Kid Pharaoh, Con Man, Tom Kearney, Cop

After reading about Kid Pharaoh, who was a con man during the Cold War, and Tom Kearney, who was a cop during the Cold War, I was shocked by how these polar- opposites, in careers, saw the same type of vulnerability in the people they came across. Pharaoh learned how to con people during the Great Depression, when his father was not making any money. He used his con schemes to feed himself, and decided that “outside of being a prize fighter, [he] took an oath to god [he] would never again labor.” (253) Pharaoh used peoples fear over events such as, the Cuban Missile Crisis, to earn his money. Pharaoh knew that people were afraid. “[He] [gave] them security.” (256) Pharaoh realized that he could also con people by using his and his brother’s bad publicity as prize fighters to earn money. Pharaoh “[sold] two things: [Pharaoh] [sold] the item of fear and [Pharaoh] [gave] them the security they never had in their life. And what ever they have [Pharaoh] [took] from them. [They] [were] more than willing to give it.”( 253) Pharaoh believed that he was giving the people, who had paid him, a feeling of security. When he heard about a boy in Arizona, who had killed himself, he noted that “psychiatrists couldn’t have [cured] him, but [he] woulda cured him.” (255) Tom Kearney “worked as a patrolman and a detective. Then [he] was promoted to a detective sergeant and from there [he] went to the traffic division.” (262) Kearney was a Catholic and so were his siblings, who eventually intermarried with Protestants, which during the Cold War became increasingly more accepted. His dad was a firefighter, who had got a pension, but Kearney’s father believed that everyone should have gotten a pension not just him. Kearney became a cop during the Cold War, and took that job, because he had authority. When he first started as a patrolman, he realized “a policeman starts out young and very impressionable, and you see people at their worst, naturally.” (271) The fear of the events going on during the Cold War had made his realization more true, because the fear that was shown made the people, he saw, at their worst. These stories raise a few questions. The first question is, did the Cold War have such an impact on the American people that anything that promised security, such as a con man, could ease people’s fears? The second question is how come the cops and con men have no fear, when the life they knew could be ended in seconds? These stories remind me of McCarthyism and the arms race. Senator Joseph McCarthy had used the fear of Communism to get him re-elected in 1950. McCarthy had accused many U.S. government officials of being Communists. This gave McCarthy instant popularity, because he used the fear of Communism to make voters feel like he would protect them from Communism if he was re-elected. The arms race also had been centered around fear. After the U.S. had used the atomic bombs to end the Second World War, the Soviet Union started to recreate the atomic bomb. When the Soviets had exploded their first atomic bomb, Americans feared that one day they would be attacked by the Soviets’ atomic bombs. These fears of atomic bombs lead to the negotiations between countries. These stories also remind me of my mother. My mother was in fifth grade during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and had gone to school on that day. She remembers that her school had practiced what to do if the city’s sirens sounded, which meant that they were under attack. The five children, including my mother, were told to take cover under the desk, just in case. My mother remembers the fear that she had.