MANY THINGS CONSIDERED: Gaslighting of America

“News is a weapon of war. Its purpose is to wage war and not to give out information.” – Joseph Goebbels, May 1942

 

By Marc C. Johnson

One of the, oh, 11 million bizarre features of Trumpism is the constant projection.

Here’s what Psychology Today says about this phenomenon:

What Is Projection?

Unconscious discomfort can lead people to attribute unacceptable feelings or impulses to someone else to avoid confronting them. Projection allows the difficult trait to be addressed without the individual fully recognizing it in themselves.

Why do people project?

People tend to project because they have a trait or desire that is too difficult to acknowledge. Rather than confronting it, they cast it away and onto someone else. This functions to preserve their self-esteem, making difficult emotions more tolerable. It’s easier to attack or witness wrongdoing in another person than confront that possibility in one’s own behavior. How a person acts toward the target of projection might reflect how they really feel about themselves.

Case in point:

“The deal with Iran will go down as one of the most incompetent ever made. The U.S. lost on virtually every point. We just don’t win anymore!”

— President Trump, on Twitter in 2015.

Now, by every credible account I have been able to identify, the “deal” that Donald Trump, JD Vance and the cast of incompetent American “negotiators” reached with Iran is, as Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy said today, a blunder of historic dimensions:

Every American should remember that Trump tore up the comprehensive, multi-national Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2015 during the Obama Administration. Republican members of Congress generally applauded the cancellation and Trump has repeatedly criticized Obama for “giving” Iran $2 billion (of its own money) as part of the agreement.

The JCPOA required international inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and while some terms and the duration of the agreement were criticized, it was – and remains – a whole lot different (and vastly better) than the flimsy MOU that will be hashed over in detail in the days ahead.

From a Wall Street Journal editorial:

“President Trump is touting his latest cease-fire deal with Iran as peace in our time, but the world is more likely to see it as a strategic retreat short of achieving his war aims. To reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Mr. Trump is accepting Iran’s promises merely to negotiate over its nuclear program…”

“Those who say Mr. Trump had no alternative to this retreat ignore that the U.S. blockade was squeezing Iran more by the day, while Iran’s blockade was leaking. Mr. Trump simply didn’t want to endure higher oil prices for longer. This is his choice, not a strategic imperative…”

“Iran’s new leaders are likely to conclude that Mr. Trump has no desire for more conflict, and they will negotiate accordingly.”

And here is military historian Phillips P. O’Brien, a keen observer of the remarkably rapid decline of American world standing under Donald Trump:

In the near future, the US is pledging to help organize a massive reparations program for Iran, to pull back American forces from the vicinity of Iran, to end all sanctions on Iran, and to pledge its commitment to all of this with a UN Security Council Resolution.

And what has the US gotten in return?

Well, it has gotten a temporary reopening of the Strait of Hormuz (under significantly worse conditions than existed on February 27, 2026) and a restatement of a nuclear pledge that Iran has made for years and years.

It is hard to grasp just how humiliating this is for the USA (and Israel). They chose to start this war after great preparation, they used their most advanced technology, and they used up massive military stocks in bombing Iran for six weeks.

And they are in a much worse situation.

If you want more on the historically bad deal I suggest reading all of Professor O’Brien’s analysis. You may be as stunned as I am by what the American president has wrought here.

A madman in his dotage

I have written before, and continue to believe, that when the end of Trumpism comes – and it will come – the effect will be something like the political equivalent of an Elon Musk rocket blowing up at launch. The explosion will be horrific and the debris will fall far and wide.

The end, after all these years of chaos, incompetence, bad faith and rank stupidity, will be rapid and despite all the available evidence all the time it will be shocking to many.

As Peter Wehner writes in The Atlantic:

Jonathan Rauch and I have argued that, as a result, the world now faces something new and frightening: a psychotic state. The administration is consistently detached from reality; the normal policy process we have seen in past administrations is nonexistent in this one. No one around the president even hints that anything he does is inappropriate, unpopular, or unwise. His Cabinet meetings have become exercises in self-abasement, with one member after another obsequiously groveling, each trying to outdo the next in their adoration. Trump, left on his own without adult supervision, has lurched from blunder to catastrophe.

We will live with the consequences for decades to come.

Congressional Republicans and the most feckless in MAGA World will almost certainly find a way to act as though the Iranian fiasco and all the rest is all well within the bounds normal behavior. It is not.

Never forget who had done this. Don’t fall, for even a millisecond, for the gaslighting that will come in the next hours and days.

Remind yourself of an infamous photo from history.