Donald Trump and the Dark Art of ‘Positive Thinking’
One of the most negative nights in American history is connected to one of our country’s most “positive” movements, notes GEN’s Douglas Rushkoff in his recap of the train wreck that was the first of three presidential “debates” between Joe Biden and Donald Trump:
“… to understand our president’s great vulnerability — as well as the way it played out last night — you have to understand the magical tradition that informs his actions and beliefs. As a child, Donald Trump went to Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, where every Sunday he listened to the sermons of Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking. Trump came to believe that the world is manifest through our thoughts. Thinking makes it so. We create our own realities, and those of others, with our thoughts and with our words. It’s all based on the hypnosis of oneself and others.
Peale, a close friend of Richard Nixon, is one of the only people Trump has cited as a personal inspiration and mentor (he’s referred to him as his “pastor” growing up, and Peale officiated Trump’s first…
