"'Gaslighting' & Other Important Economic Principles"
By Addison Wiggin
“If you're yelling you're the one who's lost control of the conversation.”
- Taylor Swift
"In November of 2022, roughly eleven months ago, Merriam-Webster named “Gaslighting” its word of the year. Gaslighting historically referred to extreme psychological manipulation to commit an individual to a psychiatric institution or cause mental illness with the intent to brainwash. The term is derived from a 1944 film titled, interestingly enough, “Gaslight.” The plot, on Wikipedia: “…A nefarious man attempts to trick his new wife into thinking she’s losing her mind, in part by telling her that the gaslights in their home, which dim when he’s in the attic doing dastardly deeds, are not fading at all.”
Gaslighting came to colloquial fame in 2017 when a writer for CNN opined President Donald Trump was “‘gaslighting’ all of us.” Later, in 2021, it was used, also by CNN, to describe Trump’s effort to downplay the events leading up to the January 6 “insurrection.” Somehow from there it became part of teenage online culture and started being used everywhere to indicate when someone persistently lies to you to intentionally change your perception of reality.
My kids might think it’s the other way around, and that their buzzword generation actually came up with the term. Alas, I think they are gaslighting us, too. Further, Taylor Swift released a short film earlier this year called “All too well” demonstrating the mental abuse gaslighting inflicts in a domestic relationship. The National Domestic Violence Hotline describes “gaslighting” as “a legitimate and extremely effective form of emotional abuse.” Swift did for the new hip term what her appearances have recently done for NFL ratings since she started showing up at Kansas City Chiefs games.
In 2023 alone, searches for the word “gaslighting” on the Merriam-Webster site surged 1740%. Now we’re stuck with it. We admit it took us a while, even as its popularity grew, to understand what the “gaslight” meant. Now, we think we get it.
You’ll recall yesterday, we had been reading Marc Faber’s "Gloom Boom & Doom Report" where he methodically outlined the many ways in which the perceived “strength” in the US economy is a statistical mirage. Doing some follow-up research we ran across these back-to-back headlines published in Newsweek a week apart about a month ago:
"‘Bidenomics Is Working,’ Says Joe Biden" (Newsweek 8/28/23)
"‘Bidenomics’ Gaslighting Reveals POTUS’s Impotence in Lead-Up to 2024" (Newsweek 9/8/23)
We felt obligated to dig in and illustrate the vernacular use of the word “gaslight”. Really… how could we not? In a nutshell, Biden set out in July and August to make the case that his economic policies - whom the White House proudly calls ‘Bidenomics’ - are successfully building the post pandemic economy back better from “the middle out and the bottom up.”
In his speeches Biden cleverly contrasts his plan to his opposition who promise to make America great again from the “top down”… Might we call it a repackaged version of Reagan’s trickle-down economics?
Biden’s take suggests his policies are working. The president gave several speeches talking up the successes of his economic policy. But then had to pivot to ransacking his “predecessor” instead. Polls, in fact, reflected some unhappy news for the economic team at 16 Pennsylvania Ave: Voters ain’t buying it.
“There is just one glaring problem [with Bidenomics],” Josh Hammer writes in the second Newsweek piece from above. “It’s all a lie. Biden can try to gaslight the American people and retcon the past few years to his heart’s content, but the evidence is simply overwhelming. The ruse will not work.” The emphasis is our own. According to a CBS poll published in mid-August, “Two-thirds of Americans describe the economy as ‘bad’, while 70% say their paychecks aren’t keeping up with rising prices.”
And you’ll recall we’ve noticed here in the Missive the number of people living “paycheck to paycheck” has been rising at an alarming pace since 2021.
Which brings us back to the “statistical mirage” Dr. Faber dug into for his latest issue. Faber cites Alia Dudum writing at LendingClub: "In July 2023, 61% of U.S. consumers live paycheck to paycheck, unchanged from June 2023, but 2 percentage points higher than July 2022. Generally, more consumers of all income brackets reported living paycheck to paycheck in July 2023 than last year. Now, 78% of consumers earning less than $50,000 a year and 65% of those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 were living paycheck to paycheck in July, both up from a year ago. Of those earning $100,000 or more, only 44% reported living paycheck to paycheck." “These statistics clearly indicate that lower income recipients,” Faber comments, “are hurting more from rising consumer price inflation than higher wage earners.”
A September 12, 2023 essay by Michael Snyder, whom we’ve quoted in these pages on occasion, was titled “The Middle Class Is Increasingly Becoming ‘The Impoverished Class’, and the Poor Are Increasingly Being Pushed Into the Streets.” Snyder wrote last month:
"When the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system during the pandemic, most Americans didn’t realize what that would do to them. That money certainly made the wealthy a whole lot wealthier, but it also dramatically increased the cost of living for the rest of us. So now inflation has been rising much faster than paychecks have, and the cost of living has become exceedingly oppressive. In fact, last year we witnessed the largest decline in real median household income in more than a decade …
The official tally is in and it is brutal: Americans suffered the biggest drop in household income in 2022 in a dozen years. Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022, a drop of 2.3 percent from the prior year, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. This is the biggest drop in household income since 2010, when the household income fell 2.6 percent. That means it is worse than the pandemic decline of 2.2 percent. It is the fourth worst year in records going back to 1985."
Agreeing, and then trying to put the middle class’ current bout with inflation and hardship in a historical context, the economic historian Niall Ferguson wrote in an August 13, Bloomberg opinion piece: "This decade will not be identical to the 1970s. Nor will it replicate the experience of the 1920s or the 1940s. But the idea that we can recover from the fiscal and monetary excesses of the past three years without economic pain - at a time of political polarization and geopolitical conflict - seems historically implausible." Unless, that is, you still believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy - and Goldilocks. Amen.
We haven’t seen any presidential economic speeches recorded since those early ones in September. So it goes..."
P.P.S. “Retcon” is another word Josh Hammer forced me to look up. According to the Oxford English Dictionary a ‘retcon’ is used by film and tv writers to introduce “a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events, and to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an inconsistency.”
P.P.S. Think you’re being gaslit? Here are some helpful phrases to shut down a gaslighting in any situation (even a political one):
“We remember things differently.”
“If you continue to speak to me like this I’m not engaging.”
“I hear you and that isn’t my experience.”
“I am walking away from this conversation.”
“I am not interested in debating what happened with you.”
*** Of course, we nicked these suggestions from a mental health site on the Internet. If you’re having a serious problem with someone else you suspect is trying to drive you crazy, seek professional help."
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