Merriam-Webster, America’s oldest dictionary company, has revealed that “gaslighting” is the top word of 2022, noting that online searches for the definition of the strange expression were up a staggering 1,740% over the previous year. And no wonder.
The term derives from the classic 1944 film “Gaslight,” in which an extraordinarily evil criminal, who has recently gotten married, psychologically manipulates his perfectly sane wife into believing she’s going insane as a means of distracting her from uncovering his horrendous crime spree. From the movie emerged the modern psychological term “gaslighting,” which means, “to cause (a person) to doubt his or her sanity through the use of psychological manipulation.”
Why are so many people interested in learning more about gaslighting, as Merriam-Webster reveals?
Possibly because America’s current ruling elites – including not only the Biden-Harris administration, but most of the Democratic Party, Big Tech, Big Media, the “Deep State,” academia, and even an increasing number of major “woke” corporations – are literally gaslighting the rest of America every single day, from morning until night, in a dizzying and ever-expanding variety of ways.
Indeed, gaslighting has become the No. 1 psychological warfare principle of America’s ruling class.
One of the most obvious examples of Biden administration gaslighting has been its ongoing campaign to not only demonize but induce paralyzing doubt, guilt, fear and self-loathing in tens of millions of thoroughly decent, law-abiding Americans by continually denouncing them as “racists,” “white supremacists,” “violent extremists” and “domestic terrorists.”
In fact, in virtually every arena in which the war for America’s future is being fought, those currently in power continually portray large segments of the American population – basically all those with whom they disagree – as essentially immoral, deplorable and irredeemable people, indeed almost subhuman.
A quick tour through some of today’s key political and cultural battlefields brings this dynamic into sharp focus.
January 6 riot: The so-called “armed insurrection” of January 6 was neither an “insurrection” by any known definition, nor did it involve a single armed protester. Rather, it consisted (aside from all the FBI, Antifa and other agent provocateurs on scene) largely of Trump supporters rallying in Washington, D.C., understandably upset at the likelihood that the most consequential presidential election of their lifetime had just been stolen from them, with several hundred of them entering the U.S. Capitol and some committing property crimes and other mayhem.
Although these rioters have been absurdly accused of attempting to steal control of the entire United States government, in reality, stealing control of the entire government is precisely what the Democrats were obsessed with accomplishing, not just through rampant election fraud, but throughout Donald Trump’s presidency. From the illegal spying on the Trump campaign before the 2016 election, to Robert Mueller’s fraudulent three-year “Russia collusion” probe, to the two fraudulent presidential impeachments – all coaxed along by the never-ending comparisons of Trump to Adolf Hitler and his administration to Nazi Germany – Americans lived in a state of constant gaslighting.
COVID-19: The entire COVID pandemic has showcased some of the most surreal gaslighting in modern history. For more than a year, the official narrative was that SARS-CoV-2 emanated from a bat in a Wuhan, China “wet market” (at a time when there were no bats at the Wuhan market) – and not from the level-4 biolab up the street, staffed with Chinese military personnel, that just happened to be conducting dangerous “gain-of-function” research on bat coronaviruses to make them much more dangerous to humans. Anyone doubting the “bat in the wet market” explanation and suggesting the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the more likely source of the virus – that is, anyone embracing honesty, common sense and logic – was mocked, censored, banned from social media, fact-checked to death and branded a dangerous “conspiracy theorist” spreading “COVID Misinformation.”
That is, until it all turned out to be true, at which time the elites just moved on to new and fresher gaslighting opportunities. No apologies – EVER.
Meanwhile, Americans reluctant to have their bodies injected with an experimental gene therapy loaded with massive downside risk and frightening unknowns have continually been told “it’s perfectly safe” and tens of millions were ordered to take “the jab” or lose their jobs.
Likewise, if they preferred to treat their COVID infection – or to prevent it prophylactically – with wonder drugs like the FDA-approved-as-safe-and-effective ivermectin, whose discovery was honored with a Nobel Prize in 2015, they were made to feel like ignorant, gullible (and probably racist) Trump-supporting “deplorables” who self-medicate with “horse paste.”
