Once upon a time, there was a cruel, nasty ogre, "The Donald," who dreamed of becoming king.  But The Donald had no claim to the throne.  Princess Hillary was next in line.  Hillary was royalty, and he was just a disgusting ogre.  No one would ever see him as king.

Desperate, the ogre went to Putin, the dark one, to help him.  The sorcerer agreed to help in return for half the kingdom.  The dark one then cast a spell that reached every corner of the land, every mountaintop and valley.  This spell made the people see the ogre as royalty and Princess Hillary as a witch.  The people rallied to the ogre and made him king of the realm.  Then they banished the witch to obscurity.  

It happened, really!  I saw it on CNN.  Okay, not exactly, but closer than you'd think. 

Fast-forward to our government's own fairy tale, that Donald Trump enlisted Vladimir Putin's dark magic to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.  This myth is just as fantastic, as implausible as the tale of the ogre yet treated as gospel by our government and their media. 

Oh, at first it was no more believable than the ogre-princess fable.  Trump-Putin was a total non sequitur to Trump's campaign, to his life.  It didn't fit with the man we saw roll from city to city to rally voters, who faced down enemy press to get his message out, who refused special interest money and funded his own campaign.

Yet the left, script in hand, staged performance after performance.  The left hammered the plot home: Russia, Russia, Russia.  And even though most Americans know the story's a farce, the plot continues to play out. 

The left takes a scalp here and there, General Flynn's resignation an early win.  Then leftists clear the way for their coveted "special counsel" when Attorney General Sessions's swamp muscle memory moves him to recuse himself from the phony Russia investigations.

Finally, they score a home run with an independent counsel, Bob Mueller, to investigate the crime.  Except there is no crime to investigate – never was. 

This whole Russian conspiracy is the MOAG – the Mother of All Gaslighting.  Now, our precious government-media has been gaslighting us for years: fake polls with Hillary trouncing Trump, a united front to deny the existence of voter fraud, and the list goes on.  But at least polls and votes actually do exist; there's a basis in reality to build on.  With the amorphous Russia meme, there's not even that.

Now, there are some people who are incredibly resistant to gaslighting, Lou Dobbs among them.  Recently, Lou went off on his guest, Tom Dupree, over the mind-numbing Russian insanity. 

Tom: Well, as long as the special counsel's investigation is hovering over this White House, I agree with you: it kind of sucks the oxygen out of the room. 

Lou shouting over Tom: There's no cloud of uncertainty!  Here's the certainty! There has been no evidence, and the FBI has been on it for over a year!  Seventeen intelligence agencies, and they can't tell us there's collusion between the Trumps and the Russkies?  Are you kidding me?

Tom (Joker grin firmly in place): But Bob Mueller hasn't been on the job that long, Lou.  I'm willing to give him a chance and let him do his job.  Let's see what he says.

And there it is: 

• 17 intelligence agencies confirmed there's no there there?  Let Bob do his job.

• The FBI spent a year investigating this farce and came up with zip?  Let's see what Bob says.

• Multiple congressional committees keep coming up empty?  Let's see what Bob turns up.

• No facts, no evidence?  No problem – let's see what Bob can find.

Translation: lack of evidence and zero proof of a connection don't kill the storyline.  The show must go on. 

However, even with "Bob" on the case, it appears that these subversives are having trouble framing the President for Russia.  Too many FOPs (Friends of POTUS) are successfully refuting the charge. 

So it's on to Plan B: "Trump's a white supremacist."

Using the Charlottesville's riot between the Alt-Right and Alt-Left, our government and media again pull a scenario from their rear ends to support their drive for impeachment.  They blow up the incident, turn it into a race war, and blame it all on the president. 

How?  Well, like the Russia campaign, the racist charges revolve around what's not there.  When the president makes a statement on Charlottesville, they rail that the president never specifically voiced disgust and revulsion for Nazis and the KKK.

So the president tries again, calls out the bigots by the exact names dictated by the left, but alas, too little, too late.

Third time's the charm: the president makes a last stab at getting his lines right but makes things worse when he goes off teleprompter and says there were two sides fighting, that the blame should be shared. 

The left explodes: the president made Antifa the moral equivalent of Nazis and white supremacists.  Antifa people were there just to stop the hate.  They're the good guys. 

Oops – unfortunately for the left, turns out Antifa's activities were identified as domestic terrorism back in 2015.  Then, after Charlottesville, Antifa goes off script and shows up at Berkeley brandishing metal poles, bike locks, and mace for yet another random beat-down. 

This story highlights the fact that these thugs show up at conservative events to violently shut them down.  The speaker doesn't have to be a white supremacist, doesn't even have to be white.  Any old conservative will do.

So here we are: a Russian scandal that never was and a racist president convicted by words he never said.  These are classic examples of gaslighting, where the abusers push a completely false reality to make people doubt their own knowledge and perception. 

Gail Saltz, M.D., a psychiatrist, explains it like this:

[Gaslighting] is like someone saying the sky is green over and over again, and at first you'll be like 'no, no.  Then over time the person starts to manipulate you into saying 'I guess I can't really see what color the sky is.' It's just this sense of unreality.

So what can you do to defeat gaslighting?  Don't participate.  Turn off the TV.  You don't need it to keep up with the news because they gave up on actual journalism a while back. 

Don't indulge friends, neighbors, or co-workers who have bought into fake news.  If they're on board with the fiction, don't argue or try to defend the truth.  Simply explain that you don't deal in fantasy and change the subject.  If they won't let it go, turn away.  You'll never change their perception, but you can save your own sense of reality and salvage your personal peace of mind by opting out.  

Meanwhile, our precious government and their lapdog press will continue to tell us facts are facts, no denying the mountain of evidence.  There's absolutely Russian collusion; President Trump is a white supremacist; and yes, the sky is green.