I didn't watch the Republican Convention but caught some glimpses in reports. One image won't let me go - the 1500 guests seated outside the White House for the president's acceptance of the nomination. It's not that it's at the White House - the most flagrant violation of norms separating public service from party politics imaginable - that gets me but those 1500 people. They were tightly packed together and none was wearing a mask. How could they? One expects lies from the president, and we have learned that his lies have cost an unthinkable number of lives. But these people, did they really think there was no danger? They weren't just enabling a fantasist but engaging in magical thinking themselves. If we act like all's well, all will be well.
Steven Colbert, whom I also don't watch but occasionally read reports of, had a reaction like mine. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve got chills, I’ve got nausea, he apparently said of this spectacle. I know Republicans like voter suppression, he quipped, I didn’t know they kicked it up to voter extinction. But I don't think the chills and nausea are at the callousness of those who would enable the enablers to risk their lives. We've seen this callousness before. What's new here, and what's getting to me, is the power of the fantasy. He shouldn't be able to do this but he does. People shouldn't be willing to be part of it but they are. It's as if, if one only entered his world, the terrors of our world would vanish. Pity the poor fools who think they need masks.
Trying to understand my own chills and nausea I was taken back to the origins of the verb "gaslight," a term I still don't quite grasp. It's a psychological tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality, I read, favored by abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. The origin is a noir movie where a man drives his wife insane by getting her to doubt her own memories and perceptions. The word is used a lot about the current occupant of the White House (apparently it's one of his gleanings from the Putin playbook), but this was gaslighting of olympic proportions. Gaslighting doesn't pretend to be truthful but lies baldly and about everything. It turns realities on their heads. Its purpose is to weaken your confidence that you can make sense of things on your own to the point of breaking - so you have to rely on the gaslighter.
I don't know if those audience members had passed that breaking point. They presumably inhabit the alternate reality of Fox News in which this president has always been decent and honorable, despite the vile subterfuge of the villains whose power he threatens, and one where all bad news is a hoax concocted by these villains. Sources they trust have assured them that the numbers of covid deaths are not only small compared to what they would have been without the prescient action of the great leader, but likely vastly exaggerated. Some of them may know this to be fantasy but many probably don't. (They also know he's the bodyguard of white "civilization," but they don't say that out loud, or that they think their whiteness provides them immunity from a social darwinist virus targetting other races.) I don't think they're gaslit.
Gaslit are us in the reality-based community. We can't believe what he says, we can't believe what he gets away with, we can't believe people let him get away with it, we can't believe that people gladly lay their lives on the line to let him get away with it. Of course these are not normal times. At a time of four historic crises - The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60′s. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change - one can see why people might want to join the gaslighters. The reality is too much to bear. If he can deny it and thrive, perhaps we can too.
Colbert apparently compared pictures of past presidents and this one, taken at the start and end of their first terms. As is well known, presidents go grey fast, looking a lot more than four years older. But not if the color of your hair has always been a flagrant lie! Trump doesn’t do any of the stuff that matures you or ages you, Colbert said, like worrying about the American people or feeling responsibility for protecting them or evidently anything else. But the fact that he's unfit for the job and hasn't tried to learn to do it might give you vertigo, not the chills and nausea of the seasoned gaslighter. The unchangingly false smile of the seasoned huckster tells another story. Genius Colbert: the last four years are like Trump is Dorian Gray and we’re the picture.
Steven Colbert, whom I also don't watch but occasionally read reports of, had a reaction like mine. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve got chills, I’ve got nausea, he apparently said of this spectacle. I know Republicans like voter suppression, he quipped, I didn’t know they kicked it up to voter extinction. But I don't think the chills and nausea are at the callousness of those who would enable the enablers to risk their lives. We've seen this callousness before. What's new here, and what's getting to me, is the power of the fantasy. He shouldn't be able to do this but he does. People shouldn't be willing to be part of it but they are. It's as if, if one only entered his world, the terrors of our world would vanish. Pity the poor fools who think they need masks.
Trying to understand my own chills and nausea I was taken back to the origins of the verb "gaslight," a term I still don't quite grasp. It's a psychological tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality, I read, favored by abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. The origin is a noir movie where a man drives his wife insane by getting her to doubt her own memories and perceptions. The word is used a lot about the current occupant of the White House (apparently it's one of his gleanings from the Putin playbook), but this was gaslighting of olympic proportions. Gaslighting doesn't pretend to be truthful but lies baldly and about everything. It turns realities on their heads. Its purpose is to weaken your confidence that you can make sense of things on your own to the point of breaking - so you have to rely on the gaslighter.
I don't know if those audience members had passed that breaking point. They presumably inhabit the alternate reality of Fox News in which this president has always been decent and honorable, despite the vile subterfuge of the villains whose power he threatens, and one where all bad news is a hoax concocted by these villains. Sources they trust have assured them that the numbers of covid deaths are not only small compared to what they would have been without the prescient action of the great leader, but likely vastly exaggerated. Some of them may know this to be fantasy but many probably don't. (They also know he's the bodyguard of white "civilization," but they don't say that out loud, or that they think their whiteness provides them immunity from a social darwinist virus targetting other races.) I don't think they're gaslit.
Gaslit are us in the reality-based community. We can't believe what he says, we can't believe what he gets away with, we can't believe people let him get away with it, we can't believe that people gladly lay their lives on the line to let him get away with it. Of course these are not normal times. At a time of four historic crises - The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60′s. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change - one can see why people might want to join the gaslighters. The reality is too much to bear. If he can deny it and thrive, perhaps we can too.
Colbert apparently compared pictures of past presidents and this one, taken at the start and end of their first terms. As is well known, presidents go grey fast, looking a lot more than four years older. But not if the color of your hair has always been a flagrant lie! Trump doesn’t do any of the stuff that matures you or ages you, Colbert said, like worrying about the American people or feeling responsibility for protecting them or evidently anything else. But the fact that he's unfit for the job and hasn't tried to learn to do it might give you vertigo, not the chills and nausea of the seasoned gaslighter. The unchangingly false smile of the seasoned huckster tells another story. Genius Colbert: the last four years are like Trump is Dorian Gray and we’re the picture.
