Miriam Webster Got It Right

Word of the Year - "Gaslighting"

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” - Rudyard Kipling

NYC | Bushwick Collective | on iPhone

I’ve had nothing and no words lately other than what feels like a circle of madness exploding in my head. The places I find refuge are in my faith, on a walk, being with my pets, listening to classical music, gardening and during nana time. I am deeply aware of these blessings and do not take the latter for granted. I watch every step and move I make knowing I too am capable of being overwhelmed by the worldly tribe that devours, cancels and forces the hand to buy here.

Outside of my refuge everything I hear and see feels exactly like the definition of gaslighting: “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.”

This is nothing new under the sun. The strength, discernment and willingness to tell the truth is the epitome of pure living. It is, I’ve concluded.. worth dying for.

As I search for stories that commit my mind to human integrity and fortitude, I realize in my own tired body that the average human simply struggles to get out of bed in the morning and forge out a living. The average human just wants to be happy, loved and secure and they want to die that way.

From the self-serving lying-with-ease leadership, loud elitists, world genocidal dictatorships, false prophets and preachers, snake-oil salesmen, illegal drug and arms dealers, hustlers and the shock and awe worship of Satan, nothing will change and nothing, once again, is new under the sun, in the history of civilization. It is of the world and yet I know the world is also full of so much goodness. We need to see and feel more of it.

For the young to be able to think for themselves it takes a strong selfless parent or adult to allow them to act on truth, independently, in an age appropriate timeframe. Truth exists to set us free and the truth will always be evident in our gut of what is right and wrong. We must never forget the onset of Hitler’s reign in Poland and how he and his horrific anti-semitic movement were able to convince youth to attack Jewish people they saw on the streets, tear their clothes off and beat them. Adults convinced youth that Jews were bad and set-up laws to enforce this fear. America, at the helm of liberation, was no stranger to this behavior at the same time. Children are not inherently racist and hateful unless an adult, who knows better, strives to convince them otherwise.

Movements can make progress for the good, but many movements can be dangerous, confusing and incredibly deceiving.. and it’s happening again.

Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer; Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements,” states: “When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.” We were definitely locked down with a front row seat.

On the surface.. life can “feel good” but in the dirt of the arena, lies truths that most of us don’t want to hear, for fear that we won’t fit in or feel good about our decisions, often made under the pressure of some type of influence, agenda or movement.

For example, the other day my husband and I were talking about how electric cars are really made. #1. It feels good, if you have the money, to buy one. Most people don’t. #2. The average electric car owner has to have a place to plug it in, requiring more money to wire-in the proper electricity station, rendering more electricity. He knows. He’s been hired to install these. #3. The average owner of an electric car has at least one other gas-guzzling car and still flies on gas guzzling airplanes (often private aircraft) but “it feels good” to own one. #4. The average electric car owner does not want to know how that car is made because if they did they would be forced to re-think that purchase. Re-think feeling good.

Not one electric car is built without the indebted slave labor of women and children in countries we don’t spend time thinking about. There are children mining for cobalt, in the Congo, one of the world’s most sought-after minerals. This is a key ingredient in the batteries that power most electric vehicles. Children hired by a Chinese mining company that owns it.

Much of the clothing we wear, the phones we use and many other things are made by modern day slaves. This is not new.

We spend sooooo much time in America listening to how incredibly racist it is, and how women have no rights while we literally buy products, we can’t live without, from the stained and worn hands of people and children of “color” in countries that have no human rights at all. It’s much easier to apply for a green deal, go down to the car lot and sign away never thinking about the human beings working for our consumption here in America.

If we cared, if I cared - we’d all be living like the Amish and lately I’ve been extremely upset with them after finding out they discard their working horses, like garbage, after years of service. But hey? who am I to criticize? Am I helping to prevent these horses from going to slaughter? where their throats will be slit after riding on a truck for miles to the Mexico border with no food or water, suffering a slow death and broken bones from being crushed in tight trailers? or being shot in the head after traveling to Canada half dead? and don’t start me on human trafficking (which is actually more important?) A little money later to a GoFundMe made me feel good for a minute. But what can I do? Human and animal disregard and suffering, in America, is a never-ending horrific act on a daily basis.

I will still keep donating because I genuinely care and collectively I do believe in causes that are inherently good. I’d like to help shut down the last horse slaughter houses in America, continue to believe in animal rescue and donate to causes that help the homeless and disadvantaged, but I will never save that money for an electric car.

