Gaslighting the Western World
By soupbone60 at Daily Kos
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/1/1695319/-Gaslighting-the-Western-World
"SNIP............
I have a friend who has been referring to Trump as the Gaslight President. I’m fairly literate, but I had to look up the term “gaslight” to remind myself of its meaning and use. According to Wikipedia, “Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity.” The term comes from a play and movie, “Gaslight,” in which a woman is made to think she’s crazy so her abusive and dishonest husband can keep a secret. I thought my friend’s term was pretty apt, and I’ve been musing on it for a couple weeks.
In my work as a small town acupuncturist I am in constant touch with the local zeitgeist — some of my patients are very conservative and some are very liberal, and frequently they are upset about the same thing seen from a slightly different angle. I respect all my patients and try to understand their lives from their point of view, even if I don’t agree with them. I have been convinced for some time that the majority of Americans agree on most of the issues facing us as a nation, but that we are divided by wedge issues, adroitly handled by professional divide and conquerors.
I don’t believe in grand scale conspiracies — I don’t think humans are disciplined or organized enough to pull it off. But I do believe it is the tendency of groups of people to move in generally parallel, mutually beneficial directions. It seems more and more like there are two very clear currents in modern American life: one current seems to most of us to be “true to life,” while the other current seems to be a kind of destructive fantasy of the good ol’ days. Recent events surrounding the latter view have been particularly bizarre, with the behavior of Trump and his enablers at the top of the list. It has seemed like something is coming to a head.
Of all things, it was a column by George Will that gave me my “aha!” moment. In one of his typically shrewish denunciations of people with whom he disagrees, he derided “trigger” as a term used by “the emotionally brittle.” And then I saw it. If you believe, as I do, that you can see a part in the whole or the whole in a part, then human affairs are the same, whether they are writ at a global level or at the level of the kitchen table. A powerful man sneering about the emotional fragility of victimized people has become a cliche on the national, political stage — “snowflakes,” anyone? However, at the level of the family, that person is the abuser, sneering at his victim’s injuries. The more the victim stands up for his or her rights, the more vigorously the abuser will react. Not in the form of defense, either, because there IS no defense, but by belittling the victim’s feelings and memories and attacking their basic narrative. In short, by “gaslighting” them.
.............SNIP"
