Political Illusions, Gaslighting Politics and the 2020 Election

Political Illusions, Gaslighting Politics, and the 2020 Election – Utopia vs Dystopia

https://howardgunn.com/f/political-illusions-gaslighting-politics-and-the-2020-election

HOWARD J. GUNN Dec 22, 2020

Ignoring Impeachments, Depressions, Recessions, and resignations, 1 out of 45  is how seldom the presidency fell to a man who was not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. 

Donald Trump’s first four-year term in office will soon enter the history books. His record and the evolution of preposterous Political Illusions, the things the Political Parties and candidates want you to believe, reached apocryphal new heights in 2020. The same preposterous assessment also holds for Gaslighting Politics, the portion of the Illusionary art of getting you to believe what you know is false is true.

 

People and history will remember the new scope and scale of the preposterous Political Illusions and Gaslighting Politics, whether the Republican Party coup fails, or even if the President is successful at overthrowing the 2020 presidential elections, the 231-year-old United States Federal Government process and the will of the voters, in early 2021. 

 

The 45th president took the oath of office in 2017 on the wings of the initial preposterous MAGA Political Illusion, buttressed with the Great Big Beautiful Wall paid for by Mexico and the Lock Her Up chants, to punish Trump’s adversaries. Together, the preposterous Gaslighting of Political falsehoods came nicely to leverage and win the 2016 election. 

 

The Gaslighting Politics from the President and Republican Party expanded each following year. It began with the tax cuts for the rich, produced the longest federal shutdown in the nation’s history, subverted NATO relations, exposed the Ukrainian extortion plot, and generated the view that our worst in the world COVID response, could have been worse.

 

In gaslighting terms of false being true, the President observed that the worst in the world Covid response, in terms of dead bodies, was better than doing nothing, while directly supporting herd immunity and conspiracy fake drug theories. Although it could be true that doing nothing was the best choice, it has proven to be false in several counties, along with the inane response strategy and Gaslighting used to misinform and mislead voters. 

 

In 2020, Donald Trump ran for reelection on his record. His record showed that he was the first impeached president to run for another term of office. Gaslighting Politics in the race often suggested that the Senate had exonerated the President and found him not guilty of an abuse of power, obstruction of congress, and the grifter extortion actions, so he could run for office again. This exoneration model is simply not true and is just Gaslighting Politics.

 

The House of Representatives found him guilty as charged. They impeached the President and asked the Senate to remove him from his office and bar him from holding any future public office. 

 

Historically, no sitting Senate had ever removed an impeached president from office. The Republican-led Senate did not do it in 2020, either. In this apocryphal legal environment, the impeached president legally ran for office as the first impeached president running for the office in the US. While impeached and running for election had occurred in several South American and African “Banana” Republics, the gaslighting of the impeachment did not make what is false true in the United States.

 

Ignoring the impeachment and his impeachable grifter action, Mr. Trump also told voters that he believed he had done an amazing job, an outstanding job, and even an incredible job. He reminded voters of his views, often. The self-assessment of his job performance shows a unique new blend of Political Illusions and Gaslighting Politics, at the same time.

 

The president assumed he could present the illusion and gaslighting of job competency through repeated verbal claims. He supported the claims with large amounts of misinformation, disinformation, and verbal collaborative actions with Cabinet and Senate sycophants. The claims were mixed with modern social media management, and the persuasive grifter skills he brought to the Presidency from his Business Gaslighting background and scripted TV Reality Show.

 

Illusions and Gaslighting were not new tactics in the 2016 or 2020 US elections. Richard Nixon and George Wallace were early successful users. Nixon won the presidency and Wallace won five states in the 1968 presidential race. They successfully mixed crime in the streets and race riot illusions with the Gaslighting of the Democratic Party. 

 

They also Gaslighted the Democrat candidates for passing the Civil Rights Act, the Voter Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, the Education Act, The Medicare/Medicaid Act, and Johnson’s support of the Vietnam War.

