The Gaslighting of America by Charles Augustus Lindbergh Trump
Four years ago, on August 27, 2015, I authored a column, “George Corley Wallace and Donald John Trump.’ The theme of that column was that if nominated by the Republicans in 2016 for the presidency, Donald John Trump would attempt to win election and maintain his governing power by means of mendacious appeals to xenophobia, racism, bigotry and misogyny.
https://observer.com/2015/08/george-corley-wallace-and-donald-john-trump/amp/
In early 2015, I wrote off Trump’s chances of being elected, because I vastly underestimated the potency of what the greatest intellectual historian in American history, Richard Hofstadter, called “the Paranoid Style in American Politics.” In this classical and must-read essay, Hofstadter defines “the Paranoid Style” as the habit and capacity of demagogic candidates, like Trump, to define “the other outsider” as the blameworthy villain for America’s economic and social maladies.
In the 2016 election, Trump’s “other outsider” consisted of America’s ethnic, racial, and religious minorities, most noteworthily, Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans, and immigrants of all ethnic origins. Frighteningly enough, the strategy worked.
Trump will use the “Paranoid Style” and the “Other Outsider” in his reelection campaign as weapons in his greater struggle, the effort to “Gaslight America.” The term “Gaslight” is used to used to describe abusive behavior, specifically when an abuser manipulates information in such a way as to make a victim question his or her sanity. “Gaslighting “intentionally makes someone doubt their memories or perception of reality.
The goal of Trump’s Gaslight America effort will be his attempt to defame our former President, Barack Obama and create an absolutely phony scandal, “ObamaGate.” The thrust of Trump’s defamation efforts are his claims that 1) the charges that the Russian government interfered in the American Presidential Campaign of 2016 on behalf of Donald Trump are false, in spite of the fact that this finding was affirmed unanimously by the US Senate Intelligence Committee, controlled by the Republicans; and 2) that Michael Flynn, nominated by President Trump to be his National Security Advisor, was unjustly convicted of lying to the FBI regarding his communications with the Russians, despite his guilty plea.
There is absolutely no evidence to support Trump’s gaslighting claims. So he is alleging an unprovable and nonexistent conspiracy by the “deep state.” And Trump’s historical precedent for falsely alleging such a conspiracy is the claim by the famed American aviator, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, during the late 1930s and early 1940s that American Jews, Great Britain, and the Roosevelt administration were conspiring to push America into a war with Nazi Germany.
Trump needs to Gaslight America, because at this point, his election landslide defeat and that of the Republican US Senate is a virtual certainty. Two of my most recent columns document the reasons Trump and the Republican Senate face electoral catastrophe:
https://www.insidernj.com/democratic-wave-election-coming-this-november/
https://www.insidernj.com/electoral-math-that-will-give-the-democrats-us-senate-control/
Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump personally and his governing style. Most remarkably, virtually all polls show that Trump’s appeals to mainstream Americans to reopen America’s economy regardless of health dangers have fallen flat.
There are two other factors regarding Donald Trump’s administration that account for Trump’s current dire predicament and his embarkation on his gaslighting mission.
The first is Trump’s preternatural and compulsive rejection of sound science. This accounted for his astounding rejection of the opinion of Dr. Anthony Fiauci regarding the return to class of American school children. It also explains the appalling rejection by Trump of all early warnings in January and February of this year regarding the oncoming arrival of the Coronavirus to our shores. Had Trump heeded these warnings, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved.
America is most fortunate that Donald Trump will be leaving office on January 20, 2021. Otherwise, we would have to face the planetary danger of climate charge with a president who doesn’t believe in climate change science.
The second is the appalling degree of influence the politically incompetent and insensitive Jared Kushner has upon the president. The Trumps are America’s Romanovs, and Jared Kushner is the Rasputin of the Trump White House.
During just the past month, America experienced three episodes of Kushner incompetence. The first was the total failure of his task force in procuring testing equipment. The second was his description of the Trump response to the Pandemic and economic meltdown as an administration “success story.” The third was his refusal to rule out the possibility of the Trump administration changing the election date after being asked about it twice.
“Kushner’s statement reveals amazing ignorance of the Constitution and law,” tweeted Bill Kristol, the neoconservative political commentator and editor at large of the Bulwark. “It reveals startling arrogance in taking for granted he gets to have some say about when the election is held. It also reveals an utter lack of understanding of his very subordinate role in our democracy.”
This statement by Kristol, in a nutshell, explains why Howell Raines, the former executive editor of the New York Times stated that Jared Kushner was incompetent and that he would not have had even a junior position in the Reagan administration.
Recently, the renowned Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty wrote a column about Jared Kushner’s incompetence, entitled “Save us all from Jared Kushner.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/06/save-us-all-jared-kushner/
I would suggest that this become a national prayer.
Alan Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.
Very few people were not startled by candidate Trump’s victory in the Presidency in November, 2016, myself included. It had not dawned on me after the election what combination of voters had put him over the top. It was clear in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere that those “Rust Belt” voters were going to vote for anyone that even remotely seemed like they might be able to deliver them from continued collapse of the industrial base that in previous times had given them and their families a decent life. That is a prosperity and possible future that didn’t include larger and larger sections of them and their families descend into poverty and addiction and other forms of personal suicide. But one campaign event I did attend later, that of John Wisniewski as a candidate for N.j. Governor, and former Sanders campaign chair, I did find clearly that disdain among younger voters over the wrecking operation run against Sanders by the DNC, that prompted them to vote for Trump. It is still that fact that the voting public may vote for Trump, maybe even more so this time because of the clear bankruptcy in policy coming out of especially the top leadership and demands by the big money to push the party into further opposition of the “middle class” base. The War Party, Military Industrial Complex, Pro-Wallstreet, factions that control as much of the DNC as the Republican factions, may not be able again to decide the voters choices.
Another B.S. article that twists the truth to cover up the criminal behavior of the left. The mainstream media in America has become nothing but the propaganda machine of those with an extreme agenda to radically change this country into a place where racism is a protected right. Where certain minority groups are given priority, not on their merits or qualifications, but solely on the color of their skin, or their ethnicity. That type of racism is exactly why the American people came out in mass in support for Trump. To try and end the racist policies of the Democratic party. Yes, the American people have been gas lighted, by the leftist media, NOT by Trump.