National Nurses United

N O V E M B E R | D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 9 Gaslighting (gas-lighting) v. 1. a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted or spun 2. false information presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own perception and reality. Adj. gas-lit misled into accepting false information for the purpose of social control P erhaps you've noticed. Some people and institutions are working feverishly to convince us that real social change is not possible. Their target is Bernie Sanders and the growing army of his support- ers who are fed up with politics as usual and the grip of Wall Street and corporate America on our political, economic, and social system. The theme is to desperately convince us that Sanders can't win. They repeat it over and over, even though Sanders polls as well or better than Hillary Clinton against every leading Republican candidate. Behind this effort is an alarmed corporate old guard that still runs the Democratic Party establishment and their allies in the corpo- rate think tanks and the media, with a special nod to NBC/MSNBC, which is owned and operated by General Electric and Comcast. There's a term that has seeped into the lexi- con: gaslighting. It dates back to the 1938 play Gas Light and a 1944 movie, Angel Street, in which an abusive husband tries to convince his wife she is insane by distorting facts—in this case by dimming the gaslights—and denying reality (in this case the changed lighting) exists. Skip ahead 70 years and the concept has morphed from the realm of domestic abuse to the political arena. As a Kos columnist wrote a few years ago, gaslighting is "deliberate manip- ulation to create a false reality that is used to control the victim" or in this case, social control. In the political world, the goal is to consciously mislead those shut out of politi- cal and economic power, to make them distrust their ability to challenge those who hold that power, and demobilize them from acting to change an oppressive system. The goal is to blunt the Sanders' surge, and what it represents for the millions of people who want to reverse income inequality, guar- antee healthcare to everyone, break up the banks, carry out meaningful environmental justice and criminal justice reform, and all the other far-reaching planks of Sanders' campaign and the coalition supporting it. A thrust of their effort is to persuade Sanders supporters that he cannot win, in large part by using all the well-funded mechanisms in their control to retard wider exposure to the message of Sanders and his allies. This is the power elite form of turning down the gaslights. Here's a small part of how the manipulation works: The Democratic National Committee slashes the number of debates and also sched- ules debates on Saturday nights when far fewer people are watching, and pressures its elected officials and convention super delegates for an early endorsement in an effort to lock down a coronation of its preferred candidate. Meanwhile, the media, in particular NBC/MSNBC which has the biggest network audience of presumed Democratic Party voters, limits coverage of Sanders while its parent company, GE, also directs its Holly- wood subsidiaries, including Universal Studios (co-owned by Comcast) and its NBC shows, to line up its contracted celebrities to endorse the politics-as-usual campaign. Other national media, which also have a stake in the status quo, contribute as well. While Sanders has now drawn more than 400,000 people to his rallies—far more than any other candidate—he routinely receives less coverage than most of the other leading candidates. A report, circulated by Media Matters, found that Donald Trump has been given 234 minutes of news network coverage compared to 10 minutes for Sanders, even though, as the Nation's John Nichols notes, Sanders has broader support among Demo- cratic voters than Trump does among Republicans in the first voting state, Iowa. No, we're not crazy, they just want us to think we are. Nurses know Bernie Sanders can win, and they are holding house parties, joining rallies, participating in online actions, in greater num bers than ever, in support of the fundamental transformation the Sanders campaign represents. And then there's the majority of people who want to see a better world. Many of them are young voters, whom the polls have been unable to hide, are overwhelmingly for Sanders. In a fall speech to the DNC, Sanders put it bluntly: "The people of our country under- stand that given the collapse of the middle class and a grotesque level of income inequality, we do not need more establish- ment politics or establishment economics." "What we need," Sanders emphasized, "is a political movement that is prepared to take on the billionaire class, a movement that works for all of us and not just the corporate class and a handful of the wealthiest people in this country." It's a message, a campaign, and an upris- ing that has sent chills through those whose primarily loyalty is to the wealthy donors in mansions and corporate suites and the poli- cy architects on Wall Street. But it's a message that sure has resonated in the grassroots. And, all the efforts to turn out the lights will not stop the momentum for change. RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United. RoseAnn DeMoro Executive Director, National Nurses United Stop the Gaslighting Don't let the corporate establishment extinguish America's "Berning" for social change

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