Gaslighting

Today a word we are hearing very often, one that I never heard as I grew up, is “gaslighting.” People use the term all the time and in a popular manner, but it has a psychological meaning. Psychology Today defined it: “Gaslighting is an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves. They may end up doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity.”

I see and hear gaslighting all the time from the political left. It includes a blatant form of lying, that requires people to believe something demonstrably untrue. The entire left gaslit the country on the condition of President Biden. Now it again gaslights the whole United States by giving a particular false impression about Vice President Harris. The left did this in 2016 with the Russian collusion hoax, saying that then President Trump was a Russian agent. For decades the so-called scientific community gaslit everyone with the theory of evolution, that then turned into the science of evolution, even though it isn’t scientific. Egalitarianism, that men and women are equal in authority and that they can fulfill each other’s roles, is also gaslighting.

Apparently the word “gaslight” arose from a 1938 British play, called “Gaslight.” Someone wrote the plot: “Set among London's elite during the Victorian era, it portrays a seemingly genteel husband using lies and manipulation to isolate his heiress wife and persuade her that she is mentally unwell so that he can steal from her.”