legerdemain

Sleight of hand; "magic" trickery.

For he in slights and jugling feates did flow, / And of legierdemayne the mysteries did know.

[…] A deliberate man with infinite resources of patience, he was content to progress by easy stages toward the millennium. Some private legerdemain must have reconciled him to the "practical" methods that were employed. […]

A show of skill or deceitful ability.

Certainly, that they are to this day so rife in Italy and Spain, and so scant in Britain, is a shrewd ground to apprehend Legerdemain, and forgery, in the accounts we get of their later Saints.

Most of the time, no one really seems to notice that presentist legerdemain, perhaps because so few of us actually remember the experience of 2020 all that clearly and are clinging to hastily imposed narratives instead.