Scott Trimingham for BuzzFlash: The GOP, the "Gaslighting Old Party"
February 11, 2021
Ingrid Bergman in the vintage film “Gaslighting,” in which her husband tries to convince her she’s going crazy. (bswise)
By Scott Trimingham
The GOP couldn’t exist without the art of gaslighting.
This is because the GOP represents the interests of their wealthy donors, not our needs. Their agenda is mostly the opposite of our agenda because they don’t represent us. They just need our votes.
So, since they’re not operating in our best interests, they must convince us to accept their donors’ agenda through deception and trickery.
So how do you sell an agenda that harms rather than helps those who vote for you?
You create an alternate reality through gaslighting. You employ the “Big Lie” and speak to voters through their conscious and unconscious fears and thus bypass their psychological defenses.
You see, we are all programmed to recognize little lies. But, for some reason, we have difficulty recognizing huge and obvious lies because we can’t reconcile in our brain how someone would have the audacity to intentionally put forth such a huge and grandiose lie. In other words, it’s inconceivable that someone would be so grandly and deliberately despicable. Common decency prevents most humans from lying so boldly, without conscience, compassion or integrity. It’s hard to imagine.
This is nothing new.
Here are Some Examples of Republican “Big Lies”
“The Red Scare”
In the 1950’s, Republican Senator Joe McCarthy, along with disgraced attorney Roy Cohn, held our nation in his thrall as he bullied service members, politicians, writers, and others by declaring them communists. The Big Lie was that there was a communist under every bed and that our country was on the verge of falling to them. As unbelievable as this Big Lie seems today, those listed below are just as implausible.
(It is one of the through-lines of Republican corruption that the infamous Roy Cohn advised both Sen. Joe McCarthy and subsequently Donald Trump. As such, Roy Cohn is considered to be an early mentor of Donald Trump. Another line of connection is Roger Stone, the self-proclaimed political fixer and dirty trickster who has worked with Republican presidents since the 1970’s including Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Jr. and Trump. Consequently, unsavory characters like Michael Cohen, Roy Cohn and Roger Stone aren’t “bugs” in the Republican system, they’re critically important structural facilitators.)
The Iraq War
In recent history we can look to the Iraq War, where 15 Saudis attacked us with airliners on 9/11 at the behest of Osama bin Laden. (None of the 19 hijackers were Iraqi.) The Bush administration quickly seized on our emotions and fears by claiming Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction” (he didn’t), was about to use them on the United States (without them he couldn’t), and was harboring Al-Qaeda (he wasn’t). Emotionally reeling and vulnerable from the 9/11 tragedy, this deadly and deceitful mix of outrage and fear was enough to engage us in an unnecessary war (in reality to acquire Iraq’s oil) was a Big Lie that continues to haunt us today.
The GOP, tasked by their wealthy donors to sell an economic policy to the public that claims providing tax breaks and even more wealth to billionaires is good for you and your family because it will “trickle down” to us in the form of jobs is a Big Lie. As it turns out, the wealthy just keep the money and hire us as needed at the lowest possible wage.
“The Election was Stolen.”
First candidate Trump, and then President Trump, set the stage for upcoming elections by stating that if he won the election then it was fair, but if he lost the election that it was “rigged”. This “heads I win, tails you lose” ploy is as telling as it is transparent. The election wasn’t stolen. That’s one of the biggest of Republican Big Lies.
Although it’s apparent that the 2000 presidential election (George W. Bush), 2004 presidential election (Again Bush) and 2016 presidential election (Trump) were gamed and perverted by combinations of Republican voter suppression tactics, Supreme Court intervention and Russian assistance, the GOP has the audacity to claim that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen.” In reality, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were only able to prevail in their elections by overcoming the strong headwinds of Republican voter suppression, voter purging, racial targeting, removal of mailboxes, dismantling of mail processing equipment, dirty tricks and other anti-democratic chicanery.
“The January 6th Insurrection was not a failed GOP coup.”
Within days of the ill-fated coup attempt by flag waving Republican storm troopers - in the form of Proud Boys, QAnon, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, armed militias, white nationalists, and other rioters - the GOP has the shameless gall to blame the insurrection on Antifa. Welcome to "Opposite World"!
One particular Big Lie-slash-gaslight, associated with January 6th, came to slap QAnon rudely across the face when they then learned that the assembled National Guard really was there to protect the inauguration, rather than to round up Democrats at Trump’s expected last-minute command, as they had been told. That wasn’t the case and that didn’t happen, and some in the QAnon community have been stewing about it ever since.
One thing that we can count on is that the GOP will continue to gaslight us and put forth Big Lies. Because they can’t defend their policies or their agenda with truth. Truth will destroy them.
Scott Trimingham writes about the environment and politics.
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