Special Opinion to the Mirror by Chas Cornweller
Gaslight; verb. gerund or present participle: gaslighting – to manipulate someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.
Is this what has happened to the general public of the United States? Are we as a people, having been engaged in group-think (social media) for these past eight or ten years, being taken for a ride? (Ask yourself – how long have you been on social media/listening to conservative talk radio?) Are we being slowly and deliberately hoodwinked by the powers that be into believing that our nation is on course for the finest years yet? Are we being deceived into believing that America, under its present leader is destined for greatness? Do you truly believe that this is so?
We have been so inundated with fake news, red herrings, false narratives and the blathering of so many talking heads and mouths, many of us don’t even know which way to turn. I remember hearing a news report over the radio that interviewed stockbrokers having lunch just six months after the two thousand and eight market crash and subsequent housing market crash. We all remember, right? We remember that the banks and the markets had created these sub-prime mortgage bubbles that burst, leaving many of the larger banks such as Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, along with many other international banks, on the brink of bankruptcy. But, in America, we the taxpayer bailed them out. Remember? From our pockets to theirs. Well, the interviewer was asking the average stockbroker why they felt the taxpayer should have to pay the banks (and eventually Wall Street itself by proxy) to bail them out for this misfortune. To a one, everyone said that “It wasn’t their fault.” They blamed real-estate agents, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. They blamed poor investments on the public. They blamed everyone and everything. Everything but themselves or their firms or banks. They were completely blind to their own culpability to the whole affair. They weren’t lying, at least in their own minds. They were completely and honestly convinced of this fact. Feel better now? Aren’t you happy that you paid your hard-earned money to the banks so they wouldn’t fail? And today, folks wonder why wages aren’t keeping up with the general growth of the economic machine. Banks are profiting. Large corporations are profiting. CEO’s and upper management portfolios are growing and profiting. The average worker? Not so much.
And that is just one example of the giant spin game shelled out to you every day to keep you in blinders and looking straight ahead at the world they present. Because they know, with you looking closer, the things you might find, might just spook the hell out of you. Take for example, the latest example of the president’s summit with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un. Did it make the world safer? Do you believe it did? For me, it was just another prime example of manipulation of the world populace. I, for one, do not believe it made the world safer. I personally saw it as a Dog and Pony show. I honestly think that North Korea got the better end of the deal. But, that’s my personal opinion. But, Trump’s base might see it as a huge American triumph. By the end of this week, they’ll be convinced of it. Not me.
The interesting thing happening to America today is not so much as the disintegration of the basic Bill of Rights and law by Constitution, but how easily it is being done. Most folks would like to argue that it has happened fairly recently and is being done by bi-partisan means. Both are false narratives. The same folks who screamed “Fascists!” at our last president now regard executive privilege as an unalienable right of the White House. The very people who believed that the invasion of Iraq in two thousand and three was for national security and a bulwark of national defense now bemoan and decry the fact that we’ve been there for over fifteen years! And with nothing to show for it, but a beleaguered economy and tens of thousands of our soldiers suffering from PTSD or worst. These are but a few examples of just how deep within the rabbit hole of a gas lit society we have become. Polarized doesn’t even begin to describe the chasm dividing our country. Dysfunctional, under educated, over medicated and lied to by the media stream, public servants (politicians-in case you forgot their place), internet and religious leaders. Are you a victim of the gas light? Ask yourself. Read these eleven warning signs of a gas lighter and again, ask yourself if you recognize these…
- They tell blatant lies.2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.
4. They wear you down over time.
5. Their actions do not match their words.
6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.
7. They know confusion weakens people.
8. They project. They are a drug user or a cheater, yet they are constantly accusing you of that. This is done so often that you start trying to defend yourself, and are distracted from the gas lighter’s own behavior.
9. They try to align people against you. Gas lighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what—and they use these people against you.
10. They tell you or others that you are crazy. This is one of the most effective tools of the gas lighter, because it’s dismissive. The gas lighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gas lighter is abusive or out-of-control. It’s a master technique.
11. They tell you everyone else is a liar. By telling you that everyone else (your family, the media) is a liar, it again makes you question your reality.
Now, congratulate yourself…because if you recognize just what is going on, you just woke up. And if you can’t wake up, congratulate yourself anyway…you are the perfect cog for the New World Order.
