A Sense of Doubt blog post #1918 - Prepare for the ultimate gas lighting
I have been hanging on to this Medium article for a little over a month. The amazing thing about this article is that it's just as true today as it was on April 10th, except for the number of Americans who have applied for unemployment, which is now double what you will read in Gambuto's article, and the U.S. death toll has topped 90,000 Americans.
Inexplicably data scientists predict that American death toll will crest 147,000 by August, which is eleven weeks away as I write this. That seems like an optimistic decline as the deaths seem to be rising at about 10K per week and with re-opening plans going forward, many of which are implemented recklessly, it seems logical that death tolls will eclipse 10K a week and reach totals of at least 200,000 by August. And yet, that same model just lowered its prediction to 143K just yesterday. Is this propaganda from the "economic success is critical to my re-election campaign" federal government or will we see decline in cases just as many, many people recklessly intermingle with one another without PPE or physical distance?
Is this low-ball data model part or is it the gas-lighting Gambuto describes in the article below?
Lately, in our house, we're watching a lot of CNN. Not because it's 100% accurate. No, it has failed some fact checks as asserted by media bias fact check. Lately, Chris Cuomo, who hosts the nightly PrimeTime segment, has been advocating a theory that spin-master Don T is wheedling his idiotic magic to cast Republicans as the party of "yes" and Democrats as the party of "no." This spin-doctoring prestidigitation plays right into Gambuto's arguments about gas lighting as described below. Democrats are all about "no": no, you can't re-open; no, you can't go back to your jobs; no, you can't get back to normal, get back to your lives: no, no, no, NO. Whereas he's making the GOP the party of YES: let's go, baby; re-open, yes!; get back to work; back to your lives; don't listen to those cries of no from the jealous Democrats who are just trying to attack me like they always do; let's get back to our lives.
And it may just work. Trump echoes what people actual want. People want to get back to their lives. His rhetoric plays into the down-laying of the seriousness of the virus he's been touting all along, though for a time he pretended to take it seriously. Trump's unwillingness to wear a mask plays into this dismissal of the severity of the situation we face. Even when we are faced with images like this one:
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| https://www.boredpanda.com/blog/ |
or this one:
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| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-nyc-mass-burials-images-hart-island-cemetery-shorter-deadline-claim-dead/ |
The gas-lighting has already begun, and its effect wormed deep roots into the brains of American citizens. Every time I make a run to the grocery store I see at least as many people without masks as with masks, and some times the number skews more toward unmasked. These people seem unconcerned with precautions for their own safety or for mine.
Unlike any time in our history as a nation, we Americans face an opportunity to hone our critical thinking skills. The information overload is very intense and requires mindfulness to navigate it. Cries of "fake news" abound, especially from the "president" who openly attacks journalists and news outlets in White House press conferences, just like the worst school yard bully from our nightmares of fourth grade playgrounds. Accusations of bias rattle around us from all sides, like an out of control commuter train with no pilot.
I was going to share this material as a separate post as it came from my dear colleague (and department chair) Hiedi Bauer, but it seems to fit here.
Hiedi writes: "This three minute podcast came from yesterday's NPR Marketplace report. It was about how we can trust the information that's coming out about the Coronavirus. They mention things like "authoritative sources," and I played it in my 102 class today because it went really well with my activity on source assessment."
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/02/12/coronavirus-can-artificial-intelligence-be-smart-enough-to-detect-fake-news/
"Artificial intelligence, used effectively, not only can identify false news; it can emphasize and push out authoritative science. At the website Buoy Health, which users can come across by searching key words associated with a disease and its symptoms, individuals can get answers about the coronavirus from an AI chatbot — answers based on science and protocols from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It starts to piece together really important details from your story,” said Dr. Andrew Le, Buoy Health CEO. “Whether you’ve traveled to China recently. Whether you’ve been around someone who has been confirmed as having novel coronavirus. What symptoms do you have”?"
AND SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?This line reverberates in my head because it came from an Art of Noise song.
oh wait, that song has the name but not the lyric. This one:
HERE'S THE LYRICS
The way that man's erudite, British voice cuts in with "so what happens now?" has always haunted me.
And...
SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
We need to be mindful. We need to be watchful, smart, and scrutinize everything. Corroborate sources. Check for credibility and credentials.
It's a mine field.
And so, as the title below says, prepare yourself.
