The scams are winning

A report that was conducted, ostensibly, on behalf of the public, its full contents kept invisible to the public: It is yet another shock that is thoroughly unsurprising, another outrageous thing that does its angering out in the open, with impunity. It has become a running joke over the past year—the summer of scam. Scam season. The best scammers of 2018, ranked. Grift in the air; graft in the ether; cons, thriving in times of turmoil, having their way with the weary and the hopeful.

But the language of the scam can be misleading, precisely because the logic of the scam has permeated American life so completely that it has found its way to the Justice Department itself. The particular brand of absurdity at play in the report, the one that translated a multi-hundred-page work of investigation into an announcement of “Total EXONERATION,” is a rule much more than it is an exception. For every version of a scam that can be neatly categorized as illegal (or allegedly so)—Theranos, the Fyre Festival, Enron, the latest college-admissions scandal, a portion of the best scammers of 2018, etc.—there are many others that live in the liminal space of the lower-grade swindle. “Scam,” in that way, becomes its own false promise. It is too hopeful. It is overly naive. It assumes a world that does not exist. There’s so much that becomes fair game, after all, within a game that is rigged.