Or keeping power and control

This won’t take long. The whole point here is just to expose it, because gaslighting only works if we fail to recognize it. For people like me, who are watching our candidate (Sanders) being vigorously undermined by party hacks and corporate sycophants, it may be obvious as a ruby in a pug’s ass; but unfortunately, gaslighting sometimes works on those who are unfamiliar with it. That’s why it’s part of the armamentarium of abusive spouses everywhere.

When DCCC Democrats tell us that criticizing other Democratic candidates is creating disunity, that it’s divisive. It’s a talking point that is being drilled into establishment partisans, as well the more credulous Democrats who listen to these party mavens. So if we point out that Kamala Harris’s actual prosecutorial record is damning, we are being divisive. If we point out that Joe Biden is no friend to women or black people, based on his record, or that he takes mad money from corporate and financial interests, we are being divisive. If we note that Pete Buttigieg supported gentrification and attended meetings with the Center for American Progress (which actively and openly seeks to destroy the Sanders candidacy) . . . we are being divisive.

In other words, as long as WE (the establishment) employ millions of dollars and countless hours in the effort to torpedo the Sanders candidacy, Sanders supporters are to remain silent . . . in the interest of party unity. Anyone who’s seen this “flip” in personal relationships, knows how it goes. I hit you in the name of our marriage, but if you hit back, or even complain, you are the dis-unifier, the splitter, the divisive one. It’s just your (pick one) inexperience, maturity, or sanity that’s telling you otherwise.

The background is equally deceptive. That background includes a faulty analysis based on a lost past, where Democrats win by moving to the center after the Primaries. Folks, that shit is over. The center is disappearing, fast. And the belief (or stated belief, because behind closed doors this is a far more strategic and cynical discussion) that the Republicans can use our own arguments against possible future candidates is idiotic. The left critique of the center is one hundred percent incompatible with Republican convictions. I have a life-sized picture of Republicans going after Buttigieg for his unrepentant Zionism or his maltreatment as a mayor of Black and Latin@ citizens.

I want to suggest an easy antidote in online communications. Every single time you see this “divisive” crap, respond with “Gaslit!.” You can link this screed if you like.