This clip may not be about the pandemic, but it's weirdly prophetic from 2014, the same year Obama warned of our need for readiness to combat the coming pandemic.
We were not prepared for this one, but we can be prepared for the next one. But we won't be ready if we let the infotoxins of ultimate gaslighting steal our critical faculties.
Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting*
You are not crazy, my friends
Pretty soon, as the country begins to figure out how we “open back up” and move forward, very powerful forces will try to convince us all to get back to normal. (That never happened. What are you talking about?) Billions of dollars will be spent on advertising, messaging, and television and media content to make you feel comfortable again. It will come in the traditional forms — a billboard here, a hundred commercials there — and in new-media forms: a 2020–2021 generation of memes to remind you that what you want again is normalcy. In truth, you want the feeling of normalcy, and we all want it. We want desperately to feel good again, to get back to the routines of life, to not lie in bed at night wondering how we’re going to afford our rent and bills, to not wake to an endless scroll of human tragedy on our phones, to have a cup of perfectly brewed coffee and simply leave the house for work. The need for comfort will be real, and it will be strong. And every brand in America will come to your rescue, dear consumer, to help take away that darkness and get life back to the way it was before the crisis. I urge you to be well aware of what is coming.
For the last hundred years, the multibillion-dollar advertising business has operated based on this cardinal principle: Find the consumer’s problem and fix it with your product. When the problem is practical and tactical, the solution is “as seen on TV” and available at Home Depot. Command strips will save me from having to repaint. So will Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser. Elfa shelving will get rid of the mess in my closet. The Ring doorbell will let me see who’s on the porch if I can’t take my eyes off Netflix. But when the problem is emotional, the fix becomes a new staple in your life, and you become a lifelong loyalist. Coca-Cola makes you: happy. A Mercedes makes you: successful. Taking your family on a Royal Caribbean cruise makes you: special. Smart marketers know how to highlight what brands can do for you to make your life easier. But brilliant marketers know how to rewire your heart. And, make no mistake, the heart is what has been most traumatized this last month. We are, as a society, now vulnerable in a whole new way.
What the trauma has shown us, though, cannot be unseen. A carless Los Angeles has clear blue skies as pollution has simply stopped. In a quiet New York, you can hear the birds chirp in the middle of Madison Avenue. Coyotes have been spotted on the Golden Gate Bridge. These are the postcard images of what the world might be like if we could find a way to have a less deadly daily effect on the planet. What’s not fit for a postcard are the other scenes we have witnessed: a health care system that cannot provide basic protective equipment for its frontline; small businesses — and very large ones — that do not have enough cash to pay their rent or workers, sending over 16 million people to seek unemployment benefits; a government that has so severely damaged the credibility of our media that 300 million people don’t know who to listen to for basic facts that can save their lives.
The cat is out of the bag. We, as a nation, have deeply disturbing problems. You’re right. That’s not news. They are problems we ignore every day, not because we’re terrible people or because we don’t care about fixing them, but because we don’t have time. Sorry, we have other shit to do. The plain truth is that no matter our ethnicity, religion, gender, political party (the list goes on), nor even our socioeconomic status, as Americans we share this: We are busy. We’re out and about hustling to make our own lives work. We have goals to meet and meetings to attend and mortgages to pay — all while the phone is ringing and the laptop is pinging. And when we get home, Crate and Barrel and Louis Vuitton and Andy Cohen make us feel just good enough to get up the next day and do it all over again. It is very easy to close your eyes to a problem when you barely have enough time to close them to sleep. The greatest misconception among us, which causes deep and painful social and political tension every day in this country, is that we somehow don’t care about each other. White people don’t care about the problems of black America. Men don’t care about women’s rights. Cops don’t care about the communities they serve. Humans don’t care about the environment. These couldn’t be farther from the truth. We do care. We just don’t have the time to do anything about it. Maybe that’s just me. But maybe it’s you, too.
Well, the treadmill you’ve been on for decades just stopped. Bam! And that feeling you have right now is the same as if you’d been thrown off your Peloton bike and onto the ground: What in the holy fuck just happened? I hope you might consider this: What happened is inexplicably incredible. It’s the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus, but The Great Pause. It is, in a word, profound. Please don’t recoil from the bright light beaming through the window. I know it hurts your eyes. It hurts mine, too. But the curtain is wide open. What the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country in the plainest of views. At no other time, ever in our lives, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped. Here it is. We’re in it. Stores are closed. Restaurants are empty. Streets and six-lane highways are barren. Even the planet itself is rattling less (true story). And because it is rarer than rare, it has brought to light all of the beautiful and painful truths of how we live. And that feels weird. Really weird. Because it has… never… happened… before. If we want to create a better country and a better world for our kids, and if we want to make sure we are even sustainable as a nation and as a democracy, we have to pay attention to how we feel right now. I cannot speak for you, but I imagine you feel like I do: devastated, depressed, and heartbroken.
