SkyBubble
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- Jul 31, 2006
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/09/the_great_unrecognized_political_realignment.html
Political change mimics a supertanker in its inertia.
Turning direction proceeds imperceptibly at first. Then advances sporadically, punctuated by specific accelerating events.
Progress in the new direction proceeds over decades, interspersed by backsliding episodes.
Glenn Reynolds examines the operative political dynamic.
The Left’s “strategy has consisted of using bullying and propaganda to convince 80% of the population that the views of 20% of the population are in the majority.”
Mass gaslighting is ancient. Regimes systematically manipulate reality, making individuals doubt their perceptions, memories, and sanity.
Historical revisionism (e.g., the 1619 Project) becomes necessary to support regime lies.
America’s current gaslighting episode originated against McCarthyism, accelerating ever since.
JFK’s assassination provided an exclamation point, requiring wholesale gaslighting. A majority didn’t buy what their government was selling. The 1964 Warren Report (requiring 27 volumes, over 18,000 pages, and one magic bullet) reinforced that perception. By 1967, Woody Allen reported he was working on the report’s nonfiction version.
The emperor goes naked until a child utters the truth.
Gaslighting is often self-inflicted. We allow ourselves to entertain lies and fantasies. Con artists and magicians exploit this flaw. Unindoctrinated children declare truths that adults are conditioned into fearing to express or refusing to believe. Specific incidents jolt us awake, forcing acknowledgment of reality.
JFK, 9/11, or Charlie Kirk provide examples.
Gaslighters eventually hypnotize themselves.
As Reynolds notes, “even [Romania’s communist dictator] Ceaușescu thought everyone loved him until shortly before he was stood in front of a wall and shot.”
Heather Mac Donald’s examination of the intensive gaslighting targeting Charlie Kirk is must reading.
Wholesale government gaslighting surrounding the Vietnam War generated substantial blowback.
The New Left exploited popular discontent and accelerated radicalism’s long march through America’s institutions.
The 1960s’ SDS, Weathermen, and Black Panthers evolved into today’s Democratic Socialists, Antifa, and BLM.
Soviet funding of numerous NGOs subsidized American radicals. GRU defector Stanislav Lunev revealed the USSR funded “just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad” during Vietnam, spending over $1 billion. The CCP and Qatar have replaced Soviet gaslighting subsidies.
Nixon’s 1968 election by the Silent Majority, followed by his 1972 49-state landslide, repudiated Leftism, underscoring America’s underlying conservative complexion. Conservative is an inaccurate adjective, whether applied to Nixon, Reagan, or MAGA. The Center resides much further right than leftist gaslighters pretend. MAGA is essentially centrist.
Chronic gaslighting symptoms are endemic. Depressed cynics, wedded to the past and afflicted with PTSD, can’t perceive supertanker turns.
America experienced the Mother of All Gaslighting under Biden-Harris.
Four possible outcomes could have followed: increased, consistent, or decreased gaslighting, or sanity. Only two were possible, the first and last. Once gaslighting begins, it must compound exponentially. Lies require continuous amplification to maintain fictions. Then they finally collapse. A crisis typically initiates the reversal.
Seeds of gaslighting’s demise are omnipresent. The question is when, not if, the inflection point appears. Sometimes it’s indistinct. Sometimes it’s unequivocal.
Political change mimics a supertanker in its inertia.
Turning direction proceeds imperceptibly at first. Then advances sporadically, punctuated by specific accelerating events.
Progress in the new direction proceeds over decades, interspersed by backsliding episodes.
Glenn Reynolds examines the operative political dynamic.
The Left’s “strategy has consisted of using bullying and propaganda to convince 80% of the population that the views of 20% of the population are in the majority.”
Mass gaslighting is ancient. Regimes systematically manipulate reality, making individuals doubt their perceptions, memories, and sanity.
Historical revisionism (e.g., the 1619 Project) becomes necessary to support regime lies.
America’s current gaslighting episode originated against McCarthyism, accelerating ever since.
JFK’s assassination provided an exclamation point, requiring wholesale gaslighting. A majority didn’t buy what their government was selling. The 1964 Warren Report (requiring 27 volumes, over 18,000 pages, and one magic bullet) reinforced that perception. By 1967, Woody Allen reported he was working on the report’s nonfiction version.
The emperor goes naked until a child utters the truth.
Gaslighting is often self-inflicted. We allow ourselves to entertain lies and fantasies. Con artists and magicians exploit this flaw. Unindoctrinated children declare truths that adults are conditioned into fearing to express or refusing to believe. Specific incidents jolt us awake, forcing acknowledgment of reality.
JFK, 9/11, or Charlie Kirk provide examples.
Gaslighters eventually hypnotize themselves.
As Reynolds notes, “even [Romania’s communist dictator] Ceaușescu thought everyone loved him until shortly before he was stood in front of a wall and shot.”
Heather Mac Donald’s examination of the intensive gaslighting targeting Charlie Kirk is must reading.
Wholesale government gaslighting surrounding the Vietnam War generated substantial blowback.
The New Left exploited popular discontent and accelerated radicalism’s long march through America’s institutions.
The 1960s’ SDS, Weathermen, and Black Panthers evolved into today’s Democratic Socialists, Antifa, and BLM.
Soviet funding of numerous NGOs subsidized American radicals. GRU defector Stanislav Lunev revealed the USSR funded “just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad” during Vietnam, spending over $1 billion. The CCP and Qatar have replaced Soviet gaslighting subsidies.
Nixon’s 1968 election by the Silent Majority, followed by his 1972 49-state landslide, repudiated Leftism, underscoring America’s underlying conservative complexion. Conservative is an inaccurate adjective, whether applied to Nixon, Reagan, or MAGA. The Center resides much further right than leftist gaslighters pretend. MAGA is essentially centrist.
Chronic gaslighting symptoms are endemic. Depressed cynics, wedded to the past and afflicted with PTSD, can’t perceive supertanker turns.
America experienced the Mother of All Gaslighting under Biden-Harris.
Four possible outcomes could have followed: increased, consistent, or decreased gaslighting, or sanity. Only two were possible, the first and last. Once gaslighting begins, it must compound exponentially. Lies require continuous amplification to maintain fictions. Then they finally collapse. A crisis typically initiates the reversal.
Seeds of gaslighting’s demise are omnipresent. The question is when, not if, the inflection point appears. Sometimes it’s indistinct. Sometimes it’s unequivocal.
