Political change mimics a supertanker in its inertia. 

Turning direction proceeds imperceptibly at first. Then advances sporadically, punctuated by specific accelerating events. 

Progress in the new direction proceeds over decades, interspersed by backsliding episodes. 

Glenn Reynolds examines the operative political dynamic. 

The Left’s “strategy has consisted of using bullying and propaganda to convince 80% of the population that the views of 20% of the population are in the majority.” 

Mass gaslighting is ancient.  Regimes systematically manipulate reality, making individuals doubt their perceptions, memories, and sanity. 

Historical revisionism (e.g., the 1619 Project) becomes necessary to support regime lies. 

America’s current gaslighting episode originated against McCarthyism, accelerating ever since. 

JFK’s assassination provided an exclamation point, requiring wholesale gaslighting.  A majority didn’t buy what their government was selling.  The 1964 Warren Report (requiring 27 volumes, over 18,000 pages, and one magic bullet) reinforced that perception.  By 1967, Woody Allen reported he was working on the report’s nonfiction version. 

The emperor goes naked until a child utters the truth. 

Gaslighting is often self-inflicted.  We allow ourselves to entertain lies and fantasies.  Con artists and magicians exploit this flaw.  Unindoctrinated children declare truths that adults are conditioned into fearing to express or refusing to believe.  Specific incidents jolt us awake, forcing acknowledgment of reality. 

JFK, 9/11, or Charlie Kirk provide examples. 

Gaslighters eventually hypnotize themselves. 

As Reynolds notes, “even [Romania’s communist dictator] Ceaușescu thought everyone loved him until shortly before he was stood in front of a wall and shot.” 

Heather Mac Donald’s examination of the intensive gaslighting targeting Charlie Kirk is must reading. 

Wholesale government gaslighting surrounding the Vietnam War generated substantial blowback. 

The New Left exploited popular discontent and accelerated radicalism’s long march through America’s institutions. 

The 1960s’ SDS, Weathermen, and Black Panthers evolved into today’s Democratic Socialists, Antifa, and BLM. 

Soviet funding of numerous NGOs subsidized American radicals.  GRU defector Stanislav Lunev revealed the USSR funded “just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad” during Vietnam, spending over $1 billion.  The CCP and Qatar have replaced Soviet gaslighting subsidies. 

Nixon’s 1968 election by the Silent Majority, followed by his 1972 49-state landslide, repudiated Leftism, underscoring America’s underlying conservative complexion.  Conservative is an inaccurate adjective, whether applied to Nixon, Reagan, or MAGA.  The Center resides much further right than leftist gaslighters pretend.  MAGA is essentially centrist.   

Chronic gaslighting symptoms are endemic.  Depressed cynics, wedded to the past and afflicted with PTSD, can’t perceive supertanker turns. 

America experienced the Mother of All Gaslighting under Biden-Harris.  

Four possible outcomes could have followed: increased, consistent, or decreased gaslighting, or sanity.  Only two were possible, the first and last.  Once gaslighting begins, it must compound exponentially.  Lies require continuous amplification to maintain fictions.  Then they finally collapse.  A crisis typically initiates the reversal. 

Seeds of gaslighting’s demise are omnipresent.  The question is when, not if, the inflection point appears.  Sometimes it’s indistinct.  Sometimes it’s unequivocal. 

Israel allowed itself to drop its guard. Oct. 7 changed that. America ignored threats until Pearl Harbor or 9/11 jolted us awake.  Incremental deterioration is ignored until reality forces a reaction. 

Extreme gaslighting yields fatalities. 

Nazis, Soviets, and Maoists sacrificed over 100 million on a gaslit altar in the last century. 

Luigi Mangione’s murder of a healthcare executive didn’t move the needle. 

Charlie Kirk’s martyrdom did.   

An inflection point occurred, the antithesis to George Floyd.  

Now comes the backlash, investigations into gaslighting networks, and prosecutions. 

Barack Obama is forced into playing defense. 

Cancel Culture is flourishing. Except it’s leftists being cancelled.  

