THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Throughout history and up to the present, there have been people who practice quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money, fame, or power through some form of pretense or deception. Whether they are called charlatans, swindlers, or mountebanks, these people often depend on ignorance and desperation to convince well-meaning people to part with their money or independence of thought, and more often than not, they use religion and greed to control their acolytes. In America, conservative ideology is tantamount to a religion that appeals to the weak-minded and faint of heart, and it is little wonder that a distinctly American religion started by a charlatan intersects perfectly with Republican ideology, and that the current Republican standard bearer, Willard Romney, is closely following the charlatan Joseph Smith’s agenda to convince Americans he should be the president.

If one stops and considers that Smith said an angel appeared and told him secret knowledge that prompted him to seek out golden plates engraved with a secret message, they may think anyone who believed him was insane. And yet, they believed it when, in the 19th Century, he translated the message using 17th Century language, and after losing the golden plates, re-translated what became the Book of Mormon. The idea that 21st Century Mormons believe the information in Joseph Smith’s translation that flies in the face of archeological, scientific, and historical evidence is proof that a charlatan can hold sway over any people as long as they have novel information and repeat it over and over again until even seemingly intelligent human beings accept fantasy as gospel truth. Crucial to Smith’s confidence trick, was referencing just enough of another established myth, the Christian bible, to convince his followers there was validity to his Latter Day prophecies, and subsequently, the Mormon church achieved legitimacy to its adherents.

Willard Mitt Romney learned the confidence game from Joseph Smith well, and he parlayed it into a career convincing financiers to hand over their wealth in hopes of becoming wealthier beyond their wildest dreams. Romney also convinced struggling companies that if they took on crushing debt, under Bain Capital’s management, they too would emerge as leaders of their industries and prosper if they followed Romney’s “creative destruction” method of wealth creation. Subsequently, companies faced bankruptcy, employees lost their jobs and retirement, and Romney the confidence man laughed all the way to the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens.

Now that Romney is campaigning for the presidency of the United States, he is using Joseph Smith’s tactic of citing historically fallacious mythos with promises of American dominance in world affairs and unrealistic economic possibilities that play well to ignorant and desperate Americans looking for a great white savior to usher in an era of wealth and prosperity. The similarities between the charlatan Smith’s scheme of prophetic fantasies and Romney’s vision of America are stunning, but instead of harkening back two thousand years, Romney is content to parrot the words of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush in hopes he can convince enough Americans to fall for his confidence game.

// posted by montag @ 11:13 AM