Trump and his Trumpeters are GASLIGHTERS

[OneGrassRoot]

"What I've observed is that, while Trump has behaved as an adolescent during his entire campaign, using twitter as his personal insult generator, whenever anyone responds in kind -- including the Fox News Channel -- he somehow comes out looking like the adult in the room. He is very, very thin-skinned, and any criticism is met with a full-on verbal assault by Trump. When the criticism comes even remotely in the form of Trump's brand of nastiness and snark, he somehow responds in a way that magically comes across as though he's taking the high road and need not engage such silliness.

It dawned on me just now that in so many ways Trump is the epitome of the group behavior many of today's right-wing conservatives have exhibited over the last eight years. I used to refer to them as Tea Party conservatives, but I suppose the best way to describe them now is Trump followers.

Trump and his followers are cloaked in their feelings of outrage and victimization. It frustrates me that so many white, heterosexual, conservative Christians don't seem to grasp that they have been the majority (and still are right now) in this country forever, and that our systems and institutions reflect that (history books have always taught "white" history, hence the need to shine a spotlight on neglected history: AA, Latino, etc.; until fairly recently you primarily saw only white, straight people on TV shows, in magazines, etc).

This twisted, inverted, distorted victim role and denial which Trump and his followers embrace so passionately reminded me of something I write about frequently: Gaslighting.

I think THAT is the diagnosis I was searching for to describe the behavior of Trump and his followers, so I'm sharing this post from 2014 which speaks to the phenomenon of gaslighting.

I'll end this update section by sharing a recent Facebook post to show that this phenomenon has only intensified over the years.

US Citizen #1: "I love that Trump and others are finally openly saying we need more white-only and Christian-only immigrants. Muslims and blacks and Hispanics -- no. They get too much attention and special treatment and handouts and that's why this country is going to hell. Screw all this PC shit. When white people have our values catered to, then America will be great again."

US Citizen #2: "When white people have our values catered to....dude, listen to yourself. That means you believe being white is superior. A lot of white people believe that, so you're not alone. But, you DO realize that is the definition of white supremacy and what fuels racism, right?"

US Citizen #1: "There you go again, being racist! I can't stand you race baiters, calling people like me racist. You're the ones being bigots against me and you don't even see it. Hypocrites."

That is SERIOUSLY the national conversation that has been going on for a while now.

*head explodes*



http://dena-patrick.blogspot.com/2014/07/we-are-not-whiners-or-victims-you-are.html

[ryan_cats]

1. If you

If you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Please, no gasplaining.