NECESSARY SCEPTICISM

FIGHTING THE CON

This week I got conned by a fly-by-night roofer/construction team led by a guy named Roger. It’s embarrassing, of course, and expensive. The question is, why was I taken in? Here’s a sketch of the events.

Roger and crew knocked on the front door on Sunday and told me that while working nearby they’d been using a drone, and it showed animal damage to the shingles up near the peak of my tall roof. I believed them. Squirrels are a constant menace to roofs around here. The guys climbed up ladders, took some shingles off to check, then showed me photos and told me that the damage was worse than they’d thought. A few hours later, Roger came by to say that there were also problems with the flat roof that slopes off the peak. He showed me photos of gaps in the seams there and told me that water had leaked through and that the roof was spongy. Scary.

Scary! It all made me anxious.

By the time I realised it was a con, next day, I was deep in a mess. A lot of the flat roof covering had been stripped off (I had believed Roger that this was necessary because he’d told me the wood beneath needed to be replaced). And I’d of course given him a wad of cash to pay for the materials that would be needed to do the repairs.

It’s all shocking: the cash spent, the cost of getting everything repaired, and the fact that I was so gullible. My fab roof guy JP, whom I called on that second day, as the reality sunk in, was upset that I’d been taken in. He’s been here with a crew for the last two days making things right again. My bank balance is about to hit bottom.

But why was I so open to the con? It’s my first (and I hope last) time. I have no problem resisting the waves of online scammers and sweet-talkers, who work on financial fears or fears of the tax man or whatever. What was it this time that made me believe?

To start with, I was dealing with real people, a group of them. When a group of people work together on a con, they establish a reality, a factual situation. To doubt them is to assume that they’re all liars and in it together. That’s not my first instinct, nor most people’s I imagine.

Second, it’s my house, my shelter, and I know, after this winter of exceptionally heavy snow and ice, that houses are vulnerable to ice and water damage. The only thing worse than roof damage is a water leak down into the house. I was made anxious and afraid, and that took hold.

I can also point to the upside-downness of the world right now, as the geopolitics of most of the globe shifts radically and unpredictably. Does that make us more anxious? More susceptible to believing in immediate threats and dangers? I think so.

That susceptibility makes us manipulable by liars and con artists of all kinds. The media barrage which supports the Musk-Trump bandwagon that is wreaking havoc in the US can undo people’s confidence in their own judgement. And fear too plays a role as institutions crumble and thousands are laid off. With no confidence, it’s very hard to mount an effective resistance.

Today historian Timothy Snyder writes in his substack about the “necessary scepticism” we should have towards authorities who claim to be acting in our best interest as they take away rights or privileges. He is referring to the wild events going on in the US, with deportations and imprisonment of individuals outside the rule of law. It’s like a hugely powerful version of my roofer con: instill fear and then claim to have the ability to rescue the situation.

My little domestic story about the con is a bit of a wakeup for me. I need to keep working on my healthy scepticism, challenging what I’m told about public events, questioning the images I see (so many doctored fake photos and videos are now in circulation), and paying attention to the sources of my news both international and local. So do we all.

Also, and this can be difficult, we need to remember how to change our minds, to be open to truths that are unwelcome, that overthrow what we think we know. It’s hard to accept that we’ve been wrong, or conned, or misled. But the longer it goes on, the more costly it is.

AND SOME SUSTENANCE, PLANNED AND IMPROV:

I was expecting a few extra people for supper on Sunday. In the late afternoon I started to worry about having enough food made, a familiar reflex.

The meal centred on a large pot of brown jasmine rice. Then there was sliced celery root and carrots, to be oven-roasted (tossed with a sprinkling of olive oil and dashes of fish sauce, a great combo); chopped cabbage also for the oven; and a small fresh local pork tenderloin that I decided to slice and stir-fry with ginger, garlic, spices, and a lot of chopped local dandelion.

Local celery root and carrots, oven-roasted then tossed with some leaf lettuce to make a warm salad

Stir-fried pork tenderloin with dandelion

In the end my add-on dish was an invented quick solution: I had a scant half pound/200 grams of flank steak (two small pieces) and some leftover boiled potatoes, still in their jackets. I peeled the spuds and cut them into small chunks. The steaks I sliced fairly thinly and tossed with some shio koji. The meat sat for about 15 minutes. I heated olive oil in a large cast-iron skillet, flavoured it with mustard seed, fennel seed, and ginger, then tossed in the potatoes. When they had started to brown and crisp, in went the beef, with a sprinkling of cayenne powder. The cooking, and seasoning with a little more salt, was very quick. The dish went out with a topping of radish shoots for colour and freshness.

And it was a good thing I’d upped the volume, because another friend turned up later, hungry, and there was plenty for him too.