This is my “PERSONAL” GRIFT watch list that I have seen FIRST HAND. “SHRM” is the RULE, and NOT the EXCEPTION.
“JB” Editorial Entry:
Hello readers, visitors, and contributors. I am responding in BULK, to the e-mails received over the weekend. Many thanks for the kind inquiries into my health, as well as the positive reviews of the newly formatted site.
I feel that over the course of the past (10) years, I have had WINDEX sprayed and wiped off my eyes. I wish that I could believe that the “system” will eventually lead to JUSTICE and VICTORY for the GOOD over the BAD. Sadly, those days are gone and will NEVER return. The US is a very shaky “Glass House“, so I am NOT throwing stones at just PANAMA as my new home. I feel it is systemic failure across the board and has left me changed for the long haul.
The overwhelming opinion in the creation of stories since the beginning of the art, is that “Novels”, “Scrrenplays”, “Movies”, “Urban Legends” and “Creation Myth” is always peppered with examples based upon FACTS. (Science Fiction excluded). Some are not only “Peppered”, but “Marinated” ion them. How on Earth can they NOT be?
I am genuinely “pregnant” and “all in” on the protection of Ex-Pats from schemers, grifters, slimy politicians, and outright liars and thieves. I feel privleged in knowimg there are professionals on the other side of the table that TRULY exist and are PRIMED to take these nefarious scum to task.
So in the spirit of shining a light on this topic being more than something written by Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy. I feel people who may not have seen these flicks to have a BINGE WATCH to see what I am speaking on Super entertaining and consider it HOMEWORK.
MICHAEL CLAYTON Movie
WAG THE DOG Movie
I would give “Honorable Mentions” to IAN McSHANE as “WINSTON” in the JOHN WICK universe, and maybe MICHAEL FASSBENDER in “THE BLACK BAG”.
Notice how I am NOT suspending disbelief to include HARVEY KEITEL as “The WOLF” in PULP FICTION, or maybe JEAN’ RENO as “The CLEANER” in La FEMME NIKITA. I say that because I have NEVER seen those type of characters with my own eyes. However, when speaking of “FIXERS”, or “MIDDLE MEN” simply go online and do your own research.
Read about MASSIVE firms that elicit the services of Ex-Special Ops Military for Private Security – GAVIN DeBECKER and ASSOC,. or CONSTELLIS (formerly “BLACKWATER”) or HALIBURTON, tasked with securing Post War Iraq. Ask yourself, what type of client or customer requires those services??? The answer is simple and explained very clearly on the SHRM website……
There are those that look at the WORLD in the way I “used” to,,in BLACK and WHITE terms.
And then there is the very real and very active SUBSET that realizes the actual processes are very much GRAY in nature.
Imagine my surprise when I recently checked my AMAZON streaming to see this brand new film.
It LITERALLY covers EXACTLY what I am opining on. My point friends, is that I am NOT talented enough to make this SHIT up. Directors are NOT contacting my “shitty little blog”. But this is REAL, and scumbags like “JH” in Bocas are also REAL.
So please fire up the microwave and grab the Dr,Pepper and have yourself a weekend Film Fest. I can promise you will come away with a FAR BETTER understanding of what I have witnessed first hand over the last decade.
Saludos-
“JB”
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Why ‘grifter’ has become the go-to political insult of 2025
This article is more than 10 months old
Our world is full of grifters. Or so it seems, considering how often that word is thrown around in public life these days.
This year alone, Zarah Sultana, the former Labour MP and founder of a new left party with Jeremy Corbyn, called the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, a “billionaire-backed grifter” (perhaps borrowing from the language of Coutts staff who referred to him as a “disingenuous grifter” when his bank account was closed two years ago). Sultana, in turn, was accused of being a “grifter” duping “honest socialists” by the journalist Paul Mason.
When giving evidence at the Covid inquiry, the Spectator editor and former cabinet minister, Michael Gove, called the lawyer Jolyon Maugham, whose Good Law Project campaign group pursued PPE contract cases, a “politically motivated grifter”. Meanwhile, the journalist and author James Ball accused the New York University history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat of “resistance grift” for suggesting the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is trying to control the population by spreading disease.
In a recent podcast, the Atlantic writer David Frum called Donald Trump’s presidency the “grift machine”, while the US president was also called “grifter-in-chief” by Florida congressman Maxwell Frost. Two years ago, it was the Sussexes who were memorably called “fucking grifters” by Spotify’s head of podcast innovation, Bill Simmons, after their multiyear deal with the platform ended after just 12 episodes.
From 2017-24, the written use of the word “grifter” has more than doubled, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). But over the past few months in particular, it has been striking how often the term – both grifter and grift – is cropping up in our political discourse. In April this year, it made its debut in parliament: it was used in a House of Commons debate on the impact of digital platforms on democracy by the Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, Max Wilkinson. “You find a mad and hateful narrative. You tell everyone it is free speech, and before you know it, you might be lucky enough to become a successful online grifter with your top off,” he said. “Perhaps you will be an MP, or maybe even the president of America.”
“Grifter”, according to the OED, is a variant of the US slang “grafter”: someone who “makes money by shady or dishonest means; a thief; a swindler” – or “one who practises ‘graft’, especially in public life; a politician, official, etc, who misuses his or her position in order to reap dishonest gain or advantage”. That second meaning has clearly captured the political zeitgeist. “It’s a kind of shorthand for inviting suspicion about the methods and motivations of someone with an opposing viewpoint,” Fiona McPherson, an executive editor at the OED, told me.
Why is it that we’re not only disagreeing with our political opponents, but assuming they are con artists somehow profiting from what we deem to be their bad opinions, policies and rhetorical style? Spivs who are in it for nefarious ends rather than simply wrong-headed?
When you search the term “grifter” on sites such as Reddit and TikTok, it is often used in relation to influencers – wellness gurus, pickup artists, life coaches, crypto bros. So many online subcultures now dabble in essentially the same business model: sowing insecurity and then charging people with the promise to rid them of it. Wherever the algorithm leads you, from sleep coaches for knackered new mums to gym rats for lonely boys, you are likely being exposed, day in, day out, to some form of grift.
When politicians themselves mimic such influencers – Farage and the shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, for example, now trade in to-camera vertical videos that gain millions of views – it is hard to ignore the similarities. Suspicions of British politicians’ motives in general are high, sparked by the 2009 expenses scandal and intensifying over the past few years of crony Covid contracts and ministers bagging freebies.
The rise of the “true scam” genre also reveals our morbid fascination with grift. From the Tinder Swindler to Fyre festival, and Theranos to the Captain Tom Foundation, stories of the hubris and humiliation of people perceived to be on the make with our money dominate TV documentaries, long-form journalism and investigative podcasts. All this and you can barely open your banking app today without warnings about the nefarious means used by scammers to winkle money out of you. Fraud is the most common crime in England and Wales, with the highest number of cases recorded last year.
In the resulting atmosphere of ambient paranoia, perhaps it’s little wonder we’re on the lookout for “grifters” – and why the insult appears to resonate. So welcome to the Age of Grift: if you’re not spotting it, you’re probably on the end of it.
- Anoosh Chakelian is Britain editor of the New Statesman