About the Author
Dear friend and fellow American patriot, Chas Cornweller, thank you as always for bringing forth in your writings in here such political red meat for us to chew over as you have done here, once again.
These are the kinds of discussions that make the Cape Charles Mirror so unique as compared with such tired old rags as the New York Times or the Washington Post, or that insipid crap dished out by such networks as Fox.
But in one thing you are seriously wrong, I think.
With respect to these bail-outs, you have no real sense of history, which is a serious failing in this particular piece.
The first real bail-out occurred right at this nation’s birth with Alexander Hamilton, and they have been continuing in one form or another since then.
Check out the Wall Street Journal article “Government Bailouts: A U.S. Tradition Dating to Hamilton” by Michael M. Phillips, Sept. 20, 2008, for example.
Anyone who thinks this crap is recent has been gas-lighted, big time.
Conservatives wanted to elect a President in the worst way, and they got one – in the worst way. They are left defying logic to attempt to defend polices that directly conflict with their established ideology. Most astonishing is the fact that there are so many people who will continue to blindly follow this path, and are perfectly content to be gaslighted. Thanks for this wonderful article Chas, and thanks for staying “woke.”
North Korea diplomacy = BADBADBADDRUMPFREPUBLICAN
Iran ‘deal’ where we got taken to the cleaners, and never even got a signed ‘deal’ = GOODGOODGOODCUZOBAMA!!!!!
Throw journalists in jail deny access = GOODGOODGOODCUZOBAMA
Arrest a National Security Security chief and his just over teenaged paramour who was…..how can I say this delicately?…whoring for a story and actually put our NatSec in peril? = BADBADBADDRUMPFREPUBLICAN
Yeah, WE are the gaslighters.
Buwahahahahahahahahaha
“Woke”……..what a word to describe people who go through life sleeping.
You know, Mike K., you can cherry pick all the day long. But, the inherent truth is…our national media, now along with social media and various blog outlets serve those who control only to mis-direct, confuse and conceal actual facts to determine the direction and “color” of the story. I am old enough to remember news reports in the sixties. Can you say the same? Because if not, it IS important. This past twenty to twenty-five years, various reporting sites and certain talk radio personalities have been putting into people’s heads, alternate facts, alternate reporting, alternate truths…and most importantly…alternate culture. If you can’t see that…then you are the one with blinders on.
And, oh by the way…”Being woke” IS a form of waking up. As from a sleep. So, you are on to something there. The difference between you and I is this: I AM woke. You are STILL sleeping. How’s that American Dream playing out for you right now?
Yes, I recall very specifically Cronkite lying about the Tet offensive. Ad infinitum.
Oh, the old ‘alternative facts’ canard. Only those who claim ‘wokedness’ are unaware that that is a term of art used in the legal field denoting the opposing argument.
Officer: “You were driving erratically”
Lawyer: “Were you aware of the bee that was inside the car?”
Alternate facts. Derp.
Alternate culture? You mean like the American culture of individual rights being subsumed by the Leftist “Alternate culture’ of identity politics? That alternate culture? Or the one that says if you feeeeeeeeeeel like a woman, you are? That alternate reality?
Finally, do not conflate being a blind follower with ‘wokednessism”.
Chas Cornweller, dude, have you ever stopped to wonder why there is a North Korea in the first place to have what you are calling a “dog-and-pony” show with?
How long has North Korea existed as a “state?”
Who created north and south Korea?
Why was such a division of that country made?
Did the Korean people have a choice in the matter?
Or were they denied a voice in their own future?
And why would you today be against reconciliation?
What about the Nazarene?
Would he want to see Korea remain divided, if there was a chance it could be otherwise?
The candid world wonders at your thoughts on the matter, dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller.
Won’t you share them with us?
As a follower and student of history (and a participant, I might add), you must realize what the peninsula was before the second world war. It was annex by Japan in 1910. The Korean people have not had a say in their destinies for over a hundred years. So, to answer your question about the sovereignty of the Korean people…there has been none. Since the invasion from the north in 1950, the peninsula has labored under a communist north and westernized south. One is a puppet of China and the other is a puppet of the United States, along with Japan…their former conquerors and occupiers. It was actually the Yalta agreement (endorsed by Great Britain and the United States) that encouraged Russia to use the Korean corridor to invade Japan before the end of the war. It was their rapid success that forced the United States to use the Atomic weaponry we were so eager to demonstrate to the rest of the world.
