Gaslighting and Cruelty are now the foundation of Official Republican Policies

Issue #732 The Choice, Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Photo Credit: SamWhitney/New York Times

Today, the Republican Party is not your parents’ or grandparents’ GOP. Its journey toward being a racist, misogynist, nativist, and brutally cruel political party is nothing short of alarming. The transformation began in earnest in the 1960s when many members of the Democratic Party switched to become Republicans after Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson helped to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Bills. Republican President Ronald Reagan, himself a former Democrat, cemented the transformation when he began his campaign at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi. 

This location is historically significant and controversial because it was near the site where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. Reagan's choice to launch his campaign there, combined with his emphasis on "states' rights" in his speech, has been interpreted by many as an appeal to Southern voters resistant to civil rights reforms.

Donald Trump has completed the change of the Republican party so much that today, the party has no true platform or policies except to do what Trump tells them to do. As a matter of fact, during the 2020 election cycle, the Republicans stated that their platform was whatever Trump said it was.

With no policies to run on, the Republicans are now concentrating on voter suppression, vote-counting interference, lies, intimidation, gaslighting, and cruelty to “win” elections. 

Many of you know I was an English Major, and I am now a retired educator of all grades from Pre-K through college. My favorite subject in school was English/Language Arts, closely followed by history and civics. 

Decades ago, when I was in the classroom, I required my students to have a dictionary and thesaurus on their desks. So, let’s start with some definitions:

Gaslighting: 

Gaslighting is a psychological manipulation tactic in which a person or a group makes someone question their sanity, perception of reality, or memories. The term originates from the 1938 play "Gas Light” and a subsequent movie, where a husband manipulates his wife into thinking she is losing her mind. 

The manipulator often uses denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation to destabilize the victim's sense of reality and make them doubt their judgments and perceptions.

Cruelty:

Cruelty is the act of intentionally causing physical or emotional pain and suffering to others. It involves deliberately inflicting harm or distress through actions, words, or neglect. Cruelty can manifest in various forms, including physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological manipulation, neglect, and exploitation. 

Cruelty is often motivated by a desire to exert power or control or derive satisfaction from the suffering of others, and it reflects a lack of empathy and compassion.

Trump is a master at gaslighting. His speeches and rallies are filled with lies that can be easily disproved. He is rarely fact-checked, but when he is, he just shouts “fake news” and attempts to discredit the fact-checkers. 

Trump wants people to believe that he is the only one they should put in power and the only person who can fix everything wrong with America. Despite everything to the contrary, Trump demands that people believe what he says and what he will do. Anyone and anything that runs contrary to what he says is just wrong. 

The other MAGA Republicans are just as bad. They expect people to forget January 6 or to think of the insurrection as a few people on a tourist visit. However, everyone saw the storming of the Capitol and the threat to Congressional lives on TV in real time.

Trump and the MAGAs also want people to believe, without any evidence, that millions of brown and Black illegal immigrants are flooding into the United States, taking jobs and spreading crime and disease.

Relatedly, the MAGAs also are insisting that the elections they lost are fraudulent and that elections as a whole are corrupt and run by cheating Democrats. Because the Democrats are mismanaging the elections, it is up to Republicans to enact policies to control the elections themselves to guarantee outcomes in their favor.

Meanwhile, the MAGA Republicans are implementing policies and programs that are as cruel as possible to those people they consider to be not “real Americans,” including almost all non-whites and women. They are not shy in believing that only white men should be in charge of America and that women and non-whites should again be relegated to second-class citizenship.

The #1 target is abortion access. The MAGAs want a nationwide abortion ban with few exceptions, while currently leaving access to “the states” has been a logistical nightmare.

What the MAGAs conveniently forget is that “abortion access” is about more than abortion. Women need and deserve all manner of reproductive health programs, including birth control, and about 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, which often need medical assistance to remove any fetal tissue from the woman’s body thoroughly.

As we have now found cases of needed abortions or miscarriage assistance being denied by physicians because of threatened jail time has led to near death and actual death of many women. 

Destroying reproductive care and threatening to eliminate birth control access, as well as condoning the name-calling and denigration of Democratic women in power as women in professional positions in general, shows their disdain for women and girls, especially if they are not Republicans.

The fact that the Republicans prefer “2nd Amendment” gun ownership over the fact that school shootings have escalated over the past several years shows their cruelty toward school children and their penchant for guns over human lives.

MAGAs do not care that climate change is hurting not only the environment but also people suffering from extreme heat or cold. The idea of not giving water to people waiting in line to vote or people who have to work outside on construction or in the fields is cruel. People living in Democratic-run cities like Detroit can use cooling or heating centers during extreme weather. People in Republican-led cities don’t have that life-saving opportunity.

The Republican Party has nothing to run on but their gaslighting, cruelty, and cheating as the only way to win elections.

Defeating Donald Trump in November will be the first step in purging the MAGAs from our society.

However, ensuring Trump loses and goes to jail is a good start.