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Sep 30Liked by Andrew Smith

Luckily, we've since moved on from those corrupt ways and no longer have grifters as politicians or---Capone forbid---Presidents.

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What's so fun for me is that I'll write about something from the past, and then I'll realize that we've already learned all the lessons from the past, so why am I even bothering writing about it?

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Sep 30Liked by Andrew Smith

Exactly! As they say, "Those who do not learn history, do not exist, because everyone has already learned everything from history permanently."

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I feel like only Big Dude wants us to learn history. After all, it's called "HIS" tory. Why should there be only one tory, and why should it belong to one person? And why that guy?

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My wife calls some people we know the Grifters for reasons I won't go into and it always makes me giggle. It's such a cool word and the shoe fits. Did you see the movie with Annette Bening & John Cusack? That one might be worth a rewatch

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No, and I'm actually a pretty big fan of Cusack movies!

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Sep 30·edited Sep 30Liked by Andrew Smith

As you noted, "grip" was a Latin word, so it may have been the case that "grift" entered English via the Italian of immigrants, whose sons ended up becoming gangsters...

Tammany Hall was certainly the most famous of the machines, but it had its counterparts in other American cities. They exploited the ignorance of the population for their political gain, and were undoubtedly responsible for the continued (occasionally justified) association of political activity with criminal activity.

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Good point. I learned a lot about Tammany Hall in one government class in high school, and I think it has stuck with me over the years, but there were lots of little Tammanies all over the place. This was all too common.

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