#963: Bamboozlement: A Pernicious Threat to Democracy

As an informal noun, “bamboozle” means, roughly, “a state of deception or mystification.” As a verb, it means “to deceive”, “delude,” “defraud,” or “to hoodwink.” Despite being a fun word to say, no one really knows anything definitive about its etymology. Even in good old Latin, the word bamboozle is just plain bamboozle. The breathtakingly brilliant Anglo-Irish satiric clergyman Jonathan Swift (best-known for Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal wrote a 1710 essay called "The Continual Corruption of our English Tongue," In this brief piece, he described the word "bamboozle" as one of the words that were in his opinion, "corroding, if not destroying, the English language" In other words, although he had a sense for what it meant, he hadn’t the slightest idea of its linguistic origin. Swift was wrong in his assertion that within a decade or two, the term would completely disappear from human speech. I mean, here we are, 313 years later, and it is still in use

Anyone who has ever read Twain’s Tom Sawyer will remember the scene in which young Tom bamboozled his friends into whitewashing his Aunt Polly’s fence. Who isn’t aware of history’s greatest bamboozlers, Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff? In order for bamboozlers to succeed, there must be a steady supply of cretins, naifs, and babes-in-the-woods ready and willing to believe that there is reality in “something for nothing.”

Of late, bamboozlement has become a singularly important ingredient in partisan politics. Three-quarter truths and outright lies have increasingly become the fuel upon which authoritarian politics thrives. Don’t get me wrong: whoppers and semi-lies have played an important part in campaigns and elections almost since the beginning of our history. One of the filthiest was the presidential election of 1884, when Democrats freely used a doozy of a nickname against the Republican candidate, James G. Blaine - former Representative, Senator and twice Secretary of State under two Presidents: Blaine, Blaine: The Continental liar from the State of Maine. Blaine wound up losing by a mere 1,047 votes to New York Governor Grover Cleveland . . . up until today, the only POTUS to win two non-consecutive terms.

One of the first people to recognize just how dangerous bamboozlement was to democracy was the late polymath (astronomer, exobiologist, novelist and science popularizer) Carl Sagan (1934-1996) who, in one of his last books, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle In the Dark” wrote:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Now mind you, Dr. Sagan wrote this more than a quarter-century ago. I guess one could add to his already bulging c.v.: “Prophet and Seer.” It’s not so much that he looked into a crystal ball and foresaw the malevolence of a Donald Trump, the almost geometric growth of bamboozlement in the public square, and the subsequent dumbing-down of a lost, and highly gullible citizenry. Rather, he was extrapolating just how far a baleful narcissist in the digital era, armed with the ability to reach the masses, could complicate and affect the ability of the hoi polloi to ferret out fact from fiction and science from witchcraft. For as sure as most of us are that G-d made little green apples, this is precisely what Donald Trump and his MAGA acolytes have done. I mean, who in their right mind would ever have believed that bleach or the anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine were certain cures for COVID-19, or that the biggest enemies of the nation were “Communist, Fascist, LGBT” and immigrants minorities? And what’s even worse - far, far worse - is that the bamboozlement is so deep and pervasive that anyone attempting to speak “truth to power” is ignored, derided or threatened with future retaliation.

Who would ever have imagined a presidential candidate proclaiming to his supporters not “I am you leader,” or “I am your champion,” but “I AM YOUR RETRIBUTION!”? Speaking before a Veteran’s Day gathering in New Haven just the other day, the FPOTUS said that in his next administration “We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country . . . . the real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left, and it’s growing every day.”

The former president and First Bamboozler’s chilling rhetoric — and use of “vermin” in particular — set off fresh comparisons between him and the fascist dictators of the 1940s in some media outlets and even from President Biden’s camp. “Donald Trump parroted the autocratic language of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, two dictators many US veterans gave their lives fighting, in order to defeat exactly the kind of un-American ideas Trump now champions, campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement.

It’s true that Trump has adopted the rhetorical strategies of some of the most reviled dictators. He dehumanizes his political enemies, has discredited the legal, political and electoral system, has demonized the press and has targeted vulnerable members of society, minorities and immigrants, as scapegoats. Like other strongmen, he presents himself as a persecuted savior of a disenfranchised sector of society that sees its traditional values and mores as under attack.

(Do keep in mind that the Bamboozle - on right-wing blogs and networks as well as slickly-produced TV ads - has performed such a total “mind meld” on a vast segment of the public, that 69 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters believe that Biden’s 2020 win was not legitimate, a slight increase from 63 percent earlier this year and through last fall.

We’ve all run into the bamboozled at one time or another. They are the ones who proclaim flat-out lies that seem to be from a single script:

“President Trump is victim to the biggest political witch hunt in American history.”
“Under Trump, America was more prosperous, safer and well-respected in the world than it is today under Biden.”
“Donald Trump had his 2020 victory stolen from him.”
“Joe Biden is senile and has accomplished nothing; he is the most corrupt president in all our history.”
“Donald Trump did more for Israel than any other president.”

It’s terribly difficult to disabuse folks like these from believing all the lies they’ve had pumped into their systems. One suggestion I have is making sure you contribute to candidates who don’t engage in “victim talk,” who do their best to bring people together and promote democracy. Also, keep a couple of links at hand to check out anything you believe is a lie: among my particular favorites are Snopes. Fact Checker, the Washington Post, Factcheck.org and Politifact. These are all sound, unbiased sites that practice real journalism.

Carl Sagan was right: “Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”