The Snake Oil Salesman Who Can’t Leave Town

Back in frontier times, in the days before the Food and Drug Administration, a colorful visitor would arrive in town. He would ride in on his horse-drawn wagon, and set up his wares. The townsfolk would soon be regaled with promises of aches relieved, as well as other miracle cures. Customers who could afford it would walk away with bottles of what often was called snake oil. 

From Wikipedia: “The snake oil peddler is a stock character in Western movies, depicted as a traveling ‘doctor’ with dubious credentials, selling fake medicines with boisterous marketing hype, often supported by pseudo-scientific evidence. To increase sales, an accomplice in the crowd (a shill) will often attest to the value of the product in an effort to provoke buying enthusiasm. The ‘doctor’ will leave town before his customers realize they have been cheated. This practice has wide ranging implications, and is known as a confidence trick, a type of fraud. This particular confidence trick is purported to have been a common mechanism utilized by peddlers in order to sell various counterfeit and generic medications at medicine shows.”

I think of this bit of history often, as the days unfold in the current administration. I thought of it as well during the lead-up to the 2016 election. The thought would always be: what would happen when people realize that many of the promises they were so taken by were not pursued, or were broken?

In the context of the story of the snake oil salesman who would make sure to be gone before the townsfolk found out that their purchase was worthless, I wondered how the current occupant in the White House would fare, since he can’t “leave town”.  He has to face the people to whom he made all these promises.

There are several ways, as we have observed. Since the 2016 election, many sources have sprung up to keep track of these ways. Most telling, a reputable news organization calculated that the President of the United States tells, on average, between 7 and 16 lies per day. And he reinforces them by repeating them endlessly, in the hopes that such repetition will convince people that they must be true. Chief among these is to assert that the reputable news organizations are “fake”, so having them say that he tells 7 to 16 lies per day must not be true.

He was recently heard to say: “Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening. Just stick with us, don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news." Telling so many untruths becomes a steady avalanche, making fact checking difficult. His loyal “customers” won’t even try, instead choosing to believe everything he says.

Another way is to organize rallies in friendly locations and put up signs that proclaim “Promises Made - Promises Kept”. Many, many signs. Repetition. People strategically placed for the best camera exposure perform in much the same way as shills in the snake oil salesman’s audience, who would brag about how much they were helped by the miracle product.

How promises are kept can be easily tracked. Here’s one:

August, 2016: “I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf." In my research I have found that our President has spent nearly 33% of his time in office at a golf club, usually one he owns. Another source has estimated the cost to the taxpayer has reached $77 million.

One enterprising site has taken on the task of keeping a running tab of his promises. They show a total of 174 so far, of which 21 have been achieved, 43 have been broken, 18 are in progress, and 84 have not been started. 

There are signs that unrest and doubts among the “customers” are beginning to show. Less than two months remain before the midterm elections. Will they show that there are serious doubts about the value and effectiveness of the product?

D. Norman