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The
first thing you need to know about a
master con artist is that his mark,
his sucker, his target never ever
realizes that he/she has been
swindled. The ultimate
crook is the one who never gets
caught. He or she is
either invisible to the public media
or is thought of as a respected
member and/or leader of the
community.
For
an example, see the section below, Confessions
of a Con Artist.
For an in-depth analysis of con
artists and how they function, see
the page titled: How
to Win with a Losing Issue.°
Confessions
of a Con Artist:
Imagine
for a moment, that you have just found the secret journal of a religious
preacher named Argy Rodes. Argy was one of the minority of
people who were
immoral, unethical, and would do anything to make a buck except
work to earn it. Here's the essence of what you found in his
journal:
When
I was still in high school, I got to thinking that the world out there was a
pretty tough place. My dad, on the few occasions that I saw
him, told me that there weren't very many life-long, free lunch counters, so I'd
better start figuring out what I was going to do to (in his words) "keep
my ass out of the gutter." I'm not much for hard labor,
so when my dad also told me that working smart was better than working
hard, I actually paid attention to him.
I
started looking for a work-smart career. My dad was a currier for
one of the small-time, local crime families, so I saw first hand that crime attracted the
attention of guys with guns and badges and jails. I knew dad's
business wasn't for me.
When
I was sixteen, two important things
happened to me in the same month and when I connected the two, a flash of
lightning hit my brain. The first thing occurred when a circus came
to town. I went there with my buddy and lost all the money I had in
a slick carnival game. When my mom found out, she just laughed and
quoted P. T. Barnum, "There's a sucker born every
minute." About two weeks later I saw the film, "Elmer Gantry"
which was about a vacuum cleaner salesman turned tent preacher in the 1920's. Talking and telling stories came
natural to me, so when I walked out of that theater, I knew I'd found my
career.
I
started reading the Bible and
checking out local
churches. Mom thought
I'd gotten religion and was
pleased. She started
encouraging me. I never
mentioned that I didn't buy into the
religious stories because there
were just too many things that
didn't make any sense.
There was, however, one thing that
made really good sense to
me. I saw
hundreds of people giving money to
people who talked about
God. As a test, I
started making up stories that I
thought were so outlandish that
nobody would believe
them. To my amazement,
many of my listeners would respond to my
stories with an open mouth stare and
say,
"Really?"
The
first time I got my hand into a
girl's panties by telling her she was
doing God a favor, I knew I was
going to be a king of
the
hill. At that point, I
knew that I was headed straight into
the religion business; not for
Jesus, not for saving souls, or for
helping widows, but to make
money; to be a pillar of the
community; to make easy
money; to be safe from those
men with guns and badges; to make
lots of money; to "live
high on the hog," to have a big
home with servants, drive or be
driven in luxury cars, drink the
finest wines, and have lots of
great sex.
Over
the years, I've made millions, hobnobbed
with the rich and famous, been
invited to places that most people
don't even dream about, and had
secret sex with more beautiful women
than anybody I can imagine except
perhaps rock stars and Hugh
Hefner.
There
are tens of thousands of dedicated,
kind, honest, loving individuals who
are leaders in numerous
religious faiths and who are truly
working for what they honestly
believe are God's
wishes. To walk among
them, wearing their costumes and
pretending to be one of them,
has been, for me, so simple and
so easy that I'm amazed that I
don't find very many others like
me. But then, perhaps
there are numerous others who are as
good at the con game as I have
been. Who's to say for sure
what someone else's motives really
are?
As
my life nears it's conclusion,
there's one thing I can say with
absolute certainty: Religion
is the home of some of the greatest
con artists on the
planet. I hold myself up
as a shining, but still invisible,
example of a master of con
artist. I've lived my
entire adult life in a lifestyle at
a level that is beyond the reach of
99.99 percent of the other humans on
this planet and never, even once,
got caught at my game.
So
the next time someone starts
peddling religion to you, look at
his life style. If he lives a
modest life, he's almost
certainly genuine, but if he
spends large amounts of church money
on himself, watch out.
My advice to
the world is to simply offer two quotes
from Jesus: "Beware of
the wolves in sheep's
clothing." and
"By their fruits you shall know
them."
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In
order to
think that there are no con
artists hiding among today's
religious and political leaders, one has to be
either, incredibly naive or believe
that Jesus was lying when he warned
about wolves in sheep's
clothing. The best this
author can add to the above quote is
to invite you to apply your mind to
your religious beliefs and question
everything. Become
"A
Reasonable."°
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