House of Games
I like slight of hand tricks, don’t you? When you watch a person who can manipulate a deck of cards and do it right in front of you, it’s pretty amazing. Even if you know how they do it. Like dealing seconds, bottom dealing, false cuts, etc. Have you ever seen Ricky Jay? He was in a many movies, mainly Mamet, such as House of Games and the Spanish Prisoner. He could do these tricks right in front of you and even if you knew what he was doing, you couldn’t tell. Your eyes deceived you. The movie “The Spanish Prisoner” starring Steve Martin is about a guy who has a process which can make the company he works for rich. The company seems to be reluctant to compensate this man, whose name is Joe Ross. Steve Martin who is named Jimmy is a con man. He comes into Joe’s life and he sets up an elaborate long con. He creates a false reality. For instance, Jimmy invites Joe to his club. It’s very nice with food and beverage, beautiful tables and chairs. Dark wood panels. A dark room but classy. Rich mahogany. There are waiters and other patrons at the club. Later in the movie when Joe shows this place to the authorities, he sees it is just an empty room. Jimmy also does other things to Joe in order to get the process from him. We never find out what the process is exactly but we know it will make someone rich. Joe is a very smart guy. He’s someone smart enough to create a process which will make billions. Jimmy is very charming and teaches Joe many things, many truths about life. He doesn’t always lie to Joe, but he is lying to him. Getting his confidence.
“It’s called a confidence game. Because you give me your confidence? No, because I give you mine.” Con man Mike, from the movie, House of Games
In the movie “House of Games”, Joe Mantegna who plays Mike is showing his new girlfriend, Dr. Margaret Ford, played by Lindsay Crouse, how the short con works. They are at a Western Union. Mike asks the clerk if his money has arrived while no one is there. There is no money but he does this to create the ruse with the clerk before some sucker walks in off the street that he can con. He waits for a person to enter and when a man enters, Mike goes up to the window and asks if his money has arrived, this would be the second time. There is no money, and the frustrated store clerk says that his money has not arrived, just as he told him before. He goes and sits down. The person behind him in line asks if any money has arrived for him, John Moran. We find out that John Moran is a Marine who needs the money so he can buy a bus ticket to get back to Camp Pendleton. Without the money he won’t make morning formation, which for a Marine means he is a state called Unauthorized Absence or UA as we call it. Some call it AWOL but Marines call it UA. The clerk communicates that his money hasn’t arrived but to take a seat and he will call him when it does. When John, the mark, sits down, Mike begins to talk to him. He gives him his confidence by saying “When my money arrives I will give you some so you can get where you are going. What are you going to do, miss formation?” He also tells him he was a Marine from ‘68 - ‘70 meaning he served in Viet Nam, a lie of course. This hooks John Moran and he puts out his hand to shake and Mike replies “I was there Joe…”, he calls him Joe, and John becomes indebted to Mike instantly. For two reasons, one because Mike offered to give him money and two because he said he was a Marine who served in Viet Nam. He establishes a fake identity which gives him authority. John says “If I get my money first I will loan some to you.” John’s name is called by the clerk and he goes up and gets his money. He turns to Mike and Dr. Ford and says “How much do you need?” Mike says “This man a perfect stranger is going to hand over his money to me” in a quiet tone that only Dr. Ford can hear. They then get up and leave and say to John “Semper Fi, Joe, save your money.” Mike’s goal isn’t to take the money but to pull Dr. Ford into his world, to build credibility. To take her somewhere she hasn’t been before, to open her eyes to the truth. To show here how the world really is. To take her and pull her deeper into his life and away from her own; making her more his identity and less of her own identity. The poor Marine didn’t realize he was just about to be conned. No one taught him how to avoid the short con. Probably because not many people know about it. Most of us just think things are as they seem to be.
Mike called this “the short con” which is different from the long con. The short con means just that, it’s done quickly and in a short amount of time. No long term planning is necessary. Just take right then and there by creating an illusion and then giving the mark his confidence so that the mark in turn feels obligated to return the favor. The illusion he creates is that he is waiting for money. He does this by cutting off John Moran, USMC, and getting to the clerk first so that John has to hear him asking if his wire transfer was in yet. He can’t not hear that. The second illusion he creates is that he was a Marine who served in Viet Nam thereby establishing credibility and authority. Credibility because John knows that Marines who served in Viet Nam deserve our respect and two the authority from Mike being an elder Marine who served while the new Corps, they haven’t proven themselves yet. The third illusion is that he would give him money if his money comes in first. There is no money coming in of course and Mike, the con man, knows this. He is creating a false narrative and John has no way of escaping this narrative because he is a captive audience. His only way of eluding this con is to assume in the first place he is being conned, which he does not do. Another rule of thumb, don’t trust nobody. Third rule, just because someone says they were a Marine don’t make it so (or a good person, or a philanthropist, or a preacher or a this or a that.) Jim Jones claimed to be a good man and a preacher / healer but he made the people drink the cool aid.