Since the pandemic more than 57 million pounds of PPE and other COVID-related plastic waste have polluted the oceans threatening marine and aquatic life leaving one French ecologist to warn “soon there will be more masks than jellyfish.” This is a massive environmental disaster.

As long as there is plenty of money there is plenty of consumption and as long as there is consumption there is waste contaminating our oceans, clogging our drains and causing flooding. In poor nations, where much of the waste ends up, there is no proper waste management to begin with.. leading to the transmission of diseases, which can cause respiratory infections, and harm animals and wildlife. As long as the rich exist they are a huge force behind this “global trash dump.” The extreme disparity gap between rich and poor lands on the shoulders of the middle, who also waste en masse, but don’t complain as much because they are too busy keeping up with bills and taxes. Owning an electric car will not change this disparity. Nor the lectures and gaslighting from the wealthiest among us. I’m uncertain how “hypocrisy” wasn’t a close second to the word of the year. We are all hypocrites in some form. Often unknowingly, unless we think deeply about it.

Where there is poverty there will be politicians. They come to the cities and encampments for “news ops.” Pounding their fists, with rolled up sleeves, like the common man. Then they leave in their fancy cars, a trail of gaslighting behind them. They feel good doing this and nothing is resolved. They are gaslighting desperate people with temporary hope.

Lately, I’ve asked myself, what will happen to all the homeless in Los Angeles, as the city prepares for the 2028 Olympics? There are 65k homeless on our streets now. People living and dying from all walks of life, races and sexes. They will be loaded up on buses with trash bags full of their worldly possessions, like the foster child arriving on a doorstep, and they will magically, temporarily disappear.

Our tax payer dollars fund this madness and will further fund the building of fancy new Olympic facilities, while fixing up the rest.

Here in California, we’re almost done building and funding our “second” multi-billion dollar train that we hope will work this time rather than become a train track memorial for miles as we drive north. I’m sure this is part of the overall cosmopolitan plan for 2028.

Tickets will go on sale, word class athletes, fans and tourists from all over the world will come to L.A. The Mayor will cut ribbons and talk about her beautiful city and the homeless will occupy another city in the desert. Maybe we could provide Jumbotron screens?

After the games are over, I suggest these facilities be used for homeless shelters, mental health hospitals and drug rehabs. A real, caring, triaging of sorts. The wait will be long, the priorities and urgency backwards, but I digress. This more than likely will not happen.

Look at the World Cup in Qatar recently. Many of the same people who deeply lectured us about what we should and should not do with our lives recently, lavishly flew there to enjoy facilities built by slaves. Many of these underpaid slaves died in doing so.

Recently, in Dubai, Beyonce’, clad in top international designer costumes, was paid 25 million to perform at the new “Atlantis, The Royal,” a $1.4 billion luxury hotel and residential project that hosted the grand finale event and her first live performance in 4 years. The hotel’s “grand reveal,” whose 1,500 guests included her husband, Jay-Z, model Kendall Jenner, and a host of other influencers, socialites and royals stayed in suites costing up to $100,000/a night. Beyonce’s projected beliefs, many of the guest’s beliefs and even her song lyrics are in complete conflict with the beliefs of the UAE toward the LGBTQ community. It is illegal to be gay in the UAE. Many who are caught are jailed. But what a gig right? There she was at the Grammy Awards, this week, hubby by her side, adored by a diverse community that she really doesn’t care about if you do the math. What a sell-out.

We are a nation lost in screens of mass confusion, lies, propaganda for power, self-interest for profit and influence, feel-good soap boxes and what the meaning of liberty is. We care more about what others are doing than what we are doing ourselves or what is true.

Why would the word “gaslighting” be chosen by the Miriam Webster Dictionary? People are feeling it. They’ve followed too many trails that have lead them over cliffs and they are owning their minds.

The Jewish people fought back against the Nazis in WW2 by keeping their minds, truths and dreams alive to the end because it was the only thing that could not be taken from them as they died or barely survived.

No price or pain was too high for Him as well.. to see to it that we kept the privilege.

Sometimes you have to climb out from under your rock and scream from a mountaintop. I doubt I am alone. It’s been hard to hide from the world no matter how much I try. I believe our nation will continue to face hard times and hard truths for the next several years and it will be humbling. I hope for “a better word” for next year! As for my politics - I am not a registered member of either party, Right or Left.