“The last I heard, both of them were going down for at least twenty-five years. But who cares? As players in the building and the deconstruction of empires, they’re mere ciphers. Jefferson in his letters to John Adams foretold their advent long ago. Perhaps the greater problem is their constituency. A confidence man chooses only one kind of person as his victim—some one who, of his own volition, invites deception into his life. Eventually we catch on to charlatans and manipulators and ostracize or lock them away. But unlike the fifth act of an Elizabethan tragedy, order is seldom reimposed on the world. The faces of the actors may change, but the story is ongoing, and neither religion nor government has ever rid the world of sin or snake oil.”
Dave Robicheaux, in James Lee Burke’s Swan Peak, 401-402.
