Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman in 1944 movie "Gaslight"
By Nancy Thorner –
Are Americans being "gaslighted" when told that the presidential election was on the up and up, that to question the results means you’re a Fascist who should lose your job if you happen to have one or if you happen to have one or be knocked off social media because you’re a threat to democracy?
The term "gaslighting" originates in the systematic psychological manipulation of a woman by her husband in Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play Gas Light and the film adaptations released in 1940 and 1944.
In the story, the husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements in their environment and insisting that she is mistaken, misremembering things, or delusional when she points out these changes. The play’s title alludes to how the abusive husband slowly dims the gaslights in their home each evening while pretending nothing has changed to make his wife doubt her own perceptions. The wife repeatedly asks her husband to confirm that the lights are dimmer, but in defiance of reality, he keeps insisting that the lights are the same and that she must be going insane.
Today, we are living in a perpetual state of gaslighting. The reality is: What the media tells us is at complete odds with what we see with our own eyes. We are vilified as deniers, racists, or bigots, or crazy and ill-informed. But we are none of these. We are being gaslighted if we call attention to something that has merit and deserves attention but which others call fantasies of lies.
Burt Prelutsky Opines
Burt Prelutsky, a California screenwriter, author, and columnist with many credits to his name, wrote as his daily commentary for Monday, February 22, 2021, An Autopsy of the Election.
His daily columns are available by subscription. Contact Mr. Prelutsky at burtprelutsky@icloud.com to be added as a subscriber to his daily commentaries that convey truth, with a dash of humor and wit, at an affordable price.
Believing Prelutsky's February 22, 2021 commentary, An Autopsy of the Election, was pertinent to today's political situation, I asked Burt, as a friend, whether I could use his commentary. Burt graciously consented, further thinking that the facts contained therein could be beneficial to Illinois Review readers.
Burt Prelutsky opines
"Even the biggest jackass in the Democratic Party has to entertain a small doubt when he considers the following numbers
They are the popular votes collected by the two main competitors in the most recent four elections.
In 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain, 69.5 million votes to 59.8 million. In 2012, President Obama defeated Mitt Romney 66 million to 61 million. (It marked the first time in U.S. history that a victorious presidential candidate received fewer votes the second time around.)
In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in the popular vote count 65 million to 62.8 million.
In 2020, Joe Biden allegedly received 81 million votes to President Trump’s 74 million.
At a quick glance, a couple of things should leap out at you even if you’re not a CPA.
For one thing, the total votes cast for the two candidates started at 129.4 million in 2008, and decreased in 2012 to 127 million, before increasing slightly to 127.8 million four years later.
Then, last November, the number suddenly jumped to 155 million!
Where did all those Democrats suddenly appear from? Is it conceivable that they were holding out for the crime boss for all those years? I mean, it couldn’t be from disgruntled Republicans who were fed up with Trump’s boorish behavior and his silly tweets because he, unlike Obama, actually increased his numbers the second time around by over 11 million votes.
It's a proven fact that Trump increased his numbers among blacks and Latinos.
We know that Hillary Clinton didn’t mount much of a campaign, but it was a lot better than Biden’s, and yet we’re supposed to believe that whereas she got roughly the same number of votes as Obama, Biden received 12-15 million more votes than either of them.
On our side of the aisle, it sounds nearly as stupid to hear Republican politicians and TV pundits ponder the future of the Party in the post-Trump era. Without Trump, there is no future at this point.
In 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain, 69.5 million votes to 59.8 million. In 2012, President Obama defeated Mitt Romney 66 million to 61 million. (It marked the first time in U.S. history that a victorious presidential candidate received fewer votes the second time around.)
In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in the popular vote count 65 million to 62.8 million.
In 2020, Joe Biden allegedly received 81 million votes to President Trump’s 74 million.
At a quick glance, a couple of things should leap out at you even if you’re not a CPA.
