When considering Trump's pronouncements on COVID-19 "just going away" and now this on climate change, people seem to be forgetting that he had a close connection to the original "Power of Positive Thinking" spin merchant Norman Vincent Pearle. As NPR wrote in 2017:
KEITH: That is the voice of Norman Vincent Peale, the author of the best-selling book "The Power Of Positive Thinking," first published in 1952. In the late 1960s, he had a regular radio segment, which is where this audio comes from. He was also the longtime pastor at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which Trump attended with his family growing up. Peale even officiated Trump's first wedding.
TRUMP: Norman Vincent Peale - the great Norman Vincent Peale - was my pastor. "The Power Of Positive Thinking" - everybody's heard of Norman Vincent Peale. He was so great.
KEITH: That was Trump in July of 2015 at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit, talking about where he got his religious grounding.
TRUMP: I still remember his sermons. It was unbelievable. And what he would do is he'd bring real-life situations - modern-day situations - into the sermon. And you could listen to him all day long.
It is, of course, magical thinking, which is the last thing you want in a politician who has to deal with problems which are about more than mere psychology.
1 comment:
I don't expect this one to just go away. But if it sticks around for awhile, as I think it will, this will be different to what we think the earlier viruses have done. Trump is going on what is generally believed to happen to viruses.
The Spanish Flu just disappeared right? Or so we are lead to believe right? Sars-1 did also. The last outbreak of Ebola. Lymes disease didn't disappear. But you are way too dismissive of the things Trump says. He's actually taking a wider view of things when he says this. Probably I expect that will turn out to be wrong. But thats a big call either way because insofar as our medical system is concerned most of these do disappear. I wonder if I got a holdover Sars-1 lurgie ten years later than usual.
Now think about it? When I said that you were skeptical? You thought I was being ridiculous. Maybe I am being ridiculous. Why? Because viruses tend to just disappear and Trump is quite right to suggest that it could do so.
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