Gaslighting

We are constantly being gaslighted. Gaslighting is not just telling a lie, it is more pernicious than that. Gaslighting is the response you get when point out that someone did something wrong or said something untruthful. The gaslighter will not only double down on their lie, he will also call you “crazy” or accuse you of some wrongdoing. The gaslighter doesn’t try to convince you that he is right by presenting evidence or proof, he attacks you by calling you names and assailing your character. This happens all the time, and it is mostly coming from the left.  

During Covid, Dr. Fauci gaslighted America when he said that if you didn’t believe him, then you are “against science”. He didn’t offer any proof or evidence for us to believe him, he merely accused us of being anti-science if we didn’t blindly accept his word as truth. That is gaslighting. It is the same with climate change proponents. If we don’t adhere to their climate orthodoxy, they accuse us of being “climate deniers” and wanting millions of people to die. No, we don’t want millions of people to die, you simply have not shown us, the evidence and proof to convince us that your climate orthodoxy is actually true. So instead of calling us names, start putting together a more convincing argument with better evidence to persuade us.

When the left wanted to remove voter ID in elections, we knew they were doing that in order to cheat in the elections, because when we objected, instead of trying to prove that elections would more secure without requiring proof of identity, they simply called us “racists”. They have never presented one factual, well-reasoned argument for removing voter ID in elections. But every response to people who are against removing voter ID is, ‘you’re a racist.’

Calling someone a “racist”, a “sexist”, a “homophobe”, or a “xenophobe” is the go-to tactic of a gaslighter. They use these ad hominin attacks to make you believe that you are wrong for pointing out the truth. So, when you argue for a secure border because you don’t want fentanyl pouring into the country, killing 100,000 Americans every year, their response is to call you a “racist” and a “xenophobe”. They never offer an argument which shows how open borders benefits the country, they merely attack you personally.

Members of our current administration are masters of gaslighting. When questioned about her husband’s obvious mental deficiencies, First Lady Jill Biden said, “What do we have to do to tell people that the man [Joe Biden] is competent, alert, and doing the job and it’s not about his age. The other one [Donald Trump] is doddering and doesn’t remember anything and can’t put a sentence together.”  She is telling the people not to trust their own eyes. She wants us to actually believe that Joe Biden is completely competent and alert, even though we see that he can’t speak coherently and wanders around aimlessly; she also wants us to believe that Donald Trump is the one who is “doddering”, with a failing memory, and unable talk, even though we see, on a regular basis, Trump extemporaneously speaking for two-hour at rallies in front of 50,000 people without skipping a beat.

We are being gaslighted about the war in Israel. Hamas’ charter as an organization is the elimination of the Jews. And when the Palestinian protesters in America march around chanting from the “river to the sea”, they are calling for the mass genocide of the Jewish people. But when Israel fights back against Hamas in order to prevent their own genocide, Hamas gaslights the world by claiming that Israel is the country that is committing genocide, and there are enough gullible people in the United States and around the world who believe Hamas.

One of the reasons why I believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent is because the side that “won”, immediately started gaslighting the people who questioned the authenticity of the election. Within a week of the election, the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating executive committees released a statement claiming the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.” That is gaslighting. There was no possible way for them to have enough time to have done a forensic investigation into the election in order to make that statement. But they made that statement anyway, so they could call the people who questioned the results of the election “election deniers”, “threats to democracy”, and accuse them of spreading the “big lie”.

In contrast, when the Democrats questioned and challenged the results of the 2000 and 2016 elections, no one on the right called anyone challenging the results, “election-deniers” or “threats to democracy” even though their challenges were unfounded. The Republicans merely tried to prove that the elections were fair. They didn’t attack the character of the person questioning the results, they didn’t call them disparaging names, they just presented evidence that the election was legitimate.

Two weeks before the 2020 election, 51 current and former intelligence officers gaslighted the American people when they signed a letter falsely claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation”. They lied to the American people, and in their lie, they made the charge that if you believed the laptop was real, then you were spreading Russian disinformation. So, they knowingly lie to you, and claimed that you are siding with evil if you believe the truth. That is gaslighting.

The gaslighting in this year’s Presidential election is unprecedented. Since 2016, starting with Obama’s DOJ and continuing now with Biden’s DOJ, the left has been in an unrelenting lawfare against Donald Trump and his supporters. Trump was falsely accused and investigated for being a Russian agent and having colluded with Vladimir Putin to rig the 2016 election. He was falsely impeached twice. The intelligence agencies have unlawfully spied on him, they have raided his home, and corrupt far-left prosecutors have indicted him 92 times in 4 different jurisdictions.

They have also gone after Trump’s associates. Peter Navarro, a former Trump economic aide, is currently in federal prison for standing up against January 6 committee subpoenas. On Thursday, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was ordered by a federal judge to report to prison by July 1 to begin serving his four-month sentence for contempt of Congress. Didn’t Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder stand up against a Congressional subpoena? Didn’t Hunter Biden commit contempt of Congress? Isn’t Attorney General Merrick Garland refusing to obey a Congressional subpoena about the Biden deposition in Special Consul Robert Hur’s investigation? None of them are going to jail for that. Only Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon. Other Trump associates, Jeff Clark, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, and Rudy Giuliani are facing potential jail time, simply for serving Trump in the White House.

The Biden DOJ is also going after anyone who espouses right leaning beliefs. The Biden FBI have arrested and are prosecuting the whistleblower, Dr. Eithan Haim, who exposed that child sex-change surgeries were being performed in a Texas hospital. Six anti-abortion protestors, Chester Gallagher, Paul Vaughn, Heather Idoni, Calvin Zastrow, Coleman Boyd, and Dennis Green, and are facing up 10 ½ years in prison for protesting at an abortion clinic. A leaked memo showed that Biden’s FBI was targeting and spying on conservative Catholics because they teach against the far-left wing social agenda.

But now after all their lawfare, the left is fearmongering the American people that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will use the court system for political purposes, even though he did not do that in his first four years in office. They are claiming that Trump will do exactly what Biden and Obama have done to Trump. Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren said that Republicans were in a “revenge fantasy”, and “that these are people who have taken their oaths of loyalty to Donald Trump, not to the Constitution,” and that they will be “using our court system for retribution” and it “is truly a threat to our democracy.”

Former FBI chief Andrew McCabe said that people in the intelligence and law enforcement community were worried if former President Donald Trump is elected again, that they will be "thrown in jail or grabbed in some sort of extra judicial detention." Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy [Trump] threw me in jail… he’s going to round up people.”

Chris Matthews said that former President Donald Trump “wants to put them [his opponents] before firing squads basically. He wants put them all in jail.” He continued that it was "very reasonable to assume" Donald Trump will become a dictator if elected. Michael Cohen claimed that if Trump wins the election, "people will start flying out of windows" or end up in prisons like in Russia. Former Trump administration communications director Anthony Scaramucci said that former President Donald Trump plans to use the FBI like Nazi Germany's "Gestapo."

So, after 8 years of an unprecedented lawfare against Donald Trump by two different Democrat administrations in which they have investigated him, impeached him, spied on him, raided him, indicted him and are trying to throw him in jail for the rest of his life, they are now telling us that we must worry about Trump politicizing our judicial system against his opponents. Remember, Trump could have pressured his DOJ to re-open the prosecution of his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, for her private server and illegal possession of classified documents, but he never did that. He was above that.

Their gaslighting is a tacit admission that they are wrong and you are right, because if they were right, they would not have to gaslight you. So, when they say, “you are crazy” or “you are racist”, they’re actually saying “you are right”. The left will always have to gaslight you, because they cannot survive in the truth.

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J Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.