EPA

By Lisa Van Dusen

October 15, 2024

While it may not necessarily seem like it now, with all the usual stylings of narrative warfare and performative propaganda predictably besieging the homestretch of this US presidential campaign and leaving us hankering for the days when politics made sense, the current (ironic hyperlink alert) war on democracy does have its advantages over previous wars on democracy.

For starters, a lack of mortal human casualties, as opposed to the reputational, financial, political, human rights, institutional and geopolitical casualties that have piled up over years of (mostly) non-kinetic covert warfare to make way for a status quo that better serves the purposes of a post-democracy world order. In this war, you’re more likely to be disenfranchised than disembodied, more likely to be virtually than corporeally hacked (especially if you’re deemed a high-value target or pesky human obstruction to a tentpole outcome).

In this war on democracy, there is no Winston Churchill fighting them on the beaches and the landing grounds. Generally speaking, this war is not being waged on such attributable, accountable battlefields. “We will fight them in the hard drives!! We will fight them in the algorithms!!” doesn’t have quite the same rousing ring to it.

In this war, there are no Andrews Sisters gamely boosting morale with alliterative earworms about Boogie Woogie Bugle Boys and Chattanooga Choo Choos. In this war, there is no Vera Lynn crooning that we’ll meet again and, let’s face it, in a world of relationships defined by technology, chances are we never actually met the first time. There are no Jimi Hendrix or Buffalo Springfield rebellion anthems, no Flanders Fields paeans to battlefield bravery (except perhaps in Ukrainian). There is no Casablanca to dramatize the impact on human lives of pathocratic tyranny and ambient situational ethics. In other words, there is nothing romantic about this war.

This war was born at the confluence of two dawns – of this millennium and of the fourth industrial revolution – based on the Outlier/Black Swan combination of geopolitical, political and intelligence motive and opportunity ignited by that confluence. Its asymmetrical parties of the first and second parts (as opposed to co-belligerents, since this is more of a heist than a conflict), are, on one side, the undeclared interests madly speeding post-democracy outcomes lubricated by vast quantities of truth-obfuscating/reality-hijacking BS and, on the other, democracy and, by extension, humanity. Which makes it not a clash of values that easily lends itself to immortalization in poetry or song. What rhymes with “cluster***k”? Nothing. Trust me, I’ve looked (and, no, RhymeZone, “rubber duck” is not close).

Which brings us to today’s hottest front in this war on democracy, and it is not, as it happens, Kursk, Gaza, Khartoum, Haifa or Beirut, but the narrative battlefield of America’s presidential election.

When Trump says he’ll use the military to handle ‘the enemy within’ if he’s reinstalled in the Oval Office, he is – in the manner of an insult comic whose craziest bits are the true stuff – not gaslighting you.

This is often described as the most crucial presidential race since the Civil War, which accurately conveys its status as a (ironic hyperlink alert) wartime election. The most obvious indication that – as so many observers have noted – this is neither a conventional war nor a normal campaign, is the GOP nominee.

That a twice-impeached, convicted-felon, one-man psychological-warfare PEZ dispenser whose democracy degrading record ranges from the concocted “birtherism” that hounded Barack Obama’s presidency to his starring role in a failed, deadly coup attempt, is a candidate for the presidency of the world’s most powerful democracy – a job from which he has ardently disqualified himself in any sane context based on the last time he held it and everything he’s done since – indicates that something has already gone seriously amiss with American democracy.

And while so many other institutions and pillars of democracy that might have supplied the checks and balances to pre-empt a disastrous, systemically destructive autocratic outcome in November have been compromised beyond public trust and disbelief recently, at least (ironic hyperlink alert) we can count on the inviolable sanctity of public opinion polling to save America and the world from an otherwise preposterous result rationalized by the dubious plausibility of pre-calibrated expectations.

Meanwhile, it may be difficult for observers to sift through the daily deluge of disinformation, misinformation and gobsmacking numbers diverting the election discourse from truly important questions, including the one involving what kind of country America will be after November 5th. How can anyone cover an election campaign much less make a choice between two candidates when one lies incessantly and relentlessly about everything (which, alone, would normally have disqualified him from the office and should have him languishing at 17% but, again, this is not a normal election)?

Many observers – including Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz – have used the term “gaslighting” to describe this phenomenon. So, based on my epic, involuntary expertise in the operational shenanigans of anti-democracy narrative warfare dating back to Impeachment Classic-era Washington (long story), herewith a Gaslighting-to-English primer while we all eagerly anticipate the day when AI can do this job for us.

(Sadly, that day will not likely come this week based on my extensive research of AI translation tools, which do not yet include a handy Gaslighting-to-English app. Indeed, the French-to-English AI translation tool Wordvice AI translates the classic French phrase câline de bine (Québécois for “holy ***k!!) as “cuddle of goodness” which is not only unhelpful to tourists but is precisely the kind of misinformation that can produce avoidable loss of life).

The point is, the only gaslighting translation trick you really need to know is that, when Donald Trump calls Kamala Harris an imbecile, what he’s really saying is “I’m gaslighting you”. And when Donald Trump says that immigrants are eating house pets, what he’s really saying is “I’m gaslighting you”. This could go on for many, many more examples than I’m inclined to translate now that I’ve shared my big decoding secret. But for what it’s worth, when Donald Trump says he’ll use the military to handle “the enemy within” if he’s reinstalled in the Oval Office, he is – in the manner of an insult comic whose craziest bits are the true stuff – not gaslighting you.

In a presidential election campaign seemingly careening toward an outcome that frames American voters as the masochistic architects of their own misfortune, Donald Trump is not a candidate, he’s a propaganda tool. And a means to an end for a much bigger problem.

Policy Magazine Editor and Publisher Lisa Van Dusen has served as a senior writer at Maclean’s, Washington columnist for the Ottawa Citizen and Sun Media, international writer for Peter Jennings at ABC News and an editor at AP National in New York and UPI in Washington.