Revealing 1984 in 2025

I am writing a new article that is about 99% finished. A major component of the article involves the Miriam-Webster 2022 word of the year – gaslighting. Before publishing the article I thought it might be helpful to discuss gaslighting and in particular, political gaslighting.

In researching this subject I stumbled upon a website that presented an excellent summary of gaslighting. That website is https://defiancepress.com/news/what-does-gaslighting-mean-in-politics/ My intent is to use the principles found on the Defiance Press site and add some additional thoughts/insights using actual events.

The original idea of gaslighting as presented in the movie is this… Someone believes “A” and someone else tries to convince that person he/she is wrong, i.e. Bergman thinks she is sane, what she is seeing is real and Boyer’s character tries to convince her she is wrong. Boyer’s character needs to convince Bergman’s character that she is insane in order to steal her inheritance.

Let’s put this into the context of the political world and elections. Gaslighting is used to manipulate the public/voters by misrepresenting the truth and twisting the facts in order to get voters to question what they believe and ultimately change their vote.

A great example: Charlottesville

Crowds gathered to protest in Charlottesville, Virginia in August of 2017. The issue was a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in a park named after him. City Council voted to have the statue removed and the park renamed. Protestors and counter-protestors showed up. It seems some on both sides of issue came prepared for violence and that is what happened. Tragically, one young lady died.

Before continuing with the story we need to insert the following from Defiance Press. They note that gaslighting “involves deliberate efforts by individuals or entities to plant seeds of uncertainty, manipulate information, and seize control of narratives, all to serve their self-interest.”

There is no question the main stream media has possessed the ability to “seize control of the narrative” over many years. A great example that happens a lot is the following… you get up early and flip on the TV or computer. CNN seems to have a phrase or word of the day. Lately that has been “threat to democracy.” It gets repeated over and over. You flip the channel to MSNBC and amazingly they have the same word of the day, “threat to democracy.” You visit ABC, CBS, NPR and it is astounding that they all have “stumbled” on the same word/phrase for the day (or week/month/year). What are the odds of that happening? Must be very good since this happens over and over again. You would almost think there must be someone sending out a memo to everyone at main stream media outlets with the “word/phrase of the day.”

Back to Charlottesville… Almost immediately, and as hard as it might be to believe, continuing to today, you heard from multiple sources “On Aug. 15, 2017, then-President Donald Trump called neo-Nazis and white supremacists who attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, “very fine people.” “Very fine people” has been a word of the day for 7 years.

For whatever reason, a fact-checking website SNOPES decided to fact-check that quote/allegation. You can read it for yourself at https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/

I will share with you what SNOPES concluded in a moment and what Trump actually said but understand that when a person or entity decides to resort to gaslighting, the truth doesn’t matter.

On November 3rd, 2024, a week ago and 7 years after Charlottesville, Barak Obama tried to use Charlottesville to gaslight voters and convince them not to vote for Trump. At a political rally for Kamala Harris in Milwaukee Obama said “If you’re a Jewish American “worried about the rise of antisemitism. Why would you place your faith in somebody .. who sat down for pleasantries with Holocaust deniers, who said that there were very fine people on both sides of a white supremacist rally?”

Earlier in September of 2024 Kamala Harris played the Charlottesville card… “Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing anti-Semitic hate. And what did the president, then at the time say? There were fine people on each side,” Harris said.

We won’t bother with quotes but suffice it to say, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and a host of Democrats have tried to play the Charlottesville card many, many times over the past 7 years and the main stream media has consistently aired the accusations but rarely include the fact-checked response or Trump’s actual words unless they have edited them “to manipulate information” and “control the narrative.”

Let’s see what SNOPES concluded when it fact-checked the accusation that Trump called Neo-Nazis and White-Supremists fine people.

SNOPES writes: “In a news conference after the rally protesting the planned removal of a Confederate statue, Trump did say there were “very fine people on both sides,” referring to the protesters and the counter-protesters. He said in the same statement he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be “condemned totally.”

So let’s get this straight. There were people protesting. Some wanted the statue taken down. Some wanted the statue left standing and in that group were Neo-Nazis and White-Supremists but also within that group were people who wanted the statue left standing but were not part of either of those groups.

