By Jim Heffernan
I’ve watched this 1944 movie, but it’s been a long time ago. The title has become part of our language. In Psychology, it refers to a tactic of power and control whereby abusive persons use lies and distortion to confuse and manipulate others. It happens in politics but is usually covered up by terms like “spin”, “messaging”, or “framing”.
Gaslighting boils down to being lied to, sometimes mildly, sometimes blatantly. Either way, I don’t like it.
I intend for this to be a regular column and to call out “gaslighting” whenever and wherever I see it.
This is the map we always saw to report the results of the 2024 Presidential election. It’s accurate on a winner-take-all basis but it gaslights us about the results. Oregon in not all blue and Kansas is not all red.
Here’s a better map. It breaks it down to counties, but it favors area over population.
Here’s another map that merges colors and makes purples. It comes closer to the truth. Not every place was as red or blue as the county breakdown.
Below is my favorite map. It really doesn’t show states or counties, but I think graphically it reveals the essential truth of the election results. I like the addition of the Statue of Liberty and the implied wish for justice and equality for the whole nation. It ignores location and just represents the near 50/50 split in the election. (49.9% Trump, 48.4% Harris, 1% other).
Those aren’t good numbers either. Better numbers are 32% for Trump, 31% for Harris, and, disgracefully, 38% did not vote.
It saddened me to find out in the Presidential elections between 2024 and 1976, only once did a candidate get more votes than the “did not vote” people. That was in 2020 when Biden got 34.4% of the vote and “did not vote” got 34.3%.
I’m not sure what I’ll write about next, but I suspect I’ll have plenty of material to choose from.
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com
