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April 30, 2023

Democrat apparatchiks try to gaslight voters about Biden

By Andrea Widburg

Since Biden put out a carefully curated video saying he’s going to run again, Democrat operatives have been doing the media rounds trying to gaslight the public into believing that Biden is a resilient, brilliant, energetic, hard-driving leader. They know that true believers and those vulnerable to propaganda, or those cowed into pretending they believe it, make it possible to justify an election outcome even more improbable than that in 2020.

The movie Gaslight, which debuted 79 years ago, added a new verb to the American vocabulary: “To gaslight.” In the movie, which is set in Victorian London, Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer) tries to convince his wife, Paula Alquist (Ingrid Bergman), that she is crazy so that he can institutionalize her and gain control over her home and fortune. He does this by hiding things and denying events, leaving Paula doubting her grasp on reality. Thus, to gaslight someone doesn’t mean simply lying to them; it means manipulating facts to make the other person doubt reality.

There’s lots of gaslighting going on in America. The most obvious example, of course, is that we’re being told there is no such thing as biological sex. The facts belie that, but even our children are being told to deny the evidence of their own eyes.

Image: Old Biden (edited). YouTube screen grab.

The benefit of gaslighting, as Charles Boyer’s character knew, is that it’s possible to break a person completely by creating a cognitive dissonance that can fracture a person’s mind. Natan Sharansky, a refusenik in the Soviet Union, talked about what happens to ordinary people living under a political regime that gaslights its citizens:

In any place where dissent is banned, society fractures into three groups. One group is composed of those who remain committed to the prevailing order because they agree with it—the true believers. Another group is made up of those who are willing to defy the prevailing order despite the risk of punishment—the dissidents. For members of these two groups, there will be little or no gap between their private thoughts and public statements. Unlike true believers and dissidents, members of the third group do not say what they think. This group is comprised of people who no longer believe in the prevailing ideology, but who are afraid to accept the risks associated with dissent. They are the “doublethinkers.”

[snip]

Doublethinkers live in constant tension from the gap between their thoughts and words. They always avoid saying what is not permitted but also try to avoid saying what they do not believe. But fear societies generally do not leave their doublethinkers such a luxury. They demand from their “cogs” constant expressions of loyalty. In kindergartens, schools, universities, workplaces, religious institutions, public meetings, and elsewhere, doublethinkers must parrot the ideology of the regime and hide their true beliefs. This constant self-censorship can be such an inseparable part of a doublethinker’s existence that it becomes so habitual that the tension between thoughts and words is almost no longer felt. Indeed, only when doublethinkers are free are they fully aware of the extent of their previous self-imposed intellectual servitude. (Natan Sharansky, The Case For Democracy: The Power Of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny And Terror, pp. 43-46.)

The Biden administration’s apparatchiks are putting out the official government line for those doublethinkers to swallow: Joe Biden, they are told, has never been sharper in his long political career. Just look at these examples from today’s rounds on the Sunday talk shows:

Meanwhile, this is Joe Biden, a decrepit, demented, dishonest man:

This cognitive dissonance is intentional. Democrats are setting up a “narrative” that will allow them to create imaginary votes for Biden to enable him to win in November 2024. If Trump is the candidate, the many investigations, lawsuits, and indictments will be used to say that Biden got more votes because nobody other than the small number of MAGA fanatics could possibly vote for someone as compromised as Trump.

Alternatively—and this is where the lies about Biden’s physical and mental well-being come into play—if a younger-than-Trump is the candidate, we’ll be reminded non-stop that Biden is every bit as vibrant as the Republican opponent, only he also has the experience and insights of his many years in politics and his four years in the White House. When the fake vote counts come in, that narrative will explain why someone younger couldn’t beat this dynamic octogenarian.

They know they’re lying, and they don’t care that we conservatives know they’re lying. All they need to do is gaslight enough people to explain their win.

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