Cheats Seldom Prosper.....
......is nothing but a lie
In response to Stuart Englander's challenge to write a story around a catchphrase.
All of his life Honest Joe tried to do things by the book. He didn't break any laws that he knew of. Joe never duped, scammed nor twisted anybody out of a single cent.
Honest Joe never ever broke a promise nor two-timed anybody. He never stole anything that wasn’t his nor told a single lie to gain some sort of unfair advantage over somebody. Did this make him some sort of saint? Not really, if anything Joe thought it made him a first class idiot.
Everybody gets screwed
Every single company Joe ever worked for had a crooked boss or owner. They screwed their customers and their employees alike. They screwed the government and even their own neighbours, family and friends. They even expected Joe, as an honest faced employee, to screw their customers on their behalf. Did they prosper? You bet they did. They became very rich people indeed.
Joe had two vicious ex wives, six sly brothers and sisters and quite a few close friends who had successfully cheated their way to a prosperous life. They all had their own houses and cars, holidays abroad and not a penny of debt. Joe, on the other hand, after a lifetime of hard honest graft, didn’t have neither a house nor car to call his own. Indeed, Joe didn't have so much as a proverbial pot to piss and is up to his neck in debt. You tell me, who’s right and who’s wrong?
Thieves and charlatans rest easy
Was it possible to get to the top without being bent? Maybe, but Joe thought it very rare. Almost every millionaire or billionaire hadn’t got where he or she had without screwing somebody to get there.
Did they sleep easily at night? Joe believed they did, very well indeed in fact. Joe once asked a doctor friend of his did bad people suffer more health problems and he told him yes they do. But nobody is impervious to health problems. Joe thought.
Honest Joe once told me
"Indeed, I dare to venture that, despite what my doctor friend told me, poor, decent folk suffer far more serious and frequent health problems.
People like me, and I do believe there are a great many, get absolutely nowhere. We get habitually shat on from a great height by the crooked, prosperous multi millionairs and eventually, some of us, end up impoverished. Some of us get to squat in poor living conditions, eat poor quality food and suffer low grade medical treatment, or none at all."
Any government is a mafia
"Governments are just as bad. These days I see all governments as nothing less than legal mafias. Think about what a mafia does. It demands, on pain of punishment, certain payments in return for certain protections. Give me one example af any government that does not operate along the same lines, just one. At least the mafia does not pretend to be anything other than what it is. In this respect the mafia is a sight more honest than any democratically elected government.
Almost all politicians are scoundrels who get up to all sorts of shennanigans and arcane chicanery to get to the top. What’s more they are a totally shameless lot. They couldn’t care tuppence who knows about their corruption. Indeed, some are even quite proud of it."
I had to agree Joe had some very valid points, principle of which was the belief that cheats never prosper is a lie!
"My mother used tell me cheats never prosper." opined Joe "It was a lie. Cheats always prosper, that is why they cheat. Sadly I have come to realise that my mother was a good person who unwittingly gave me a bad education. It is not bad to be bad, on the contrary, it is good to be bad." By now Honest Joe was in the groove.
"People tell me it is good for my soul to be a good person. Bullshit. My soul would be in finer fettle if I was a swindler. At least I would be able to pay my bills and thus rest easy and sleep well at night.
Those at the top who sell us the lie that it pays to be honest are simply protecting their own little gig. They don’t want everybody muscling in on the good thing they have got going.
All that remains then is for me to decide how and when I am going to turn crooked. I bet you a thousand to one I will fare economically better than I have done being legal, decent and honest."
Who was I to argue with somebody as honest as the day is long. But somehow, I could not for the life of me see Honest Joe as anything but honest.