Lincoln Predicted It: America Sees Through the Gaslighting

On January 29, 2021, I was at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. I could not believe what I saw. Here is what I posted that day on my Facebook page:

It would be hard for me to put into words the level of disgust I feel for those who are exploiting Jan. 6th to cordon the whole area around the Capitol with fencing and barbed wire.

We are not fooled by the gaslight, gentlemen. We know what you’re doing. And when Trump or something like him is back in power and you wonder why, look in the mirror and remember the barbed wire.

Americans are an unruly, hard-to-govern people. And as our greatest leader once said, you can fool some of us all of the time and all of us some of the time. But you can’t fool all of us all of the time.

A year later the Merriam-Webster Dictionary named “gaslighting” its “Word of the Year.”

I mention all this because, as we dissect the many aspects of Donald Trump’s sweet victory over Kamala Harris, I don’t want us to lose sight of it–the gaslighting of the American people that has taken place, wholesale, over the last four years. I think it is one of the biggest stories of this election. Nay, of the last decade.

They Gaslighted Us Throughout Trump’s First Term

We were told all year long that Donald Trump was the threat to democracy. But when the exit polls came in, it turned out that most of the voters who were worried about threats to democracy actually voted for him and not Harris.

They were not wrong. They saw through the gaslighting. And not just because, as this article suggests, they had questions about election integrity. Oh, it was much bigger than that.

It was the Russia Collusion Hoax, which was the start of it all. It was the Deep State’s slow-motion coup d’etat against an elected head of state during Trump’s entire first term.

It was the former national security officials who prostituted themselves in 2020 by falsely claiming that the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. It was the media who abandoned any pretense of objectivity by taking the “Russian disinformation” claim at face value and participated in censoring the laptop story.

It was that same media gaslighting us all year long over “mostly peaceful protests.” It was public health officials telling us that we could not have a funeral for our loved one because of the pandemic but we could attend a BLM protest. It was the BLM protesters getting off easy while the J6 protesters had the book thrown at them.

They Gaslighted Us Throughout the Biden Administration

It was the claim that men can be women and that anyone who says otherwise is a bigot. It was the federal government labeling as “domestic terrorists” parents who objected to transgender curricula at school board meetings.

It was the Department of Justice slow-walking investigations of the hundreds of attacks on Catholic churches after the Dobbs ruling in 2022. It was the FBI testifying to Congress that they couldn’t catch the culprits because they were committing their crimes at night, when it’s dark. It was the FBI memo calling for investigations of Catholics who attend the Traditional Latin Mass.

It was a federal SWAT team raiding the home of pro-life activist Mark Houck over an incident that local authorities had declined to prosecute years earlier. It was elderly women, like pro-life hero Joan Andrews Bell, being given disproportionate jail sentences for peaceful protests at abortion clinics.

It was how they tried to bankrupt Trump. And tried to keep him off the ballot. And tried to jail him. And even tried to kill him–twice.

We Saw Through It All

It was how they told us that Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack,” when everyone could see that he wasn’t. Who was really running our country these last four years? Jill Biden? Barack Obama? Someone else?

It was how Harris became the Democratic Party’s nominee without going through the process. It was how the machine suddenly snapped into place and told us that all the things that made her unpopular — her cackling laugh, her word-salad speeches — were her strengths. That the kids on TikTok just adored her.

Throughout all of this, we were told that Trump was Hitler. That you and I who voted for him were fascists. White supremacists. Garbage. That we were the ones spreading misinformation.

The majority of Americans — both the popular vote majority and the electoral college majority — saw through all of it. They knew who the real threat to democracy was. And they voted accordingly.

When I look back on the 2024 election — and the decade or so prior to it — what I will remember most is the gaslighting. And how, as Lincoln always said we would, the American people eventually saw through it. Thanks be to God!

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action. He lives in Waterbury, Connecticut, with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on The Stream are solely his own.

The post Lincoln Predicted It: America Sees Through the Gaslighting appeared first on The Stream.

Source link