Rise of a Global Cult of Charlatans

Charlatan (shär′lə-tən) noun — A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble [twisted] claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud.

“A basic problem for people in politics is that approximately none have the hard skills necessary to distinguish great people from charlatans.” — Dominic Mckenzie Cummings, British political strategist.

“Over the generations, black leaders have ranged from noble souls to shameless charlatans.” — Thomas Sowell, American author, economist, and political commentator.

“Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator.

In the book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft American horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novel author Stephen King wrote,

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.”

It has come to our attention that there are a growing number of influential charlatans in this world.

Interestingly there are forty-two synonyms for charlatan: fraud, sham, fake, pretender, mountebank, quack, misleader, deceiver, faker, impostor, phony, imposter, fakir, hoaxer, phoney, counterfeiter, actor, humbug, operator, quacksalver, ringer, dissembler, trickster, swindler, poseur, imitator, sharper, impersonator, copycat, fraudster, mimic, skinner, bluffer, scammer, scamster, defrauder, dodger, feigner, duper, cozener, sharpy, sharpie.

There’s almost as many synonyms for charlatan as there are personal pronouns. Get my drift?

Charlatans come in all ages, of all ethnicities, political persuasions, genders (of course we know there are only two of those, unless you are a charlatan), religions, professions, societies and cultures.

Charlatans have become so numerous and invasive in everyone’s lives as to become a cult.

We have gone from the 1960s and the dawning of the age of Aquarius to the 2020s and the dawning of the age of the Charlatans.

Cult of Charlatanism

One cannot avoid reading, watching, listening to those who are charlatans. It’s impossible to avoid them and their cult in today’s cyber-connected world.

It almost seems as if they have learned their horrors, supernatural fictions, suspense’s, crimes, science-fictions, and fantasies from Stephen King.

From the world is going to end unless we stop cows from flatulating, to you must get multiple Covid booster shots to save mankind.

While there are many offenders the most egregious charlatans are those who have power. Power to force others to do things that they know are wrong. This power allows these charlatans to recruit new members into their cult of charlatans.

The cult of charlatanism is designed to create new charlatans by indoctrinating them at the youngest of ages to believe what is false, fake, phony, etc.

You see, in order to gain and keep power, the charlatan must have a growing number of charlatans who not only fall for their scams but actually believe and promote these scams.

At some point the charlatans take over a nation state, start wars, imprison those who don’t fall for their myths, lies and untruths.

Remember the dire warning about charlatans contained in 2 Corinthians 11:13-15:

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.

At a certain point the charlatan becomes first a tyrant, then a dictator, and finally a genocidal mass murderer.

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Some in this world are waking up and fighting back against the charlatans. We’re on the side of the anti-charlatans.

But that is a discussion for another column.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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