You Can Be the Mark Even When you Know Who the Mark Is
“If you don’t know who the mark is, you are the mark.” Good advice for any poker game. Sometimes you might think somebody else is the mark, but an elaborate ruse has been created to fool you. This mostly happens in movies, like The Sting. Other times your partner might double-cross you, and after you and he previously conned other marks, you become the mark without realizing it. Think White Men Can’t Jump. Current events have me trying to remember if there has ever been a movie in which one player is an insider on one con, while simultaneously being the mark in another con, involving some of the same players. I don’t mean a fake con, but 2 simultaneous real cons happening at the same time.
Instapundit has been asking “who is the rube” a lot lately. Very recently, Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz argued it’s time to play who is the rube on the issue of gay marriage. It’s clear that many gay marriage supporters believe President Obama has been lying about his opposition to gay marriage, and therefore believe that everyone who believed him has been the rube — but since Obama hasn’t tipped his hand on that issue yet, we don’t know. Assuming, for now, that the gay marriage supporters are right, that might explain how they could be “idiots” at the same time regarding another issue. Tigerhawk criticizes wealthy Obama supporters who are horrified to find out he really is a class warrior:
If you are going to be “rich,” be proud of it and only vote against your own pecuniary interests to achieve some collateral objective. You know, because you want to treat our traditional allies more respectfully or some such reason (bwahahaha!). Do not, please, be a moron and claim to be surprised when the dude’s actions in office closely mirror everything he stood for his entire life up until the last five months before the general election.
I think it is pretty clear that many of the rich, and even the working affluent, voted for Obama for just such collateral objectives, including culture war issues like gay marriage. Figuring that they had spotted the rubes in one context, they thought they couldn’t be the rubes on economic issues. But candidate Obama talked from both sides of his mouth on such issues. Somebody had to be the mark, and it turned out to be the folks with the cash.