Colbert and Kimmel are canceled. 

Little Ceaușescus, convinced everybody loved them. 

America flipped the channel.  Nixon’s Silent Majority now rules. 

As Britain’s government collapses, Peak Gaslighting emerges. 

Citizens are resisting while their government amplifies its lies and internal delusions. 

A crowd of a million or two demanding reform is officially described as 110,000. 

Orwell’s 1984 explored gaslighting. 

Tyrants instinctively commandeer language. 

Orwell’s newspeak — intended to eliminate independent thought — is alive and well. 

“Fascist” became the Left’s utilitarian Swiss-Army-knife pejorative. 

Pronoun tyranny forced Jordan Peterson into a new career.  Stating truths is derided as hate speech.

Nigel Farage spent 20 years as a lonely voice in the wilderness of the European Union Parliament, mocking its president.  Farage was fined for accurately declaring his subject had “the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk.” 

Undeterred, he doubled down, "The only people I'm going to apologize to are bank clerks the world over.  If I've offended them, then I'm very sorry indeed."

Political turnings require time.  The EU, born in the post-Soviet era, institutionalized Soviet-style centralization and Soviet-level gaslighting. 

Farage represented an anomalous nationalist.  With a child-like willingness to announce the EU’s underlying fictions, Farage eventually prevailed when Britons voted to Brexit. 

Nine years since, 26 years after arriving in Brussels, he’s likely Britain’s next prime minister. 

MAGA represents the latest installment of Nixon’s Silent Majority.  Reagan’s revolution and the Tea Party succeeded Nixon, paving the way for Trump 57 years after Nixon’s success. 

Democrats formed a political party in 1828 to support slavery.  Some 37 years later, they lost a civil war, eventually failing to gaslight the majority into accepting one race’s inferiority.

Some have noted the preponderance of government employees among the Left’s shrillest voices supporting violence. 

These include teachers and university officials. (Because of federal funding, student loans, and incentives, universities and NGOs are essentially government appendages, as are healthcare workers.)  These government employees include elected Democrats. 

Obama/Biden/Harris installed a freak show in the judiciary, military, and bureaucracy.  Dysfunctionality and deviancy became employment enhancements.  Voters notice such things. 

The political supertanker veered sharply toward the center since 2020. 

All 50 states shifted right in the 2024 election. 

Contrast reactions after the deaths of George Floyd and Charlie Kirk. 

We’ve gone from NFL teams taking a knee to eight of 13 games memorializing Kirk on the Sunday following his death. 

Baseball games spontaneously featured memorials. 

But crickets at the Emmys.  (Hollywood represents a lagging political indicator.) 

Congressional Democrats knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds in 2020, yet won’t honor Kirk. 

Voters notice such things. 

Realignments occur when temporary political shifts endure across decades. 

Excepting Obama, Democrats’ popular vote share dropped precipitously since 1964. 

After Watergate, Jimmy Carter eked out a 50.1% 1976 victory.  His reelection attempt cratered at 41%. 

Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory came with 43% of the popular vote in a three-way race.  In 1996 he received 49.2%. 

Democrats averaged 42.9% across seven consecutive elections from 1968 to 1992.  

You read that correctly. 

Biden’s 51.3% in 2020 wasn’t credible, a participation trophy with an asterisk.  The election theft was epic, requiring gaslighting, riots, biowarfare, and lockdowns. 

Meanwhile, two former Democratic presidential candidates fled lunacy to seek asylum in Trump’s cabinet. 

The post-1964 realignment is 61 years old, a year from Social Security eligibility. 

Yet gaslighting convinced us Republicans can’t win. 

Only three presidents acquired 520 Electoral College votes: FDR (in 1936), Nixon, and Reagan. 

Trump shares Farage’s affliction: confronting gaslighting with obvious, indisputable truths.  Restoring the War Department’s name recognized reality: America must continuously prosecute evil.  Centrist voters somehow find such honesty appealing. 

Douglas Schwartz blogs at The Great Class War, applying pattern recognition of historical cycles to place current events into context.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License