We have become a nation of rubes. If unfamiliar with the term, it means a person who is an easy mark, someone not in tune with subtlety, someone who has something of value for the taking, a term derisively used by carnies who rigged the midway games to never be beat. Carnies feed off the greed of the game player by encouraging and complimenting and then consoling, incredulous that someone of such high ability cannot win. Try it again! Here, let me show you a winner technique. Come on man. Make America great.

Carnies are a different sort with a special sort of fraternity. And the more slippery of the group makes the most money. Commerce. So what might the qualifications be to become a carnie. Beats me. Call them entrepreneurs perhaps. Like the snake oil salesmen before them or the traveling flim flam artist, it’s a successful business model for clever thieves.

So how might we apply that model in today’s world. Hmm. We had thought for a time, perhaps mistakenly, that dear leader is a useful idiot, a rube if you will, on Putin’s midway. But…what if. What if they really are chums of the same fraternity. What if they really are working as coequal scumbags toward a common purpose. In Vegas, the best cheating scams are perpetrated by fumble fingered idiots. Mostly discounted, they fly below the radar. Which is why everyone gets equal scrutiny. No one is above the law or below the radar. It’s a business model that works for us.

About that common purpose. Follow the money. Putin is filthy rich. So is Kim. Think there’s income inequality here…Trump would love to have what Putin has. More money and unlimited, above the law, below the radar, power. So far, it’s a business model that’s working for him. These behind closed door, no reporters allowed, no nobody allowed to observe meetings between dear leader and Putin, not to mention the phone calls to Vlad, are just a couple of guys planning and scheming their way to enriching themselves while fomenting untold misery to everyone else. The amazing part of the story is how incredibly patient they have been in getting to the payoff.

The carnies are in awe and incredibly jealous. Well played.