 

Many third-party candidates, conservatives, and libertarians have also used the mixture of Illusion and Gaslighting since the 1960s. The mixture helps win elections. Trump, the business executive, and Reality TV host shifted his persuasion skills to the government and won the 2016 presidential race, with a unique Illusionary and gaslighting program.

 

Political Parties, Dark Money Supporters, and many candidates have used misinformation tactics to gain a competitive advantage. The tactics can help to undermine the other Political Party candidate, create voter confusion, and generate contradictions over who and what to believe. Voter confusion resolves itself through a federal election every two years, although the election does not resolve the Political Illusions nor the Gaslighting derived conflict of believing that false things are true.

 

Illusion and Gaslighting are neither good nor bad. They are forms of communication used to persuade voters and influence their voting behaviors. Political Illusions excite people and often form the basis of hope and dreams. Gaslighting changes some people’s understanding of what they know to be true, and we repeat the communications process every two years, to let voters also judge the Illusions, the Representatives, and their performance.

 

The communication processes inform, misinform, and help people decide. For example, a mail-in ballot gives the illusion of increased voter turnout and extending democracy. Gaslighting claims of voter fraud from mail-in ballots are used to undermine voter confidence in the count and restrict the use of mail-in ballots to extend democracy. 

 

With a typical average of 50% voter turnout and less than 1%, mail-in fraud has occurred after 150 years of mail-in ballots, the Political Illusion and Gaslighting Politics on the mail-in process still has consequences and showed up again in the 2020 Federal Election conflict.

 

Mixing the information delivery processes with coercion presents a unique voting and Gaslighting problem. For example, intentionally dismantling the post office capacity to deliver ballots shows a dirty tricks coercion plan versus the more typical Gaslighting using false claims like Democrats cannot win the election unless they cheat.

 

Mr. Trump learned Gaslighting and Grifter skills while amassing over 4,000 lawsuits for failing to perform to contract. He honed the skills with 6 bankruptcies, a reluctant $25 million class-action lawsuit payment, and various hush-money payments.

Mr. Trump brought his persuasion and grifter skills to politics. He merged them with his Republican populist illusion, his best-of-the-best staffing illusion, and his popular claim to drain the swamp of disloyal Republicans and socialist Democrats. He also pledged to save the people from immigrants with a wall paid for by Mexico and his Hillary lock-up plan.

 

Sadly, the Illusions evaporated while in office. Gaslighting became the President’s and the Republican Party’s primary form of communicating competency. Gaslighting helped mask the extremely poor choices of staff and cabinet members (270 indictments, 90 quits, or dismissed members with 5 criminal convictions within the first three years).

 

Gaslighting also helped cover his poor restocking of the “swamp” with lobbyists, the US citizens paying for the Wall, Hillary’s exoneration, the tax cut for the rich that juiced and destabilized the stock market, and the Chinese trade war that created an indirect new tax on consumers, an increasing need for farm subsidies and massive new deficits.

 

His misguided deregulation plans stimulated fossil fuel production and unprecedented air quality deterioration. Military spending went back up to Iraq war levels, with no war. The nation also adopted cuts to health care and the poverty safety-net to punish the lazy unemployed, the welfare queens, the disabled, the sick, and the poor.

 

In response to these operational shortfalls and the attempted extortion scheme, the House of Representatives impeached the President for the abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. They levied the charges as the trade deficit worsened, and the fiscal deficit doubled before the COVID-19 virus struck in the first quarter of 2020.

 

With the COVID virus test in its 11th month at the time of the election, the nation was experiencing depression-era unemployment, a GDP economic and job disaster, and massive, unwarranted, COVID death rates when the voting started.

 

The country was also facing revived social unrest and anti-fascist versus fascist confrontations, along with divisive political rhetoric, Federal Court-packing, and new delusional Political Illusions that produced gross levels of political factionalism, white supremacy conflict, and even cultism threatening the Republic.

