Opinion

It's gone mainstream in recent years, but the word "gaslighting" used to be an esoteric term from the world of psychology and domestic abuse counseling. The word refers to the 1944 film "Gaslight," in which Ingrid Bergman plays a woman whose husband tries to drive her insane by hiding her belongings and otherwise manipulating her environment, and telling her that the changes she perceives are all in her head. Experts in domestic violence developed the term to describe the way that abusers in real life try to manipulate victims. The gaslighter works by denying reality, often when the facts are plain as day, with such conviction and repetition that the victim starts to question themselves and the evidence of their own senses.

Many Americans who were children sometime between the 1950s and the 1980s no doubt remember Game of the States. It was (and evidently still is) a simpleminded catch-and-carry board game through which multiple generations learned vague, generic facts about the 50 states. That game is probably the reason I know all 50 state capitals to this day. Massachusetts and Georgia are tough because the answers are too obvious; South Carolina and West Virginia are tough because the answers seem almost intentionally confusing.

Amid growing criticism from progressives and increased anxiety among the nation's working families, small business owners and local and state governments that economic relief from the coronavirus pandemic will come too late and be too little, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday told television viewers to "just calm down" when asked if she had erred in her legislative strategy with the Trump White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

While the mainstream media has been quick to situate the deadly recent events that unfolded in Nova Scotia within the context of Canadian mass murders, no one seems to be drawing attention to the most prominent link connecting Canadian mass killings: all of the accused perpetrators have been men, and most of them have been white.

President Donald Trump claimed on Sunday that members of the news media are getting "Noble Prizes" for investigating his administration.

As the Coronavirus rages through communities across the world, nationalist voices are redoubling their critiques of "globalism." But it would be utterly naïve to imagine that a post–COVID-19 world will retreat to a condition with almost no international trade, business travel, global tourism, or migrations from poor or imperiled nations. We cannot solve the threat of more global pandemics by shutting borders lest we are willing to halve the world economy.

My mom contracted polio when she was 14. She survived and learned to walk again, but my life was deeply affected by that virus. Today, as our larger society attempts to self-distance and self-isolate, my family has texted about the polio quarantine my mom was put under: how my grandma fearfully checked my aunt's temperature every night because she shared a bedroom with my mom; how they had to put a sign on the front door of the house that read "quarantine" so that no one would visit.Growing up with a polio survivor, I learned lessons about epidemics, sickness, disability, and inequality that have forever shaped my world. From a young age, I saw that all of us should be valued for our intrinsic worth as human beings; that there is no line between the supposedly deserving and the undeserving; that we should be loved for who we are, not what we do or how much money we have. My mom modeled for me what's possible when those most impacted by inequality and injustice dedicate their lives to protecting others from what hurts us all. She taught me that the dividing line between sickness and wellbeing loses its meaning in a society that doesn't care for everyone.Here's the simple truth of twenty-first-century America: all of us live in a time and in an economic system that values our lives relative to our ability to produce profits for the rich or in the context of the wealth we possess. Our wellness is measured by our efficiency and — a particular lesson in the age of the coronavirus — our sickness, when considered at all, is seen as an indication of individual limitations or moral failures, rather than as a symptom of a sick society.

Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.

West Point Military Academy, America’s oldest military academy, changed its graduation this year because of the coronavirus epidemic. Instead of an in-person event, the academy decided to have a virtual commencement with Vice President Mike Pence as its speaker.

As of Friday, the coronavirus pandemic has killed at least 50,000 people in the United States. That number is likely to be an undercount, and it's possible we will never have a true reckoning.

Deprived of his daily press conferences where he battled with reporters for asking him tough questions, Donald Trump has retreated once again to his Twitter feed to boast and brag and attack.

If you listen to Donald Trump, before him there was nothing.