What would Jesus do? Would he want to see Korea divided? Eyeroll. I’m pretty sure Jesus is way too busy to care about countries right now…he has his hands full comforting crying four-year old’s and speaking smoothly in Spanish to lull them to sleep in an over active, strange, sterile environment right now. Proud of our government much?
Thanks for responding Paul. As always, you get my blood pressure going early in the morning.
If you are aware of your blood pressure, dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller, that is a positive message to yourself from yourself that you at least are still clinging to life, however precarious your hold might be at that moment, so you should be thankful you still have life, Chas Cornweller.
Many don’t, you know.
And you dance around my series of questions with the ease of a Nijinsky, Chas Cornweller, slip- sliding this way and that to avoid any petards you might hoist yourself on.
Frank Roosevelt, a Democrat, essentially handed Korea and its “brown” people to Joe “The Butcher” Stalin as an inducement to get Joe to declare war on Japan.
When Japan suddenly surrendered, all the pin-striped “New Dealers” essentially panicked, for want of a better word, and were forced to resort to maneuvers to stop the Russian advance they were responsible for initiating in the first place.
As you say, our involvement in the mess began on or about February 11, 1945, when a week of intensive bargaining by the leaders of the three major Allied powers ended in Yalta, a Soviet resort town on the Black Sea, it being the second conference of the “Big Three” Allied leaders–U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.
A frail President Roosevelt, two months from his death, concentrated his efforts on gaining Soviet support for the U.S. war effort against Japan.
The secret U.S. atomic bomb project had not yet tested a weapon, and it was estimated that an amphibious attack against Japan could cost hundreds of thousands of American lives.
After being assured of an occupation zone in Korea, and possession of Sakhalin Island and other territories historically disputed between Russia and Japan, Stalin agreed to enter the Pacific War within two to three months of Germany’s surrender.
So Frank Roosevelt and Joe Stalin were divvying up the world and its peoples as if they were trinkets.
So yes, Chas Cornweller, there has been a clear division between North and South Korea ever since the surrendering of Japan August 15, 1945.
After Frank Roosevelt agreed to give part of Korea to Joe Stalin, the Soviets decided to move into Korea from the north which made the US under Democrat Harry S. “The Buck Stops Here” Truman fearful of the spread of communism.
Since the Soviets occupied the northern part of the country, Harry S. wanted to create a US occupation zone, so the US government officials drew an evenly divided line between north and south while still leaving Seoul under US control.
The Soviet Union and the US agreed to divide Korea at this drawn line, more commonly known as the 38th parallel.
Late in 1945, Allied foreign ministers met up at a conference in Moscow to set up a trusteeship that lasted five years, to have Korea contain a provisional government so the country would be able to become independent.
Now, there is a key statement or point that in your Nijinsky style you have danced right around, dear friend Chas Cornweller – the fact that Korea was supposed to be independent quite some time ago, like before you were born.
But obviously, that never happened, and my series of questions to you had to do with why that was.
A lot of it goes back to the charges by the Republicans that the Democrats were soft on Communism, which had the Democrats always on the defensive, especially when the full text of the Yalta agreements were released in the years following World War II.
Many criticized Roosevelt and Churchill for delivering (read: GIVING AWAY) Eastern Europe and North Korea into communist domination by conceding too much to Stalin at Yalta.
As we older people know and remember, being institutional memory in here, the Soviets never allowed free elections in postwar Eastern Europe, and communist North Korea was sharply divided from its southern neighbor.
Because of the atomic bomb, Soviet assistance was not needed to defeat the Japanese.
Without the Soviet invasion of the Japanese Empire in the last days of World War II, North Korea and various other Japanese-held territories that fell under Soviet control undoubtedly would have come under the sway of the United States.
At Yalta, however, Roosevelt had no guarantee that the atomic bomb would work, and so he sought Soviet assistance in what was predicted to be the costly task of subduing Japan.
Stalin, more willing than Roosevelt to sacrifice troops in the hope of territorial gains, happily accommodated his American ally, and by the end of the war had considerably increased Soviet influence in East Asia.
And the rest, as the wags say, is history.
Thanks for sharing it with us to educate us, dear friend Chas Cornweller.
It is appreciated.
Mike Kuzma, weren’t you already outed as a Russian troll? Are you still playing with matches around Mommy’s curtains?