We will not be gaslighted

Some three weeks after the Apollo11 lunar landing and a continent away from the launchpad, a small, slithering band of malcontented “hippies” began a murder spree under the remote control of an evil mastermind named Charles Manson. Their rampage shocked the nation and ended with the deaths of seven people and an unborn child.

Then there’s the writer and actress Allie Esiri, who says of William Shakespeare, “There was a particular moment when I came closest to understanding his depths.” She goes on to relate the true story of a woman in the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration center who was overheard by a guard there quoting a line from one of Shakespeare’s plays. The guard pulled her aside and told her he recognized the quote, then he told her to run away that night. She managed to escape with her mother and survive the war. Later she said she wasn’t sure but she thought it was Shakespeare’s words that jolted the guard’s humanity.

These two stories, told from real events, are brought to you by the human race. Both highlight the startling juxtaposition of the good and evil of our species. Both remind us of how far apart good and evil really are, yet how, paradoxically, both extremes can inhabit the breasts of everyday people.

From moonshot to Manson, Hitler to humanity, we are accustomed to the side by side contrast between the heights our species can achieve and the lowest depths it can plunge to. The cognitive dissonance these contrasts create are the atonal background music of human experience.

Few places showcase this contrast better than the building that houses the Congress of the United States. Within that building, men and women of high-minded goodwill work side by side with men and women of low-intentioned depravity. A great deal of nonsense, largely from the media, has gone into the effort to suggest that people on both sides of the aisle are really the same, that their failure to see eye-to-eye is really a failure of partisanship and nothing more. “If only,” the talking heads seem to opine, “they could set aside their differences just once and come together in unity. If only.”

But we will not be gaslighted. We know the difference between good and evil. It’s imprinted on our DNA. The depraved members of Congress who call themselves Republicans know it too, which is why they so desperately try to disguise their intentions by obfuscation, equivocation and endless filibusters of whataboutisms.

They know perfectly well, for instance, that the January 6th, 2021 attack on the very building they work in was a violent attempt to overthrow the government of the United States, a depraved and open violation of everything they claim to hold sacred. That is why they desperately do not want it investigated.

In fact, they are so terrified of having that day investigated that they threaten with prison and censure any members of their own party who cooperate with the January 6 Committee. But every child knows that evil prefers darkness. Every child knows that the sunlight of scrutiny is inimical to the shadow of corruption. Republicans know it too. And they tremble.

So we are tired, tired of the relentless, exasperation-promoting battle for our sanity. The twisting and turning of words, the clockwork mechanism that measures the good and evil of legislation not by its true merits but by the party of the people promoting it. We are tired of the relentless assault on democracy, on voting rights, on science. And we will not be gaslighted

We are particularly tired of making “heroes” out of scum, merely because they agree with the obvious. The sky is blue and January 6th was an insurrection, an outrage against the very foundation of the American government. What do those who acknowledge the absurdly incontrovertible want, a medal? Remember, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are climate science denialists who voted to make the rich richer and do nothing for the poor, who opposed voting rights and want to criminalise abortion. They are scum. So they say out loud what is plain to the simplest fool. Goodie for them. We will not be gaslighted.

Sometimes there aren’t two sides to every story. Sometimes there’s just the truth on one side and shameless lies on the other. There are certainly no two sides to this story, no two schools of thought here. There are only people acting in good faith opposing the subversion of the will of the people by criminals who are trying to steal the 2020 election for a thin-skinned poison toad. Of the liars who cover for him, their “side” is nothing but an exasperating escalation of one absurdity on top of another. They are held in the thrall of an insidious man child. We will not be gaslighted.

We refuse to be lectured about how January 6 was a harmless protest, just as we refuse to be lectured about Hillary Clinton’s emails by members of a party who support an ex-president who ate or took home in boxes or flushed down the toilet top secret documents. Those days are over for good. I hope Republicans at least have enough shame by now to acknowledge just how stupid they look when they pretend to care about the rule of law.

Astrology is not astronomy, alchemy is not chemistry, psychokinesis is not psychology. We will not be gaslighted. Those politicians on the right come by their points of view not by way of careful thought or years of dedicated study but by abject greed, cowardice, laziness and a complete absence of intellectual rigour. Their supporters among the American people come by their points of view because they are ignorant, lazy, stupid and deliberately obtuse.

We will no longer stand by and agree to acknowledge obfuscation, equivocation and whataboutisms as legitimate debate. We will not allow an attack on the foundations of democracy to be called “legitimate political discourse.” Enough is enough. We will not be gaslighted. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.