Merriam-Webster has announced that “gaslighting” is its word of the year. After six years of conspiracy theories, online trolling, deep fakes, and just bold outright lying, why did it take so long?

2022 saw a 1740% increase in lookups for “gaslighting.” What is “gaslighting?” It’s “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for one’s own advantage.” Merriam-Webster writes, ” the term comes from the title of a 1938 play and the movie based on that play, the plot of which involves a man attempting to make his wife believe that she is going insane. His mysterious activities in the attic cause the house’s gas lights to dim, but he insists to his wife that the lights are not dimming and that she can’t trust her own perceptions.”

For years, the best examples came from domestic abuse. I think a more modern example is the song “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy where the singer tries to tell his girlfriend that it wasn’t him despite the fact she saw him “creeping with the girl next door” and he continues to tell her it wasn’t him even though she saw them both “butt-naked banging on the bathroom floor, and on the counter, the sofa, the shower, seeing the marks on his shoulder, hearing the screams getting louder, and even catching them on camera. The singer even admits, probably just to Shaggy, that his reasoning doesn’t make sense.

Several years ago while walking my dog late at night, I heard a guy and his girlfriend having an argument outside. She was accusing him of cheating and he kept denying it. Then, she pulled out his cell phone and showed him a photo he took of his mistress giving him oral pleasure. I had to pause to hear this and told the dog to at least pretend to be pooping so I could eavesdrop. The guy claimed it wasn’t him and eventually his girlfriend, “Well maybe it’s not you.” Even my dog wanted to scream out, “Why would he have another guy’s penis on his cell phone? Leave him!”

That is gaslighting. It’s not just lying, but telling someone that reality isn’t real. It’s telling a person they didn’t see or experience what they lived through.

Love can make people stupid which means MAGAts must really love Trump.

In politics, it’s not just Donald Trump lying that he created a great economy, but telling people it was terrible before he walked into the White House. This was seriously gaslighting, telling an entire nation that they didn’t live through what they lived through. Remember that entire “American Carnage” speech?

Last week, I had Twitter trolls parsing and explaining that Donald Trump didn’t say “terminate” the Constitution despite his very words saying, “terminate the Constitution.” They even combine gaslightings saying articles in the Constitution should be terminated only because the election was stolen. That’s double gaslighting.

Republicans have successfully gaslighted Hunter’s laptop to the point that people aren’t noticing that there’s nothing on it. Elon Musk is gaslighting the Twitter Files, telling people it’s huge and reveals so much corruption even though the files don’t show anything like that. Republicans are now saying that Democrats and Twitter conspired together to suppress the laptop story…and the FBI was in on it too. People are convinced that if the nation knew Hunter Biden owned a laptop, Trump would have won the 2020 election. Gaslighting doesn’t have to make sense.

Donald Trump even tried to tell people it wasn’t his voice on the Hollywood Access tape even though we’ve all heard it and he previously admitted it was him. You can just imagine the gaslighting he’s done to Melania.

Donald, I heard you on the Hollywood Access tape bragging about “grabbing them by the pussy” and that you can do it because you’re famous.

It wasn’t me.

But I heard your voice on it.

It wasn’t me.

And then you came out of the bus with Billy Bush and…

It wasn’t me.

And then that porn star said he had sex with you in a Las Vegas hotel room.

It wasn’t me.

And that she spanked you with a rolled-up magazine with Ivanka on the cover.

It wasn’t me.

It’s the same rolled-up magazine you keep on your side of the bed.

It wasn’t me.

And over 20 women accused you of sexually assaulting them.

It wasn’t me.

And the porn star described your penis as looking like a tiny cartoon mushroom.

It wasn’t me.

But your penis does look like a tiny cartoon mushroom.

It wasn’t me.

Gaslighting works because in case you haven’t noticed, Melania is still with Donald Trump.

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