Have Americans Been Gaslighted?

In times of trouble the crème rises to the top…such as the insights and creativity, from such people as Lucian K. Truscott.

I just read his Substack post:

“This is Our Rosa Parks Moment.” 

Truscott writes: “Politics is not the only mechanism by which democracy works.”

“Democrats tried and failed to end the Vietnam war in 1972 with their votes for George McGovern and lost. Richard Nixon carried 49 of 50 states and won the popular vote by 18 million votes.

“The protesters at Fort Benning wanted the war to end, but it didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen.

In 1973, the soldiers were brought home, and two years after that, the war ended because we lost it and pulled out of Vietnam militarily for good. It was unrestrained power and idiocy that started the war in Vietnam. It wasn’t the power of the vote in our democracy that ended that war.

It was the hundreds of thousands of protesters just like those at Fort Benning who did it.”

Peter Greaves commented on Truscott’s post. The president-elect was only elected by 32% of those eligible to vote. He was allowed to be elected by 38% of eligible voters who chose not to cast a ballot.

He does not have a mandate.

Nine days before Election Day, Donald Trump delivered his closing argument at a Madison Square Garden rally that drew comparisons to a 1939 pro-Nazi rally in the same arena and characterized by similar anti-democratic themes: demonization of immigrants and political enemies, invocation of strongman leadership, threats of violent retribution, denunciations of the press.  

Enough Americans bought it to elect him.

We must conclude that most voters want what Trump is offering.

 Or it could be that they have been gaslighted into believing his lies.

I know people are angry and want to strike out—we’ve been stirred up for the last nine years—people are on tenterhooks. Don’t you know, folks, it was planned that way?

From Paul Rosenberg:

“Like the conman in the original film “Gaslight,” Trump spun elaborate fictions, claiming that Obama had come out of nowhere, demanding to see his college transcripts and inventing a team of investigators sent to Hawaii (who did not exist). That got the anti-Obama base fired up, while presenting a pseudo-serious facade to the broader public. This is how he gaslights routinely in politics, rarely engaging directly with the right-wing mythologies he taps into, but freely improvising his own fantasy extensions.  

In this election, Trump relied on five key themes of gaslighting in various different ways, all of them adding up to an overarching sixth theme: Democrats are the real threat to American democracy, and Donald Trump is its savior. 

“It is the upside-down logic used in abusive relationships.

“Gaslighters may lie all the time, but when the chips are down, they gaslight.”

For example, “The hate you saw was really love, and if you can’t see that, you’re the hateful one.”

(Google— “How Donald Trump Gaslit America,” by Paul Rosenberg.)

Wow, that President elect isn’t stupid, he’s devious.

Or, could it be that the idea that a woman of color could possibly become President is so repugnant to many that they would elect a rapist, misogynist, amoral man who cannot even take pleasure in winning but must still rail at the Democrats?

Doesn’t he know that an athletic event (since he likes fighting so much—as displayed on the Joe Rogan show) has two sides?

(The fighting they were so enamored with is extreme fighting where they kick to break their opponent’s legs, and sometimes the fighters carry a razor blade to cut themselves to make their injuries seem worse.)

If you win, you celebrate, but you do not want to annihilate your opponent, they were there so you could win.

Didn’t your coach teach you anything about sportsmanship?

The country elected a man by a democratic voting system—even Latino men whom he has threatened to deport voted for him. I’m boggled. 

I’m ashamed. When hate opens the door it gives other haters permission to be their worst. Some far-right men have taunted social media women, “Your body, my choice.”

That tells me the abortion ban is not about saving babies. (Nobody wants to kill a baby.) It’s about sticking it to women. It’s about control.

I always wondered when I saw how maligned an unwed mother was, how she was hidden, set off, made ashamed, and ridiculed. Sometimes, the man just ran off. Then, after the baby was born, “Oh, how cute it is.” Now, it is a person. While it was in the woman, it was a shameful sexual act, a biological blight that made the woman swell up and commit to the act of pushing what feels like a watermelon out of her body. And let’s make sure she did it, and hopefully in pain. (Evidenced by some nuns who facilitated childbirth.) The Bible said a woman was unclean after giving birth and had to spend a certain number of days to cleanse.

Back to the question I posed in an earlier blog—and it is not why Harris lost, (get off picking on that). Why did Trump win?

“Trump’s voters turned out because they believed him when he stood up there at his rallies and claimed that he would fix all their problems, whatever they were.  For them, it was what passed for leadership, so they followed him.  He won’t fix things, he doesn’t even know what their problems are, and he doesn’t care.  But that doesn’t matter right now.

“What matters for us is that the time for complaining is over.  Here is how my father told me to get over myself: 

“Buck up.  There are things to figure out and work to do.  We have the tools; we’re smart; we can do it.”

—Lucian K Truscott

The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

“Before he (the President elect) enters on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:– I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Fourteenth amendment: Section 3 

Why haven’t we acted on this?

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.