Incredibly, the Biden Department of Homeland Security even released a graphic titled “POTENTIAL TERROR THREATS,” illustrating what DHS considers the biggest terrorism threats facing Americans. The top terror threat cited? “OPPOSITION TO COVID MEASURES.”
Presidential dementia: For four years, Democrats pursued a multi-faceted campaign to end Donald Trump’s presidency by any means possible, including their demand that the 25th Amendment be invoked to remove him from office for his “disability,” “incapacity” or “mental illness.”
“Almost immediately after his inauguration,” explained constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley, “Democrats and the media called for the removal of Trump through impeachment or the 25th Amendment. Various liberal psychologists held forth on alleged mental illness without the benefit of any examination.”
In reality, of course, Trump is remarkably sharp, and in fact “aced” the difficult Montreal Cognitive Assessment test administered to him while president, getting all 30 questions right. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is obviously in a state of rapidly advancing dementia – something virtually every sentient adult American now understands.
Immigration: Democrats in power are allowing, encouraging and facilitating the illegal immigration of millions of people, not just from Mexico and Central America, but from all over the world, and settling them en masse in the American heartland – permanently and profoundly altering the fabric of American society. Yet anyone who dares complain about the rapid destruction of their nation is accused of being a racist, a white supremacist, and a selfish, heartless person who “hates black and brown people.”
This is straight-up gaslighting, the purveyors of such outrageous and revolutionary policies cynically condemning the totally moral, caring and logical sensibilities of good Americans as grievous character defects like racism and bigotry. In reality, as the nation’s elites well know, America is unquestionably the least racist, most successful multiethnic nation in the history of the world.
Abortion: Anyone who advocates the murder of children in the womb is considered by America’s ruling elite to be a loving, enlightened defender and protector of women – even though half of the babies being thus killed are female. However, if one believes human life begins at conception (i.e., “the science”) and moreover, comprehends that the human child in the womb is sacred, created in the image of God, and worthy of every protection, that person is viciously demonized as immoral, anti-choice, anti-science, anti-woman and anti-freedom – an American Taliban scheming to impose an insane theocracy that enslaves women. In other words, a terrorist.
Transgender agenda: Claiming to be “the party of science,” today’s Democrats insist that men can menstruate, get pregnant, have babies and “chest-feed” their children. This is obviously straight-up insane, yet anyone who dares say the truth out loud is painted as bigoted, hateful and immoral.
The gaslighting involved in today’s aggressive transgender movement – which increasingly includes seducing little children into undergoing irreversible medical and surgical desecration of their own bodies – is far more extreme than that dramatized in the movie “Gaslight.”
Election fraud: Democratic Party operatives have long specialized in election fraud and abuse. Their opposition to Voter ID laws, expansion of Election Day into Election Month, unconstitutional alteration of state election laws, promotion of universal vote-by-mail, advocacy of “ballot harvesting,” opposition to cleaning voter rolls, requirements to accept late mail ballots and a multitude of other strategies are proof of their love affair with election fraud. And yet, Republicans who support the most basic, mild, commonsense, universally accepted standards like Voter ID – having to identify oneself before voting – are condemned as racists and white supremacists, and – as Biden told the nation – amount to nothing less than “Jim Crow 2.0.”
In every area of life and policy, the ruling elite has tried to confuse, distract, project, accuse and intimidate the American public into believing normal, patriotic, Judeo-Christian values-affirming Americans such as have populated and loved and protected this uniquely blessed nation generation after generation, are somehow extremists and potential terrorists.
No wonder “gaslighting” is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2022: It’s the go-to tactic that the Biden administration – and all the radicals, elitists, pseudo-experts, globalists and power-mad leftwing politicians – use all day, every day, on the tens of millions of good and decent Americans.
By the way, in 2021 Merriam-Webster named “vaccine” as its word of the year. Ironic, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed the definition of “vaccine” to make it fit the experimental mRNA gene therapies that fail both of the two basic requirements of all vaccines – preventing infection and preventing transmission of the target disease. The “COVID vaccines” do neither. So why did the CDC change the definition of vaccine? Get ready for more gaslighting: To be “more transparent,” explained CDC officials.
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This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
