Jim Carrey is taking advantage of the shitstorm his painting of Sarah Sanders has created to publicize his other paintings:
Carrey himself seized upon the controversy to promote another one of his paintings satirizing the Trump administration titled, "The Wicked Witch of the West Wing and Putin's Flying Monkeys." Previous artwork by the Carrey has taken swipes at Trump himself, as well as his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, former Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and numerous other Republicans in Congress.
Like all political cartoonists and artists, Carrey attempts to cut through the for-public-consumption facade of his subjects and show who they really are.
This reminded me of the plot of the movie “Shallow Hal” when the superficial character played by Jack Black meets the famous American life coach Tony Robbins playing himself in an elevator.
“He hypnotizes Hal into only seeing a person's inner beauty. Hal does not realize he's been hypnotized and later meets Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow), daughter of the president of the company where he is employed. Rosemary is morbidly obese, but Hal sees a slender and beautiful trophy blonde. He is immediately smitten by her. His boss is not certain about Hal dating his daughter, thinking that Hal may be trying to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. Used to being overlooked due to her appearance, Rosemary initially interprets Hal's interest as mocking, but begins to realize his feelings for her are sincere. After apologizing to him, they begin to date, which includes a bike ride with Walt (Rene Kirby).” WIKIPEDIA
What the country needs mass-hypnosis to see people for who they really are, to see their inner beauty or their inner ugliness.
Trump has managed to induce loyalty, sometimes a near worship, worthy of a cult figure, in his followers. If you want to see a depiction of the power of a cult leader, there’s a six-part series on NetFlix called “Wild, Wild Country” about the eastern Oregon cult started by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
Much has been written about how cult leaders use a dangerous kind of mass hypnosis. Often there’s a flurry of articles after incidents like that which happened in Jonestown (Lessons from Jonestown: The mass suicide of People's Temple followers 25 years ago teaches psychologists what happens when social psychology is placed in the wrong hands) and with the Heaven’s Gate and other cults when they made the news.
Trump is an unlikely seeming cult leader to us. Yet he managed to make his own magic without knowing a bit about the techniques of mass hypnosis.
We need someone to hypnotize his brainwashing, some might say zombified, followers to see him for who he really is. They need to see how he has manipulated their fears “of the other” and latent paranoia to give him control over their minds.
Once that door to a person's subconscious is opened they can be made to believe anything, and in some instances even do things they would normally be constrained from doing by their conscience or by social norms. This makes Trump dangerous.
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A personal note. I became friends with the famous humanist psychologist Clark Moustakas in the early 1970’s. He was propelled into prominence on college campuses and on the conference circuit after the publication of his best selling 1961 book “Loneliness.” In private he came across as a mild-mannered empathic self-effacing man but not at all like a cult figure. However, when he presented at conferences he exerted a charisma I never saw in private. I went to a conference on loneliness which he gave in Detroit and heard people in the audience calling him a second Jesus.
Because he was who he was, he discouraged this kind of reaction. Trump on the other hand, with his message of hate rather than love, has only encouraged this kind of obsequious loyalty.
My Blog HalBrown.org