The religious roots of Trump's magical thinking on coronavirus

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Analysis by Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

Updated 9:42 AM ET, Thu May 21, 2020

(CNN)As the novel coronavirus has spread across the globe, President Trump has repeated one phrase like a mantra: It will go away.

Since February Trump has said the virus will "go away" at least 15 times, most recently on May 15.
"It's going to disappear one day," he said on February 27. "It's like a miracle."



Invoking a miracle is an understandable response during a pandemic, but to some, the President's insistence that the coronavirus will simply vanish sounds dangerously like magical thinking -- the popular but baffling idea that we can mold the world to our liking, reality be damned.

The coronavirus, despite Trump's predictions, has not disappeared. It has spread rapidly, killing more than 90,000 Americans. In that light, Trump's response to the pandemic, his fulsome self-praise and downplaying of mass death seems contrary to reality. But long ago, his biographers say, Trump learned how to craft his own version of reality, a lesson he learned in an unlikely place: a church.

It's called the "power of positive thinking," and Trump heard it from the master himself: the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, a Manhattan pastor who became a self-help juggernaut, the Joel Osteen of the 1950s.

"He thought I was his greatest student of all time," Trump has said.

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https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/politics/trump-magical-thinking-peale-coronavirus/index.html

[Wounded Bear]

1. I blame religion for lots of societal ills...

mishandling a plague is right up religion's alley.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Positive thinking has nothing to do with magical thinking. Many positive thinkers are realists. . nt

[highplainsdem]

3. Please don't blame Peale for Donald Trump. Peale emphasized forgiveness, love and

good will, as well as positive thinking. Trump heard ONLY the part about thinking positive things about himself.

Trump is a malignant narcissist, and that, more than anything, is the source of his magical thinking.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201808/the-gullibility-the-narcissist-what-you-need-know

Such grandiloquent imaginings set the narcissist up for ultimate betrayal by a reality far harsher than their self-aggrandizing fantasies. Author, professor, and self-confessed narcissist, Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., has written a seminal book on narcissism. Entitled Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, this work is distinguished for its many “insider” insights. Perhaps exaggerated in some of its contentions, it nonetheless depicts this personality disorder in ways that most readers, experientially, can easily relate to.

Here’s what Vaknin has to say about narcissists' custom-made (yet self-blinding) fantasies, which make them susceptible to being out-maneuvered, out-strategized—or flagrantly ripped off:

[Narcissists] live in a fantasy land all their own in which they are the center of the universe, admired, feared, held in awe, and respected for their omnipotence and omniscience. . . . Narcissists are prone to magical thinking. They hold themselves immune to the consequences of their actions (or inaction) and, therefore, beyond punishment and the laws of Man. Narcissists are easily persuaded to assume unreasonable risks and expect miracles to happen. They often find themselves on the receiving end of investment scams, for instance. . . . The narcissist believes that he is destined to greatness—or at least the easy life. He wakes up every morning fully ready for a fortuitous stroke of luck. That explains the narcissist's reckless behaviors and his lazed lack of self-discipline. It also explains why he is so easily duped.

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Emphasis added.