{"slug": "mathews-united-scammers-of-america-celebrates-250", "title": "Mathews: United Scammers of America celebrates 250", "summary": "Columnist Joe Mathews argues that the United States should rename itself the United Scammers of America to embrace its history of fraud and deception, citing high rates of financial scams, government corruption, and the Trump administration's Freedom 250 celebration as evidence. He contends that American cultural traits like optimism and individualism foster a fertile ground for scamming, making the new name fitting for the nation's 250th anniversary.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...For the 250th, the United States should give itself something better than cage fights or triumphal arches.\n\nA new name: The United Scammers of America.\n\nPerfect, isn’t it?\n\nFirst, we keep the acronym USA, preserving our unbeatably jingoistic chant for world sporting events.\n\nSecond, the name revels wonderfully in dishonesty. “United” remains a lie — Americans are divided, badly — which makes this a perfect union of name and country. A scammer country’s title should be scammy.\n\nFinally, the new name allows us to escape endless historical debates — America is a beacon of freedom! America is a land of oppression! — and embrace the beating heart of what this country has always been:\n\nA paradise for ripping people off.\n\n#### Built different\n\nThe same cultural traits in which Americans take pride also create fertile ground for fraud. Our optimism makes us trust those we shouldn’t. Our individualism means that we’re often alone, thus easier prey for fraudsters. And our entrepreneurialism turns us into suckers for new schemes.\n\nHunger for opportunity and property drive our financial crimes. This country expanded thanks to the national government’s deceptions and massive theft of Indian lands. America also invented the archetype of the snake-oil salesman, selling bogus cures or, in our times, serving as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.\n\nAmericans are a diverse collection of scammers, targets of scammers, or both. You can’t answer a phone, scan your email box, or doom-scroll on social media without encountering those determined to cheat you.\n\nSurveys show that Americans navigate 100 scam attempts a month, and that 40% of U.S. adults have been victims of some form of financial fraud or scam. The country has replaced Switzerland as the international capital of financial secrecy (and thus money laundering). In global anti-corruption rankings, the U.S. is now dirtier than Lithuania, Barbados or the United Arab Emirates.\n\nSo, what better occasion to embrace our leadership in confidence games than during the fraudulent celebration of our fake 250th birthday?\n\nThe American republic started in 1789 and would be 237 years old this year, except for the fact that it died last year, when Trump consolidated his dictatorship. The America we know now didn’t exist until California and Texas were conquered into the Union in 1848. We didn’t become a warmongering empire until the Second World War.\n\nThat accounting makes us 80. Same as Trump.\n\nWhile I’m no fan, I appreciate the man’s willingness to celebrate his personal and national scamminess. Which is why the criticism he’s getting for Freedom 250, the White House-backed initiative, seems unfair.\n\nSure, Freedom 250 is yet another forum for Trump to take money from those with business before his administration. But that’s small time, compared to the billions his family receives from crypto and foreign interests.\n\nYes, Freedom 250 put a UFC fight on the White House lawn, but at least it’s balanced out by a Rededicate 250 rally to celebrate America as a Christian nation. Not even mom and apple pie are as American a combo as violence, religion and hypocrisy!\n\nFreedom 250 is also Trump’s scammy justification for erecting (without Congressional approval) a 250-foot-tall arch that will obscure views of Arlington Cemetery. But maybe that arch will be a blessing — it should also block those hallowed dead from looking across the river and seeing what’s become of the government they fought for.\n\nThe real problem with Trump’s Freedom 250 is not tastelessness. Or that it took resources from the congressionally-approved, bipartisan America 250. The real problem is that it doesn’t go far enough in celebrating our national talent for scam.\n\nThe arch is so mid. Why not, instead, build a giant dome shaped like a teapot, to recall America’s great 20th-century government scandal? If you want to improve the Reflecting Pool, drain its water— like it was the Colorado River — and fill it with all-American manure.\n\nOh, and that monument to prissy Washington (“I cannot tell a lie” — spare me, bro) must go. In its place, how about a neon-lit statue of Charlie Ponzi and Bernie Madoff, giving each other a high-five?\n\n#### Founding criminals\n\nThose who criticize Trump’s embrace of crooks as amoral or worse say that we should honor the U.S.A.’s Founding Fathers for their commitment to law and their loyalty to our country.\n\nBut they misunderstand American history. The Founding Fathers were great because they were criminals — indeed, avowed traitors to their country, Great Britain. King George, in his August 1775 “Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition,” declared that they were “traitorously preparing, ordering and levying war against us.”\n\nSamuel Johnson, the preeminent British writer of his era and critic of the American Revolution, told his biographer James Boswell that the Americans “are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.” Johnson wasn’t joking. That’s why Ben Franklin warned his fellow Declaration of Independence signers that they had two choices: “We must all hang together” or “we shall all hang separately.”\n\nSo, what’s your choice this Fourth of July? Go the traditional American route, and loyally celebrate this nation of scams with the scammer-in-chief? Or dream of a new future and plot some glorious act of treason — California independence, anyone? — over the grill?\n\n*Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mathews-united-scammers-of-america-celebrates-250", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/30/mathews-united-scammers-of-america-celebrates-250/", "published_at": "2026-06-30 09:45:13+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-30 09:50:31.974481+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy"], "entities": ["United States", "Trump", "Freedom 250", "White House", "Arlington Cemetery", "United Scammers of America"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mathews-united-scammers-of-america-celebrates-250", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mathews-united-scammers-of-america-celebrates-250.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mathews-united-scammers-of-america-celebrates-250.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mathews-united-scammers-of-america-celebrates-250.jsonld"}}