For those of you who questioned why I hit the theme of
Trump as chaos agent so hard
yesterday, this is the kind of environment I see this administration creating. It’s also why so many writers lately, including
Mike Lofgren, are using the term “gaslighting” for what is happening. He spells out the effects on the public with this:
Aside
from reinforcing the Trump base, the next four years of non-stop
gaslighting could erode the basic standards of discourse in a healthy
civil society. The truly horrible thing about propaganda in
authoritarian regimes is not that it convinces the true believers, but
that it demoralizes opponents by saying in effect: “Yes, we know that
you know we are lying, but we don’t care! We do it because we can and
you can’t stop us!” As for the majority of apolitical citizens, it
infects them with a corrosive cynicism and dissuades them from all forms
of public engagement. Apathy may be a more powerful silencer of dissent
than overt physical coercion.
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