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Stephanie Massie Clark's avatar

If I can indulge myself one more time, I am remembering a situation in which my violent, narcissistic ex-husband was threatening to do something destructive. I was trying to talk him out of it. I was only 26 but I had a moment of genius. I told him: "Go ahead, everybody is going to know for sure that you are crazy." In one sentence I told a secret and also threw up a threat to his all-important self image. And it stopped him in his tracks, for that episode...

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Peg Frey's avatar

So interesting. I just rewatched the HBO doc on Elizabeth Holmes and was immediately impressed at how Holmes' ability to capture the attention and total belief of her supporters and financiers was so . . . MAGA-like. Those involved, the enablers, were for the most absolutely besotted by Holmes and her 'vision.' Many denied the reality of the con (the markers were certainly there) because they so badly wanted to believe in what this young woman was selling, a fairy-tale.

Once we place our critical-thinking skills aside, we are vulnerable to this sort of wishful-thinking and the lure of the gamester who repeatedly says:

I have the answer; only I can fix it. Believe me.

The Pied Piper's seduction is ruinous, deadly.

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