Jim Jones used animal body parts to fool people into thinking he was actually healing through the Holy Spirit. He would have an accomplice pretend to be sick and then fake cough up chicken parts during some sort of healing service and then they were healed. It’s a miracle! The chicken parts they pretended to cough up represented the disease. It was magically expelled. This trick among other things, lead a bunch of people to follow him to some place and then commit suicide. They were all fooled into to killing themselves. They didn’t drink the cool aid thinking it wasn’t poison either, they knew it was poison. They even poisoned their own children. They all believed the lie. They were all under the influence of a con man. Every time you walk with the devil you become more and more influenced by him and less influenced by the truth. You become more and more him and less and less you. When they tell you they are an authority, in this case a healer, a preacher, a leader, and you believe them, then they have power over you. And if they’re lunatics they will lead you to death.
That is the power of the con. It pulls you in. Each decision you make you go in a little deeper and before you know it you’re being conned. If you ever do see the truth and you realize it was all a lie, an elaborate lie, you don’t understand how you could have been deceived. But what you see in the end is the truth and it is that you were fooled and that what you thought was truth was in fact a lie. You realize you believed in the lie as if it were truth if you have ever been conned. But if you think you haven’t been conned then you go on thinking that what you see is in fact the truth.
Is it ok to believe something without seeking out the truth if there is a different point of view? For instance, if you are Catholic should you not try to understand Protestantism from the Protestant point of view? In other words should one not seek to know the truth even if it conflicts with their world view? Is it a sin to believe something without taking the time to investigate? If you are Catholic and you hear the Pope is the anti Christ shouldn’t you investigate?
I would say it would be good to do some investigation into things but I believe most will not because they are afraid of hearing other points of view. Ignorance can be a defense against culpability, meaning if one doesn’t know about the truth, how can they be culpable? On the other hand, if one should investigate, but do not, then they have culpability. One needn’t investigate anything and everything but at times there are reasons to investigate such as someone you trust is saying something that doesn’t jibe with your experience. Someone such as a family member, a husband or a wife. A complete stranger saying something doesn’t mean we must respond but at times someone we love and trust says something and what they say challenges our view of the world, shouldn’t we investigate. This person could be someone we trust for other reasons such as they were a public figure who told you things or lead you in the past and you believed in them and now they say something that goes against what you know to be true. Shouldn’t you investigate? How information is presented to you is important too. Shouldn’t we question if we have all the information necessary? How do we know we do? How do we know what we know? How can we live in a world with all this information at our fingertips and 50% of people KNOW one thing and 50% KNOW another?
Going back to our friend Joe Ross, the guy who came up with the process, he was very smart. He was an engineer but he was conned by a guy who probably didn’t have a high school degree, Jimmy. Just because you’re smart in one thing does not mean you are smart at another thing. In Joe’s case he was smart as an engineer but dumb against being conned. He believed Jimmy. Jimmy taught him things. He established himself as someone with money and wisdom. He created a false reality. That is the devil’s trick too. He creates a false reality, but we are too smart to see it. We KNOW the truth. The dumbest people I have ever known were the smartest people I have ever known. How can someone so smart believe something so dumb? Joe Ross is a fictional character in a movie, but he is a real person. We all have traits of Joe Ross, John Moran or Dr. Ford in us. We are smart in one thing or a few things but ignorant of the rest.
If we stay in the area where we really know something we are safe and protected but when we venture outside of it we fall prey to con men and ravenous wolves who would rather destroy us than look at us. I go into the world thinking most people are simple idiots who do what they think is right but what they really do is wrong. What’s worse we don’t even know what is right or wrong. We are animals. To overcome this we must have a well formed conscience and a real view of our self so that we can realize how weak we are and how susceptible to lies we really are. This takes work and is mentally painful. It is hard to see our self in truth.
If we keep our eye on Jesus on the Cross, the Eucharist and the blessed Mother we won’t be able to be fooled by the devil because what it is we want? Nothing. And if we want nothing then who can take advantage of us and make us do things we wouldn’t do in other circumstances? No one. You may say others can force us to do things, certainly but we don’t do it voluntarily. Therefore, the enemy will have to take the fight to us directly as he has done many times before such as during the Cristero wars or the French revolution. He will come for us if we want for nothing and keep our eyes focused on Jesus on the Cross because unlike John Moran, the Marine, we aren’t a captive audience, we aren’t listening to him even if he talks to us. We pay him no mind. If we want nothing then everything is ours and nothing is his. But, of course, we want, and so the game is afoot. It is a House of Games.
