Rarely a television viewer in the past, I now find myself addicted to watching MSNBC and FOX News each night hoping to find some rational explanations for what is happening to reality as I have perceived it. In my search, I find myself switching between these two channels during those extensive commercial breaks that hammer the viewer without respite with new drugs and automobiles.
Watching these two channels since last Nov. 8 in an attempt to find out what is going on in the real world — in the real U.S.A. — is more perplexing than watching reruns of “Twilight Zone.” Watching FOX News and MSNBC takes the viewer into alternate realities.
Overriding the political affinities of both of these channels is a reality which is even perplexing to the very people I am turning to for some kind of clarity. Reality, as I and millions of other people have known it, is being reshaped by the Narcissist in Chief, his faithful Breitbart Tonto and their faithless band of conservative conspirators.
I am left wondering what is the truth coming from the current president of the United States? One clue to Trumpian “truth” can be found in the president’s self-laudatory book, “The Art of the Deal.” He writes “The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration, and a very effective form of promotion.”
So I/we (or a lot of us) get it about this president. He’s a bottom line guy, he likes, no needs the spotlight. He’s a fighter and will say anything to achieve what he wants. Except that he’s having a difficult time getting what he wants right now and that’s making him really, really angry. Trump has also written that “when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard. The risk is you’ll make a bad situation worse…” The president is certainly succeeding on that account.
More worrisome are the people behind their affront man that he has put in place to destroy our government structure instead of fine-tuning what has been so laboriously achieved over many decades and many administrations. Their strategy appears to be designed to diffuse, confuse and distract public attention from the critical issues. As in the effort to submerge the intelligence committees’ investigations into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign beneath the off-the-wall Tweet that President Obama directly wire tapped the Republican presidential candidate’s phone in Trump Tower.
In her recent essay in The Guardian, Ariel Leve writes “Right now, many Americans listening to their president are experiencing what I experienced frequently a child. Nothing means anything, and reality is being canceled. There is confusion, there is chaos, everything is upside down and inside out. When facts and truth are being discredited, how is it possible to know what to believe, especially when it comes from someone we expect to embody both ethics and etiquette? To those new to the phenomena,” Ms. Leve continues, “the president and the current administration are gaslighting us.”
“The term ‘gaslighting,’ Leve says, “refers to when someone manipulates you into questioning and second-guessing your reality. It derives from a 1944 movie — and the play and another film that preceded it — in which this happens to the heroine.”
“Gaslight” is an American 1944 mystery-thriller, adapted from the 1938 play “Gas Light.” The film was nominated for 7 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. It won Academy Awards for Best Actress and Best Production Design. The film features numerous deviations from the original stage play, though the central drama of a husband trying to drive his wife insane in order to distract her from his criminal activities remains intact. An apt analogy for what is taking place in the Trump administration.
As Leve wrote in her memoir, “An Abbreviated Life,” “it wasn’t the loudest and scariest explosions that caused the most damage. It wasn’t the physical violence or the verbal abuse or the lack of boundaries and inappropriate behavior. What did the real damage,” Leve writes, “was the denial that these incidents ever occurred. One of the most insidious things about gaslighting is the denial of reality. Being denied what you have seen. Being denied what you have experienced and know to be true. It can make you feel like you are crazy. But,” Leve states, “you are not crazy.”
“There were some strategies,” Leve says, “which I didn’t know at the time were strategies — that helped me survive. And in these uncertain times, it is a way to stay sane.”
John Bos lives in Shelburne Falls. He invites dialogue at john01370@gmail.com.