For one thing, the total votes cast for the two candidates started at 129.4 million in 2008, and decreased in 2012 to 127 million, before increasing slightly to 127.8 million four years later.
Then, last November, the number suddenly jumped to 155 million!
Where did all those Democrats suddenly appear from? Is it conceivable that they were holding out for the crime boss for all those years? I mean, it couldn’t be from disgruntled Republicans who were fed up with Trump’s boorish behavior and his silly tweets because he, unlike Obama, actually increased his numbers the second time around by over 11 million votes.
It's a proven fact that Trump increased his numbers among blacks and Latinos.
We know that Hillary Clinton didn’t mount much of a campaign, but it was a lot better than Biden’s, and yet we’re supposed to believe that whereas she got roughly the same number of votes as Obama, Biden received 12-15 million more votes than either of them.
On our side of the aisle, it sounds nearly as stupid to hear Republican politicians and TV pundits ponder the future of the Party in the post-Trump era. Without Trump, there is no future at this point.
People like Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse and Susan Collins, can portray Trump as a bull in a china shop, but in reality he is the 800-pound gorilla in their living room and they dismiss him at their own peril." End of quote
MITRE Report Critique
Grabbing Thorner's attention on Thursday, February 25, 2021, was a timely blog post relating to gaslighting from physicist John Droz, jr. He reported "how this week the mainstream media (e.g. here and here), is touting the recently released MITRE Report as “proof” that there was no fraud or other consequential irregularities in the 2020 Presidential elections."
According to Droz, "the MITRE Report is simply more fake news." Said John: “Anyone interested in election integrity would be very pleased to have a comprehensive and objective analysis of the 2020 Presidential election and a subsequent definitive conclusion."
Droz then describes how a team of independent experts working for free, Droz included, pored over the MITRE Report and then wrote up a 30± page detailed Critique of it. (As per the Critique’s Appendix, this is not the team's first rodeo.)
Per instructions from John, he requested that the Critique be passed along.
Good news for Trump
A new Rasmussen poll has found that 72 percent of voters want the GOP to become more like President Donald Trump, and less like the establishment Republicans who turned on Trump and his supporters.
The poll asked: “Which of these statements is closer to your belief: ‘Donald Trump is still the kind of leader the Republican Party needs,’ or ‘Republicans need to get away from the legacy of Donald Trump?"
Election integrity a must
If Republicans hope to reclaim the House and the Senate in the 2022 mid-term election and the presidency in 2024, election integrity much be the top priority in every state legislature.
John and Andy Schlafly, sons of the late Phyllis Schlafly, wrote for their weekly February 23, 2021 commentary, States Step Up for Election Integrity. Excerpts follow:
"Establishing election integrity should be the top priority in every state legislature, after the fiasco of the recent presidential election. Polls continue to show that most Republicans think the election was unfairly conducted for a number of unprecedented reasons, and that Joe Biden did not legitimately win."
"Fortunately, the U.S. Constitution grants state legislatures the full authority to govern elections for the presidential electors who ultimately choose the president. Courts, which are dominated by liberals at the state level and in most federal venues, have no role in that process."
"A presidential election that half the voters regard as illegitimate cannot be salvaged by barbed wire which today blights the history, grandeur, and beauty of Washington, D.C. An American presidency needs to be based on election integrity, not thousands of troops stationed at our Capitol."
"The gold standard for election integrity is in-person voting, as used nearly exclusively (and successfully) for more than 200 years in our great country. This ensures a secret ballot, the absence of ballot harvesting (in which political partisans collect unverified ballots from union shops and nursing homes without supervision), and robust poll monitoring so that both parties can verify who is allowed to cast a ballot."
"States should enact legislation specifically basing the selection of presidential electors on in-person voting, except for military personnel on active duty and narrowly justified absentee voting, as Idaho House bill H0105 would do. Nothing requires that the voting process used to select presidential electors be the same as the process for electing a dog catcher."
