The term "gaslighting" derives from an old film called Gaslight, a story of insidious psychological manipulation of a vulnerable woman by her psychopathic husband. The basis of gaslighting is the production of confusion in the victim to the point where the victim is unable to recognize reality, unable to differentiate truth from lies, unable to function without the guidance of the manipulator.
Bryant Welch has recently published a book called State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind. Dr. Welch is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. He's interested in psychodynamics. But what his book is about is essentially the gaslighting of America by the Republican-neoconservative-protofascist religious axis of political agitprop -- the gang now represented by George W. Bush and John McCain.
John McCain, eager to sit in the Oval Office despite his age and apparent medical problems, of course would like to dissociate himself in the public mind from eight years of disastrous Bushism -- a failed war, a failed economy, a failed presidency. But the fact is Mr. McCain is in the same political party as Mr. Bush, financed and advised by the same people as Mr. Bush, and a purveyor of essentially the same dogma and gaslighting techniques that have come close to wrecking the soul of this country by what Bryant Welch calls "an assault on the American mind" -- an assault on all of us. Mr. McCain is as much part of the assault as Mr. Bush -- it's a Bush-McCain duet that from its rhetoric aims to continue the gaslighting of the American people.
In his book, Dr. Welch asks a number of incisive questions. "Why did Americans become so vulnerable to divisive political tactics? Why did America get dragged into such an unwise war in Iraq? Why have fundamentalist religious groups, Fox News, and hate-filled right-wing radio played such influential roles in the American political landscape?"
These are serious questions that deserve serious answers, and historians and sociologists and psychologists will be discussing these questions for many decades. My own view is that Dr. Welch has put the most important explanatory word into the title of his book: confusion.
When people are confused, they feel vulnerable. And when people feel vulnerable, they look for the quick fix, the simple answer that will provide stability and security. Life, after all, is a pig's mess of uncertainty -- horror, war, killing, crime, poverty, and unpredictable disease -- and any creed or propaganda that promises an antidote to life's misery and uncertainty has the immediate attention of the masses. So if you want to control people politically, economically, and socially, the method is clear: make them feel uncertain and vulnerable and before long they will look to you for salvation.
When a man walks into a church and starts shooting at people because he hates liberals and he thinks the congregation is too liberal, you are witnessing a consequence of the gaslighting of America.
When a young woman sits before a congressional investigating committee and smirks as she says yes, she "stepped over the line" in vetting Department of Justice employees for their political views, you are witnessing a consequence of the gaslighting of America.
When the American public passively accepts Pentagon censorship of the casualties of an unnecessary war, you are witnessing a consequence of the gaslighting of America.
When a media mouthpiece talks about liberals, about people who want political and social justice, as if such people are cockroaches that need to be sprayed with insecticide, you are witnessing a consequence of the gaslighting of America.
Can we stop the gaslighting? This is a critical year in American history. A wise man once said we borrow the future from our children. We may be making a great tragedy if what we hand back to them is a gaslighted country of continuing confusion.