Gaslight, a 1944 Movie or Donald Trump’s Legacy?

[According to Prevention.com,] It’s a sign that someone is gaslighting you if they are:

• Constantly minimizing or invalidating your feelings
• Avoiding taking responsibility for their actions
• Lying
• Regularly recalling events differently than you
• Using words like paranoid, overreactive, dramatic, overly sensitive, or crazy
• Experiencing self-doubt
• Acting reactively or intensely where it’s unwarranted

"The mob violence is being stomped out. The criminals responsible will be swiftly brought to justice, and the Trump administration's operations to arrest illegal aliens are continuing unabated." 

Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary

Fox News Correspondent, Gillian Turner on June 12th speaking with Donald Trump:

TURNER: Mr. President, if this turns into another summer of unrest, what are you prepared to do, sir?

TRUMP: About what?

TURNER: If this turns– well, the protests have spread now to 16 cities across the U.S. If this turns–

TRUMP: Well, that’s what you’re saying. Do I believe you? I don’t think so.

TURNER: Well, I got that from the Fox News brain room.

TRUMP: I can tell you, what we have, what we have a situation in Los Angeles that was caused by gross incompetence. They didn’t have the police to handle it.

"Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace…This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!"

Trump on Truth Social, June 12th

As the anti-ICE protestors first gathered near Los Angeles’ downtown, where government buildings are focused, the “usual suspects,” a small coterie of vandals and arsonists, did what they always do, sometimes after a local sports team wins a national championship. They tag buildings and burn a few cars. The deserve the prison time they will probably get after they are tried and convicted (yes, “due process”), but they are at best fewer than 1% mixed in with those deeply offended at Trump’s immigration policies against a city, formerly a part of Mexico, that is 35% Hispanic with a culture that permeates Southern California.

My cousin, living in Virginia, sent me a panicked email asking if my wife and I were OK as LA was burning and erupting in riots. “Huh?” I asked. “Riots? Here? Major fires? Not happening here!” I responded. Trump assured the nation that but for his illegal (a federal judge’s determination) call-up and deployment of California National Guard, Los Angeles would have burned to the ground. My lawyer and accounting friends, with offices downtown, told me that there was some traffic disruption, but they did not feel threatened and that they could access their office buildings without fear of being incinerated by local “terrorists and paid activists.”

In a city (without counting the little cities around us) of 3.8 million people, that our police and sheriffs were purportedly unable to contain the “violence perpetrated” – by a thousand or slightly more Angelenos standing up for their heritage … and the immigrants that form a labor backbone of this city – is absurd. But gaslighting requires lies… assisted by some clever editing that makes little moments HUGE. Oh, and the only picture above that depicts truth is that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s real hand (the one in the blue plaid shirt), now back in US from that Salvadoran prison.

Even as Trump was beginning to realize that there soon would be no food on grocery store shelves if the undocumented farmworkers were pulled from the fields, Immigration Tsar Tom Homan and White House Senior Advisor Stephen “Rasputin” Miller, cheered on by Trump’s now-personal lawyer AG Pamela Bondi, were pledging to deport all “15 million illegal aliens” in the United States (probably more like 11 million) without regard to their innocence of value to the country. Meanwhile, combat-trained Marines made their way to “violence torn” Los Angeles, an illegal use of the military under the Posse Comitatus Act.

For our military sworn to uphold the Constitution, Trump’s recent visit to one of the Army’s premiere training facilities and home to a number of operational divisions shattered any pretense of military neutrality. “Instead, what unfolded Tuesday [6/9] at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, bore little resemblance to the customary visit from a president and defense secretary. There, President Donald Trump unleashed a speech laced with partisan invective, goading jeers from a crowd of soldiers positioned behind his podium -- blurring the long-standing and sacrosanct line between the military and partisan politics.

“As Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom -- amid the president's controversial move to deploy the National Guard and Marines against protesters in Los Angeles -- as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump's diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship…

“For this story, Military.com reached out to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's office as well as the Army and the 82nd Airborne Division directly with a series of questions that ranged from the optics of the event to social media posts showing the sale of Trump campaign merchandise on the base, to the apparent violation of Pentagon policies on political activity in uniform.

“Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance… One unit-level message bluntly saying: ‘No fat soldiers.’… ‘If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,’ another note to troops said.” Military.com, June 12th.

Trump is a showman with a dangerous agenda. He takes credit for fixing the damage “only he can fix.” That HE caused! That tariff/trade negotiation with China, for example, a struggle of Herculean proportions according to Trump, seems to be nothing more than a return to the same tariff structure that existed before Trump’s “liberation day.” The UK deal has yet to be fleshed out. Still, the Republicans in Congress are struggling with that Big Beautiful Bill that reduces taxes mostly for the richest in the nation, but that seriously increases our deficit and requires cutting Medicaid, Medicare and maybe even Social Security.

And all that without referencing a certain expensive birthday parade with enough personnel and military hardware to invade and conquer most countries on Earth. Army’s 250th? No, the main theme is Trump, Trump and more Trump. “No Kings” protests all over the country showed a vastly more accurate reflection of who we are. I used to read that democracy was a fragile experiment here in the United States… one that requires constant support and protection. I used to believe that view was a tad pessimistic and unlikely. I do not feel that way anymore.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am watching the unraveling of everything I hold dear in this country by an angry, destructive minority and a lackadaisical majority that still believes that it can’t happen here as it is in fact happening here.