Page 559 - Demo

Post-Pandemic553ments such as, %u201cHow handsome am I, right? How handsome?%u201d In 2015, he claimed to be worth $8.7 billion, while author Timothy O%u2019Brien said the number was less than $250 million.Narcissistic cult leaders crave approval and admiration, and often feel entitled to get whatever they want %u2014 often through criminal activity. Moon was sentenced to prison for tax evasion, and Rainere for racketeering. Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter for Trump%u2019s book, The Art of the Deal, said Trump didn%u2019t want to divulge his tax and financial records because, %u201cthey will all will reveal he is a stone-cold felon.%u201d Not surprisingly, a lack of empathy, envy, antisocial behavior, lying, exploitation, sadism, violence, paranoia, an inability to trust, obsession with enemies, and using harassment and lawsuits to silence critics, are common personality traits of cult leaders, although no one individual will manifest every one.In addition, there are scores of techniques cult leaders use to attract and keep followers and, again, one particular person will be unlikely to use them all. Deception is a big one, whereby a cult leader will deliberately withhold potentially harmful information, or distort information to make it more acceptable %u2014 or simply lie. They make statements that misquote what others have said, or claim to have never said things they did, in fact, say. Repetition is another commonly used technique, as are denial, rationalization, justification, and wishful thinking.Its important to note that lying, and the repetition of lies, causes followers to experience something called dissonance. This is a psychological tension that occurs when there is conflict in our subconscious mind. For example, if you know something to be true, but you hear a person call it a lie, your brain experiences dissonance. Our brain can only tolerate a certain amount of dissonance, because it causes us to feel embarrassed, ashamed, or guilty, so we try to rationalize the two opposing views in order to eliminate the disturbing dissonance. And the brain does this rationalization without any conscious awareness. An important example of dissonance involved the January 6thriot at the Capitol in Washington DC. Many participants and observers knew it was wrong, yet they later justified it in a variety of