Complaisance:
willingness to please others by being polite and fitting in with their plans [Cambridge Dictionary]
Noted in “A new documentary continues the Thomas Kinkade art hustle,” Philip Kennicott, WaPo:
Unfortunately, the consequences of being an idiot aren’t suffered just by the idiots. Stupidity is a mass phenomenon: It builds on its own momentum, and that momentum can change empires. The treacle and nostalgia that [Thomas] Kinkade monetized — and that other artists, including much of Hollywood, monetize — continue to haunt us, continue to divert people from genuine experience into escapism and fantasy, continue to fritter away our public energies into private complaisance. Bad art can destroy democracy.