 

Gaslighting was at the core of the voter conflict. The illusionary political process may generate Gaslighting, but the Illusions are not normally the problem. 

 

Reality and history suggest that Political Illusions have been a key part of our cultural history since the publication of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. As an example, the signed Declaration listed fifty-five (55) complaints. The complaints formed an illusion to generate new personal beliefs about the colony’s relationship with the King and Parliament. 

 

They also generated new patterns of thought supporting two religious heresy style political illusions. “All men created equal” denied that the men in the colonies were the King’s Subjects (gaslighting). “People empower government for the benefit of the people” dump allegiance to all royalty, nobility, and any Godly claims of government empowerment for the accumulation of wealth by the wealthy. 

Equality and the people’s empowerment illusion became the foundation of a new reality during the Revolution, and over the years, it even became the future basis of the American Dream.

 

In a complex remote setting like the thirteen Colonies, the Political Illusion also embraced the use of coercion to extend the illusion to more people. Converting the King’s Subjects and the coercion (American Revolutionary War) to help produce the conversion could have produced a disaster. Over time, the illusion, coercion, and gaslighting proved that they could also produce excellent results.

 

The first Constitution produced 13 “kingless” fiefdoms and a loose association in 1781. The Confederation achieved truly little except for signing the Peace Treaty with England, separate from the Continental Congress. 

 

Citizens proposed a second constitutional in 1788. The liberals introduced the “We the People” and citizen equality Illusions of a new Federal Republic model of government power-sharing with states. The “We the people” Political Illusion replaced the “men” only equality connotations in the Declaration of Independence. 

 

The “more perfect union” replaced the loose association and independent fiefdom model. By the people voting for the House, the state Senate appointments and Electoral College selection of the President processes generated the new notion of creating new states and political power. 

 

That seedling illusion of a multi-state union stimulated the Louisiana Purchase, the sea to shining sea ideas, and the Manifest Destiny that would prove so successful in our history.

 

Many voters accepted Trump’s competence claim in the 2020 election. Their votes imply they believe that he had done “an amazing” or even the preposterous “an incredible job.” Gaslighting and misinformation produced misinformed followers believing what they know is false is true.

 

The Trump Gaslighting that began with Hillary’s emails, Comey’s reopening of the Clinton investigation, and the “Deep State espionage” conspiracy theory against Trump’s election shifted away from the election itself to job competency issues after the election.

 

Besides those initial claims, the ongoing conspiracy Gaslighting includes the ever-present Hoax defense and the theory that the press and knowledge are the enemies of the people. The new conspiracy theories from Trump QAnon and the White supremacists got embraced, and the newest Democrat election fixing mantra of Trump was born. 

 

This disinformation and use of Gaslighting Politics inter-working with the false competence job illusion claims could have swept the 2020 election to him. Alas, it did not.

 

Many people saw through the Illusion of competency. They also saw the gaslighting, the misinformation, and the disinformation. Many perceived that the president and his sycophants were liars. The perception of the lies is great and quite intense. The lie perceptions often overrode and blocked out the recognition of the incompetence in the first three years before the COVID test failure in 2020.

 

Objectively, the first three years of poor performance discussed earlier were a prelude to the 2020 disaster and the worst COVID response in the world.

 

Nobody expected the US to fail the pandemic challenges. The 2019 Global Health Security Index rated the US as the top performer among the 195 UN Countries. On February 12, 2020, the World Economic Forum, rated the US the best-prepared nation, based on the previous successes of the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense Survival.

 

The President’s illusion of COVID competency and the Gaslighting began with “under control,” claim, the “15 cases going to near 0,” guidance, and the “miraculously go away when it warms up” forecast in the first quarter of 2020.

 

The misinformation about the infection risks and the testing availability disinformation delayed the needed test, trace, and quarantine response. The delay in the set of tests and the lack of trace actions caused the nation to forgo the effort that had successfully mitigated and suppressed the H1N1 Flu Epidemic until a vaccine arrived. By the time test and trace started, it was already too late to have a similar delaying impact on the Covid outbreak.

