Facing poverty and other financial distress, many were told that layoffs and home loss were gifts, and that to be truly successful, one needed to simply believe in oneself and exude a positive attitude. Any external obstacle could be overcome if you believed hard enough. As a way of deflecting responsibility away from the actual corporations that created the collapse, enforced positivity was a brilliant strategy: “What could be a better way of quelling dissent than to tell people who are suffering that it’s all their attitude,”
