The 'Gender Identity' Patent Medicine Show

An American tradition continues

Confidence trickery — fraud by deception — is ancient.

Magic is the original form of confidence art, and all confidence art derives from the performance of ritual magic in our distant past. As Rex Sorgatz writes in the 2018 Encyclopedia of Misinformation, the confidence artist must “tell a story that persuades the victim. And to persuade, you must becom…