All The Things I Lied About by Katie Bonna

Author:Katie Bonna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oberon Books

TRUMP: We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday.

KATIE: PS I’m in charge here, don’t forget it.

Trump is also very fond of playing the victim:

TRUMP: (Soundbites cut together.) And believe me, I and we inherited one big mess.

Tomorrow, they will say, ‘Donald Trump rants and raves at the press.’ I’m not ranting and raving. I’m just telling you.

When they try and demean me unfairly –

I’m really not a bad person, by the way. No, but the tone is such – I do get good ratings, you have to admit that – the tone is such hatred.

KATIE: Trump repeatedly insists that he is the one suffering here. Exactly as my dad did. Exactly as all gaslighters do.

A final and insidious example of Trump’s gaslighting are his claims that:

TRUMP: (Soundbites cut together.) The press has become so dishonest

The level of dishonesty is out of control.

Russia is fake news

It’s all fake news

Very fake news.

KATIE: Exposing ‘fake news’. Making the public question what they are reading and watching unfold around them, is tantamount to making them doubt their own reality.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you believe what he says or not. By creating conflict and confusion with every tweet he sends and every press conference he holds, Trump will eventually be able to by-pass the voice of any opposition and implant his own version of reality.

Trump, however, is just a symptom of what’s happening around us. Gaslighting is the beating heart of the post-truth world – in fact the two concepts are very closely aligned. The definition of post-truth is when appeals to emotion and personal belief usurp objective facts or, in other words, when a person is emotionally manipulated into questioning their reality. The very definition of gaslighting.

So, this is how we have arrived here, slap bang in the middle of post-truth. Realities have been manipulated for years by individuals ranging from my father to Donald Trump and now we are finally at breaking point.

The big question is, Warriors Of Truth, what can we do about it? Should we write petitions? Go on marches? Post long, angry status updates on facebook? We’re doing that and we need to keep doing that, but it won’t change the perpetrators. I can’t stand here and honestly say that we can stop Trump. What we can do, though, is understand him. If we can understand how gaslighters are able to do this and how we are all becoming victims of it, then we can rise – Warriors – against the post-truth world!

So, what makes people capable of gaslighting? What, psychologically, allows them to manipulate another person’s reality? We only need to take one look at the orange tinge of Trump’s skin to find our answer – self-deception.

Self-deception convinces the gaslighter that their behaviour is acceptable and, oftentimes, that it is for the good of the victim.

In fact, for every lie that we tell – however big or small it may be – we must also lie to ourselves.

Why? Because of Cognitive Dissonance.

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