These things: the crucified Christ, the Eucharist and the blessed Mother are good things but if you listen to a protestant they are not what you should focus on. Don’t focus on Jesus crucified but only on Jesus resurrected they would say. But why do we focus on Jesus and His suffering? It leads us to be at peace with our own suffering. Why do we focus on the Eucharist and believe in the real presence? Because it is Christ with us and is our Manna in our desert. To them it is only symbolic even though it wasn’t symbolic only to Luther. But each successive protestant made it more and more symbolic until there is nothing to it just as they did to baptism. Mary is just a person they tell us and yet the church has taught us she is the Immaculate Conception and that God became man through her, theotokos, or God bearer. She was spoke to by angels, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, gave birth to Jesus Christ, both God and man. How could we think of her as just another person? Through her we have received our Lord and through her assumption into Heaven we receive even more gifts. She is the queen of the Apostles. The devil hates the Cross, he hates the Eucharist and he hates Mary and will do anything to keep these things from us even create Protestantism, the greatest con of our time. It looks real but it is not the fullness of truth. I love protestants but we must realize they haven’t really protested anything but have inherited a system or the process for salvation. Joe Ross created the process. The process was created in order to keep us from the relationship. The best part is they say they offer the relationship and we should want that but what they really offer is something removed from truth. They can’t see it even if you showed it to them, they can’t see it. They are conditioned well. However, many are seeing the truth and I pray more do every day. How can you see the truth if you aren’t looking? How can you find the truth if you don’t question reality? This is misdirection! The seeing of things that appear to you and you accept them as real while not realizing you should look elsewhere. That thought doesn’t enter into our mind because we are so fixated on what is being presented to us day in and day out. We become mired in our plight instead of joining our suffering to Christ on the cross. Every time Mass is said we are experiencing Christ being Crucified. It is the same sacrifice as the one that happened two thousand years ago not a representation but it is actually occurring today even though it only occurred the one time. This is at the core of our belief that we participate not just in a church service but in the sacrifice of the Mass which unites us to Christ and His body as we are the body of Christ. Every one of my small sufferings I unite with Christ and in return I dwell on His suffering and make it my own through meditation. I pray for Him in His suffering and through all our united suffering which is offered up to God for the salvation of the world He saves us. Therefore, we can unite our suffering to His in the Mass and change the world. Most people don’t realize that Catholics believe this and I would imagine most Catholics don’t know it either.
Unclouding our vision through conscious effort, by way of the Cross, through self reflection on who we are and who we are not, develops truth in us, so that we cannot be fooled; this can bring peace to the world because our actions will be formed by our minds which are steeled and hardened by Christ as we see Him on His cross, so that we have no deception in us. We are no greater than He and we have no right to anything greater than He told us we have a right to. We are together as one, as He prayed to the Father. If we do not do this then the original con man is allowed to fool us because he engages us through his lies, his speech, his presentation, his false reality and we listen to his lies and we respond, poorly. We allow separation and divisiveness. The freedom of wills which choose poorly become compounded and result in the world of pain in which we have become accustomed. It need not be like this; no outcome is inevitable if we trust in God and resolve to become like Christ. We need the Eucharist which sustains us and we need our Mother who is loving. Instead we believe being hard is being tough. We believe being tough is being self sufficient. We believe in self. But what is really hard is to love Christ and to focus on Him crucified and through His love we can change the world.
It’s almost an impossible task. To have that kind of focus on such a thing as Christ suffering on the cross is almost an impossible task. To allow it to transform you so that you too die to your self is almost an impossible task. To live with temptation and all the things that come your way and to still focus on Christ is almost an impossible task. To suffer yet still focus on Christ, difficult. To fear the world yet still have focus is almost an impossible task. I am not worthy or good enough to such things but Christ if He is with me can change me into to something I don’t want to be. I am weak. I am a sinner. But if I focus my God who suffered on the cross how can I expect anything for myself?
Who can do it? I never believe anyone who says they don’t suffer and to be Christian is easy. They say “well others actually suffered, you don’t suffer.” They don’t really know what they are saying. Even the simplest Christian who eagerly seeks Christ will suffer. How can you deny your self and not suffer? Are you super human? That is by definition suffering. They aren’t really denying themselves if they promise you a rose garden and dismiss your suffering or suffering in general. No, this stuff is tough. The House of Games is a movie about a long con and what I am saying is our faith has been represented to us over time so as to deceive or to con us. The con works mainly because of greed. The person being conned believes they will make money and they are the one who is taking from the dupe. The con artist makes himself seem dumb but he is very smart. His aim is to take. So, by understanding the con game and seeing the devil who is at work trying to con us we can protect ourselves by going to the basics of the faith which are suffering, self denial and humility. Those things are hard for the devil to deal with and that is why many are receiving a faith that is based on prosperity or feel goodedness. That is not the gospel but is instead a false gospel and a con.