And what a perfect time for Best Buy and H&M and Wal-Mart to help me feel normal again. If I could just have the new iPhone in my hand, if I could rest my feet on a pillow of new Nikes, if I could drink a venti blonde vanilla latte or sip a Diet Coke, then this very dark feeling would go away. You think I’m kidding, that I’m being cute, that I’m denying the very obvious benefits of having a roaring economy. You’re right. Our way of life is not without purpose. The economy is not, at its core, evil. Brands and their products create millions of jobs. Like people — and most anything in life — there are brands that are responsible and ethical, and there are others that are not. They are all part of a system that keeps us living long and strong. We have lifted more humans out of poverty through the power of economics than any other civilization in history. Yes, without a doubt, Americanism is a force for good. It is not some villainous plot to wreak havoc and destroy the planet and all our souls along with it. I get it, and I agree. But its flaws have been laid bare for all to see. It doesn’t work for everyone. It’s responsible for great destruction. It is so unevenly distributed in its benefit that three men own more wealth than 150 million people. Its intentions have been perverted, and the protection it offers has disappeared. In fact, it’s been brought to its knees by one pangolin. We have got to do better and find a way to a responsible free market.
Until then, get ready, my friends. What is about to be unleashed on American society will be the greatest campaign ever created to get you to feel normal again. It will come from brands, it will come from government, it will even come from each other, and it will come from the left and from the right. We will do anything, spend anything, believe anything, just so we can take away how horribly uncomfortable all of this feels. And on top of that, just to turn the screw that much more, will be the one effort that’s even greater: the all-out blitz to make you believe you never saw what you saw. The air wasn’t really cleaner; those images were fake. The hospitals weren’t really a war zone; those stories were hyperbole. The numbers were not that high; the press is lying. You didn’t see people in masks standing in the rain risking their lives to vote. Not in America. You didn’t see the leader of the free world push an unproven miracle drug like a late-night infomercial salesman. That was a crisis update. You didn’t see homeless people dead on the street. You didn’t see inequality. You didn’t see indifference. You didn’t see utter failure of leadership and systems.
But you did. You are not crazy, my friends. And so we are about to be gaslit in a truly unprecedented way. It starts with a check for $1,200 (Don’t say I never gave you anything) and then it will be so big that it will be bigly. And it will be a one-two punch from both big business and the big White House — inextricably intertwined now more than ever and being led by, as our luck would have it, a Marketer in Chief. Business and government are about to band together to knock us unconscious again. It will be funded like no other operation in our lifetimes. It will be fast. It will be furious. And it will be overwhelming. The Great American Return to Normal is coming.
From one citizen to another, I beg of you: take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all. We care deeply about one another. That is clear. That can be seen in every supportive Facebook post, in every meal dropped off for a neighbor, in every Zoom birthday party. We are a good people. And as a good people, we want to define — on our own terms — what this country looks like in five, 10, 50 years. This is our chance to do that, the biggest one we have ever gotten. And the best one we’ll ever get.
We can do that on a personal scale in our homes, in how we choose to spend our family time on nights and weekends, what we watch, what we listen to, what we eat, and what we choose to spend our dollars on and where. We can do it locally in our communities, in what organizations we support, what truths we tell, and what events we attend. And we can do it nationally in our government, in which leaders we vote in and to whom we give power. If we want cleaner air, we can make it happen. If we want to protect our doctors and nurses from the next virus — and protect all Americans — we can make it happen. If we want our neighbors and friends to earn a dignified income, we can make that happen. If we want millions of kids to be able to eat if suddenly their school is closed, we can make that happen. And, yes, if we just want to live a simpler life, we can make that happen, too. But only if we resist the massive gaslighting that is about to come. It’s on its way. Look out.
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Note: The author and Medium have made minor tweaks since initial publication.
BONUS VIDEO.
Since this whole article was about gas lighting and the president, and I wrote about this "president," here's an obvious choice:
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2005.19 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1781 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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