From “Twelve against the Gods,” we learn that Charles XII of Sweden was a silent child considered dimwitted, but when he assumed the throne he proved to be something else entirely, setting out to conquer much of Europe. It turns out he had a secret role model he’d found in a book and emulated his heroes supposed silence, austerity, and single-mindedness — Alexander the Great.

From a profile in the “New Yorker” of Mark Zuckerberg we learn he has long had a role model from history as well — the clever, ruthless, empire-building Augustus Caesar who was also initially underestimated. He has even gone so far as to name one of his children August.

This is also the fellow who gloated in the early days of “the facebook” about the willingness of its users to give him access to their personal data. “They ‘trust me,’ Dumb F**ks.” Obviously that turned out to be a bad idea, but it’s nothing new.

After 9/11 we trusted Bush, Cheney, George Tenet, and Colin Powell when they told us to invade Iraq because of imaginary weapons of mass destruction while the real perp, Osama bin Laden, escaped retribution for another decade.

This time the American people were regarded as dumb f**ks by the leaders they had entrusted with their security. and they weren’t wrong. They even reelected the jokers who destabilized the entire Muslim world and alienated our allies. Only when these same clowns fiddled while New Orleans drowned (“heck of a job, Brownie”) did the gullible believers begin to doubt.

In 2008, banks, financial services companies, lenders, the real estate industry, the federal reserve, Bernie Madoff, economists assured the dumb f**ks that the economy was sound, the housing market wasn’t a bubble, and the market could grow forever. What a falling off there was. And once again, blind trust was unjustified.

And in 2016, Donald Trump, a real estate huckster and reality TV Queen of Hearts (“Off with their heads!”) asked the country to trust him with their fate. And not quite a majority of dumb f**k voters did.

There seems to be a pattern here. Perhaps the endless willingness to fall for the snake oil salesman, the televangelist, the silicon valley hype, the Wall Street scams, the oleaginous pol, the seller of self-help nostrums suggests we are the land of the saps and the home of the betrayed.

Is our tragic flaw optimism or laziness? “Trust, but verify,” said Ronald Reagan, but he had it backwards. Verify first, trust later, and only sparingly even then. But falling for cons is easy, Investigating every pitch, treating every scheme as a potential nest of vipers requires effort, analysis, objectivity. Easier to take a selfie and hope for the best.

It is perhaps no accident that a recent study found that only 53% of Americans read books. And we all know quite a lot of those people are lying to the pollsters about it. When America fell for the fat, fraudulent demagogue Joe McCarthy, Edward R. Murrow ended his TV dissection of the charlatan by quoting Shakespeare, and laid the blame at the feet of a carelessly trusting, easily bamboozled public.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.” Of course, Shakespeare is now too hard for us, so maybe we should listen instead to the philosopher king, Mark Zuckerberg, and just try to quit being dumb f**ks.