Governance via Grandparent Scam

Just noting a striking juxtaposition of two separate and  independent items this morning.  On NextDoor there is a neighbor alerting the community to Grandparent Scam incident, and suggesting being on the alert and having a talk with vulnerable elders.  From the AARP article:

Scam artists will use any leverage they can get to separate you from your money. Sadly, that includes exploiting grandparents’ love and concern for their grandchildren, giving rise to a breed of impostor fraud specifically targeting older Americans.

Grandparent scams typically work something like this: The victim gets a call from someone posing as his or her grandchild. This person explains, in a frantic-sounding voice, that he or she is in trouble: There’s been an accident, or an arrest, or a robbery. To up the drama and urgency, the caller might claim to be hospitalized or stuck in a foreign country; to make the impersonation more convincing, he or she will throw in a few family particulars, gleaned from the actual grandchild’s social media activity.

The impostor offers just enough detail about where and how the emergency happened to make it seem plausible and perhaps turns the phone over to another scammer who pretends to be a doctor, police officer or lawyer and backs up the story. The “grandchild” implores the target to wire money immediately, adding an anxious plea: “Don’t tell Mom and Dad!”

Followed a little later by seeing this tweet:

A quick thread about moral injunctions, imperatives, MiGs, no-fly zones, and the standards for effective judgment.
Overall message: Acting on the basis of imperative-driven thinking, especially under time pressure in a crisis, is a common prelude to disaster

— Mike Mazarr (@MMazarr) March 9, 2022

Global Warming, followed by Covid-19 pandemic, larded with Defund the Police, followed by Emergencies Act for the Canadian truckers, followed by Ukrainian-Russian War are merely a sequence of crises intended to gin-up imperative-driven thinking and decision-making.

Or, alternatively, a series of Grandparent Scams conducted by the government in alliance with interests.