"Maybe your dictionary was a misprint?"

Confessions of a moral idiot

The more I understand what happened to the “left,” the more I see how much the great con has relied on moral idiots like me, those of us so intent on being “good people” that we’ll silence every warning screaming within our souls.

I was recently fooled, taken in, conned. It’s hardly the first time, of course. It’s really quite embarrassing. I’m a moral idiot, and thus a really, really easy mark.

Like the very first time. I was a child, just recently six years of age. My father had bought me my first bicycle for my birthday. It was red, and had training wheels, and a little bell, and I adored it. A few months later, riding through the blocks of social housing where we briefly lived in Connecticut before returning to Ohio, I encountered another boy who stole it from me in a rather insidious way.

See, the bike looked “exactly” like one that belonged to the brother, or so he said. And though I assured him this one was mine and had been bought for me by my father, the boy didn’t seem convinced.

“Do you mind if I take it to my brother just to see? If it’s not his, he’ll know immediately and I’ll bring it back. And if it is, I’ll come tell you.”

I don’t know where my tragic belief in the truth winning out over falsehood comes from, nor my strange certainty that being on “the right side” means things will work out in the end. But that was certainly the first time I’d encountered evidence to the contrary. Of course, the bike was never returned: the kid scammed me. But even still, I refused to believe it. Despite knowing my father had bought it, I thought somehow the bike must have originally belonged to this boy’s little brother and I’d therefore done the right thing.

You know that prank about “gullible” being the only word not in the dictionary? I checked, and it was actually there. But here’s perhaps what’s more embarrassing still. I assumed that there must have been a problem with the prankster’s dictionary. Maybe it had a misprint, or it was even missing a page. I kindly explained to her that she should consider getting a different dictionary, or at least checking her edition again. Maybe “gullible” was actually there, but she’d missed it? Or maybe she’d not actually checked at all and was merely repeating false information she’d heard from someone else?

Certainly, I’m gullible, but perhaps you see the problem here. There’s a mechanism behind my credulousness that I’ve finally — in my 48th year of life — come to identify. I’ve always been immune to other sorts of scams, especially the financial ones. The first time I received an email from a Nigerian princess, I laughed bitterly, doubting anyone could possibly fall for such a thing. And then a partner of mine — an otherwise quite intelligent man — fell for a variant of it, and then later for a second one.

Watching him fall twice for what seemed an obvious con made me think about why he’d been vulnerable to it. To me, the hook in such cases seemed too obvious, especially the promise of quick wealth without any real work. I’ve never gambled — never even bought a lottery ticket — for the exact same reasons I’ve never gotten taken in by these scams. Gold doesn’t really glitter to me, and wealth — instant or otherwise — just doesn’t dazzle.

Instead, what hooks me are moral concerns. I’m a dupe for pity, for sympathy, and especially for sorting out the truth of a matter. If a mistake’s been made or a moral wrong committed that needs to be fixed — and especially if it falls to me to fix it — I’m such an easy mark.