I was a bit surprised to see that SNOPES actually included a transcript of Trump’s words as he responded to a reporter. You can read it at the link above but here is just a part of it.

“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?” 

You may believe that you couldn’t be a “fine person” if you wanted the statue left in place. You are entitled to your opinion but it is clear that Trump’s reference to “fine people” on both sides of the issue clearly was not a reference to neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Of course, those doing the gaslighting know that very few people will take the time to “fact-check” their allegation, and if a few actually do, so what? They also know that the main stream media, which long ago lost any credibility and now is trusted less than politicians and lawyers, will broadcast the gaslighting all over the airwaves, print media and on-line.

There is an expression that goes “the chickens have come home to roost.” For years politicians on both sides of the aisle have been gaslighting the public. However, as the Democrat Party (and global elitists and the deep state) swung far to the left over the past ___ years, the main stream media and those controlling the majority of social media outlets did also… to the point, that they have become nothing but talking heads espousing whatever word, phrase or ideological view their puppeteers want to shove down the throats of the public. The bias has been so overwhelming and so obvious that indeed the chickens did come home to roost but not they way they all intended.

Thanks to the rising of new, talented investigative journalists, new media alternatives like Just The News, new platforms like Rumble, Truth Social and Telegram who actually value free speech and bluntly, just a lot of good old-fashioned common sense, the American people have seen through the bull____. The curtain has been pulled back and everybody can see through the “Magician’s” illusion. You can gaslight the American people and tell them how much better the last 4 years under Biden/Harris have been compared to the 4 years under Trump but their grocery bills yell NOT TRUE! Pulling up at the pump yells NOT TRUE! The southern border illegal alien crisis yells NOT TRUE! The blatant and outright censorship growing day by day yells NOT TRUE!

There is a line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet where Hamlet says, “For ’tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petard;.”

It seems the “enginer” has a military connotation, i.e. he is a maker of engines/bombs, and in this case, he has been destroyed by his own petard/bomb. Simply put, someone ends up defeated because of their own schemes. For a long time, it was difficult to see through the illusion/gaslighting presented by those on the left and main stream media. The social media platforms blocked, censored, demonetized and de-platformed dissenting voices. Hell back in the Obama days, the I.R.S. was weaponized so it blocked conservative organizations’ applications for non-profit, tax free status so they would have difficulty raising money thereby preventing them from joining the fight against the left.

Please do not be foolish and think the gaslighting is going to end. Despite, or better, because of the Trump victory, because the American people pulled back the curtain and saw the “Wizard” and didn’t like what they saw, Donald Trump is the 47th president of the U.S.

I have no doubt that Big Brother will launch an all out war to put an end to this situation. Power is the ultimate addiction and those who have wielded it and believe that it is their destiny to “rule” the world will never surrender it without a massive fight. Gates, Soros, Schwab, neocons, big pharma, big ag etc. don’t own a white flag and even if they did, they would never wave it. Self-preservation is a powerful force. The bureaucracy we call the government has too much to lose. There is too much at stake. If the curtain could ever be entirely ripped away and their actions revealed, it would be catastrophic for them. I wonder what would happen if the truth about the JFK assassination was revealed… or 9/11, or January 6th etc.

And yes I will gladly admit that I don’t trust the narrative that has been put forth about any of those events and a whole lot more. I admit that knowing that will earn me the label of conspiracy theorist. So be it… my response is when you take time to check, it is amazing how many times people who challenged the “narratives” presented by Big Brother and their main stream media puppets were labelled conspiracy theorists but later on those conspiracy theories ended up being the truth.

In Orwell’s 1984 it does not end well for the main character, Winston Smith, but as I have mentioned before, 1984 begins with Big Brother firmly entrenched in power to the point it has no opposition. That is not the case in 2024. I believe the opposition showed up in elections in Italy, Argentina, France and especially in the United State of America on November 5th, 2024. Hopefully it will continue and grow.

Perhaps it is fitting that yesterday was Remembrance Day. We should always remember those who fought and died in WW 1 and 2 and other wars. The men and women fought so we could be free (although I am not sure that was the real agenda for those “higher up orchestrating the wars.”) The enemy has changed, it does not look the same, the war is fought in much different ways, but for many of us, we feel we are in WW3 today. In military terms, the battle was won but the war is far from over.

Doug

11/12/2024