Did you see that flicker? Gaslighting is driving me crazy

You know sometimes things often get a wee bit more complicated than seems necessary.

But hey, what do I know? I’m with Socrates on that one — "The only thing I know is I know nothing … ."

For instance, my daughter Amy has been trying to convince me for years that Motrin and ibuprofen are the very same thing.

And my response always is, "If it is the same thing, why are they spelled differently?" She pauses and says, "You’re hopeless." I smile at her amusedly.

It’s almost like me going to one of those big restaurants in New York City and dining on a few delectable escargots while thinking I’m sure glad they don’t serve snails at this joint.

The other day, I was watching the news and someone asked if the president ever went to the southern border. The response was "Of course he has," but then a fact-checker discovered he’s only driven through an area that hugged the border. Once. In 2008.

While in Laredo once, I went to the border and could almost throw a rock into the Rio Grande River. Perhaps the reporter should have asked if the president could throw a rock into the Rio Grande.

I guess maybe if you’ve never been to the southern border, one can’t comprehend why so many in the country seem a bit concerned with immigration.

There appears little logic assigned to the remarks of the president and vice president in regard to immigration these days. They seem to be gaslighting us.

I bet President Xi of China has been to his border, and he doesn’t even have an immigration problem.

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Some people say the Democrats are a looney bunch, while others say the Republicans can’t be any less looney.

How do you fix a flat tire, anyway. You just plug the hole, don’t you?

Some folks say there is a day of reckoning coming for those credit card users too that are maxed out. So now I’m beginning to worry about our country’s $31 trillion dollar debt.

Should our political friends be worried a speck too? I’m beginning to wonder if any of them actually knows how to balance a check book, let alone manage a nation’s budget.

Dumb me! politicians are not taught to be concerned about deficits. Otherwise we wouldn’t have one.

And speaking of teaching, some folks are now objecting to that new curriculum of gender awareness being proposed in our halls of higher learning.

Heck, I’m hoping they will soon begin teaching courses like good manners; taking care of the sick and elderly; obeying the law; how to be kind just and honest; and why they should stay away from illegal and deadly drugs.

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But as a footnote, perhaps those gender awareness classes are a tad more interesting in subject matter than any study of biblical history.

Math, spelling, English, history and science can wait until next year, and we can worry later about the future careers of our kids. Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first, huh?

Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I put on the blueberry coffee and surf the channels of my TV in a dark room to get today’s news.

And perhaps that’s my first mistake — the dark room and dismal news. The coffee is always fine.

And finally, did you know that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary always announces a word of the year, and the word selected for 2022 is "gaslighting"?

“In this age of misinformation — of ‘fake news,’ conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes — gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time,” stated Merriam-Webster.

The dictionary’s official definition of gaslighting is, “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for one’s own advantage.”

Every time I check in on a presidential news briefing on TV by the press secretary chosen by the White House to update reporters, I am reminded of this word.

The Los Angeles Review of Books offers an even more refined definition: "driving a person to question their own sanity through deliberate psychological manipulation."

The word is associated with a 1944 movie, "Gaslight," starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer where a husband uses a deliberately manipulated flickering gaslight from lamps to make his wife doubt her own sanity.

I’m thinking more than a few presidents must have seen this movie and apply gaslighting as a routine political maneuver to us voters.

I sometimes wish those press secretaries and politicians would just stop gaslighting us so much.

Soon we’re all going to need some therapy and medication.

Did those lights just flicker again?

Darn!

What were you thinking?

Pete Waters is a Sharpsburg resident who writes for The Herald-Mail.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Presidents and press secretaries seem to specialize in gaslighting