazing into the bed of the old truck out of altruistic philanthropy. And in the process, setting themselves up for the kill. This contest led to a much more sophisticated scrimmage of prevarication for profit.

The pickers had their own tricks, and had come to use me as a test, and if their newest counterfeit antique passed my inspection (it rarely did), then they felt as if they had truly accomplished something. I often laughed them off, but sometimes I had to complement them on their artistry. The thing that amazed me the most, was that my fellow dealers were usually never very interested in my warnings to them, that counterfeits were being regularly circulated.

I sometimes visited their homes, whenever they had a new batch of junk, ready to seize anything of value that could be sold for some profit. One day they were all gathered around a drum fire in their primitive outdoor furniture building area, telling lies, bragging and scheming, and I saw one of them quietly carving on an old polished cow horn. He handed it to me shamelessly, to get my reaction. It was crudely inscribed, with a name and date, which elevated it to the appearance of folk art and a highly collectible thing... I always tried to ignore their counterfeiting efforts, trying to encourage the more boring vocation of really “picking” old things from barns and abandoned farm houses. On this day I just smirked and kept walking. But I could not help but shake my head.

A couple of weeks later I saw the same horn hanging from a fellow dealer's private stash behind his desk. It was “not for sale”... or at least that was the game... making the price much higher for anyone who had to have it. I blurted out before I could think, and let him know that I recognized the cow horn. I went ahead and told him what he had, and worried out loud about what he had to pay for it. He would not say immediately, unable to discern whether I was telling him the truth, or kidding him, or even trying to acquire it myself, but defiantly admitted that he had given a reasonable sum.

I assured him that I had no interest in it, and told him that he should never sell it, because that kind of thing could hurt his own reputation. He shrugged, unable to let go of the “find of the week,” and unwilling to affirm my assessment. He was going to keep it, he said, as it looked good hanging there. And that was that.

So far no laws had been broken; One fellow had made a half-ass “replica.” No harm in that. Another fellow had showed it to the antique dealer. No crime there. He left it with him to ponder. No pressure was applied. Later a third fellow came by and picked up a check. Just a courier of the transaction... so nothing illegal or unethical had been done or said by any of the parties. Each had an “innocent” role in a process carefully woven with plausible deniability.

But a damnable lie had been established and was hanging in that shop, for all to see, and misunderstand. All while the buying public assumed that a reputable dealer would never proudly display a worthless counterfeit artifact. Soon the lie easily became the most coveted item in town. Until the next lie floated in. This was a veritable counterfeit antique ring, covered by smiles and innocence, and after all, nobody was hurt by it. Well, not physically. And great conversation was enjoyed by all, by those passing through, and those participating in the process.

And this is EXACTLY how the American Media functions today. One source creates a lie. No harm in itself... in fact it could be considered a joke or parody. Another source merely repeats it... not claiming its authorship, but advancing the lie to Media outlets. No crime in repeating a lie. The Media publishes these lies, a truckload of clever counterfeits, or just pure junk, ostensibly obtained from “reliable sources.” Nobody claims the information is reliable, only that it was passed on by persons of influence or reputation. The lie is then borrowed, repeated, reworded, pondered, cultivated, and generally spread until it is considered a solid fact. And no one has broken the law. Not even tarnished their ethics.

No one can be directly accused of "bearing false witness," one of the more neglected of the Ten Commandments. But I get some satisfaction believing that God knows all about it. 

Newspapers, news broadcasts, magazines, and Internet news outlets all profit from the lie, which in some cases can be exploited for months or years. Until someone proves it to be untrue. And in some cases, that cannot be done. Lies are easily the most profitable and dependable material being trafficked by the national Media. And it has always been the case. Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and even Franklin Roosevelt could all tell you of egregious lies printed and reprinted about them. The Press has always had scurrilous characters who understood this “gray area” long before somebody coined the phrase “plausible deniability,” and ambitious “journalists” have always been willing to capitalize on it.

Bizarrely, our brave soldiers fight and sacrifice life and limb to defend the right of the Media to perpetuate this wicked chain of injustice. Hunkered in the corner under the auspices of “Freedom of the Press,” lurk the insidious profiteers of prevarication.

There may be no laws to prevent such activity, no prosecution of those who dance in the gray of plausible deniability, cleverly designing their alibis while dealing in laundered lies. But observers have warned for centuries about the latent threat of malicious propaganda designed to confuse and redirect societies.

Alexis de Tocqueville predicted the oncoming strategies overwhelming us today. Edward Bernays and others made a science of population management via mass psychology. Now a hundred years later, Russian disinformation has partnered with partisan manipulation of law enforcement, and the force-feeding of the Media poisonous narratives guaranteed to implement Lenin's secret weapon: “Confirmation bias.” The founder of Soviet Russia built his empire on deception, and that was done by cleverly telling what Lenin knew the Russian people wanted to hear. Could he have known, what we have learned through scientific research, that people actually get a dopamine rush from belief affirmation? Thanks to all of the major networks, Americans are actually mentally and physically addicted to the gratuitous, incendiary trashing of the president; An evil yet effective strategy straight out of Vladimir Lenin's playbook.

It has become a race to oblivion, a question of which will burn out first. Whether the American experiment can outlast the dying newspaper business, pervasively discredited and now cannibalizing itself to survive. We can only hope there will be a special place in Hell for those who knowingly proliferated lies for profit, or worse, for some despicable political strategy.