 

Disinformation dismissed the need for masks, social distancing, washing of hands, and restricting large gatherings. Together, the information produced the early reopening and new wave of infections and deaths.

 

While 2020 also displays the incompetency with the third wave, the gross leadership incompetency had begun in 2018, two (2) years before COVID struck. The White House and the best-of-the-best sycophants made faulty decisions.

The White House disbanded the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense Survival. In a fit of cosmic sarcasm, the Directorate’s Project Predict closed 90 days before COVID struck China in 2019.

 

Without Project Predict, the White House functionally missed the first 45 days of the pandemic in China. Relying on the reports from China and the World Health Organization generated the nation’s late response and a partial flight ban on Chinese citizens coming from mainland China on January 31, 2020. Twenty countries had already put their ban in place before the US.

 

The US also issued just a “partial” ban that had massive loopholes that did not stop 60,000 non-Chinese travelers from flying from China to the US, nor any people coming from Taiwan, Hong Kong, or European nations (New York City’s first infections came from European flights, for example).

 

While the President claims the illusion of Covid competency and Gaslighting were to avoid panic in his interviews with Bob Woodward, the poor decisions, the distribution of misleading information, and the inability to test, trace, and quarantine early, enabled the infection to take root and ultimately spread across the nation.

 

Subsequent presidential actions debunking masks, CDC distancing guidelines, handwashing, and lies about testing availability produced community spread. The spread also produced new Gaslighting efforts to pass off his Federal responsibility to “provide the common defense and promote the general welfare” to the states and governors. 

 

President Trump canceled the Post Office program to deliver masks to Consumers in April 2019. This and the other misguided administrative actions, including distorting and defying expert opinion blended with the virus, to kill more people in the US, compared to every country in the world, by October 31, 2020.

 

For perspective, consider China, where COVID began, and India, a neighboring country with a long Chinese border. Both Countries have three times the population of the United States, and they were both rated as average preparedness countries.

 

By late October 2020, the US had approximately 203,000 COVID-related dead bodies. India has nearly 55% fewer dead bodies (approximately 95,000). China has nearly 59% fewer dead bodies (approximately 85,0000). The president’s Gaslighting suggests the two countries are lying in their reports and that US Doctors and Health Care Providers are exaggerating and mislabeling death claims to make more money.

 

The illusion of competency, Gaslighting, and disinformation had also continued through summer and early fall with denials of severity, bogus drug treatments and vaccine claims, and the general failure to promote the CDC guidelines concerning masks, distancing, avoiding large indoor groups, and hand washing.

 

The White House also integrated these Gaslighting claims with a Gaslighting pivot to a law and order competency late in the campaign. This leap is inane, given crime rates have increased annually and white color crime prosecutions are down 33%.

 

We also had new civil rights protests occurring in cities with armed vigilantes, anti-fascist anarchists, and white supremacists roaming the streets, staging riots, and planning to kidnap and kill a governor or two. History has examples of such law and order leadership and violence from both Italy (Mussolini) and Germany (Hitler) in the last century.

 

Can Political Illusions and Gaslighting Politics generate a Civil War? Can they cancel elections and collapse the Federal Republic into corporatism, dictatorship, and Classic Fascism? It is not speculation. Italy and Germany are warnings from history, suggesting that the illusion of leadership competency can collapse a Republic when the illusion draws on the delusions from the leader and a misguided administration.

 

Government collapse aside, the “anarchist” democrat cities, the crooked Democratic Party, and the mail-in fraudsters all lend credence to the Gaslighting conspiracy plot-line that the Democrats cheat and rig the elections, even when they lose twelve House seats. 

These Political Illusions and Gaslighting Politics have set the stage for the November 3, 2020 election swearing-in ceremonies, and what hopefully brings an end to one of the worst administrations and one of the worst years ever in our country’s history.