Gaslighting Squared

The frightening (in appearance and deed) NY governor Kathy Hochul has a novel explanation for her and her fellow Democrats’ unexpected political peril: Republicans are “master manipulators” who “have this conspiracy going all across America to try and convince people that in Democratic states they’re not as safe.” (Warning! Article contains a photo of Hochul! It did appear on Halloween, but still.)

In other words, Republicans are gaslighting Americans to believe–against the evidence of their own eyes–that crime has spiked in the US.

I have to say the Republicans, especially in places like New York, have given no evidence that they are in fact “master manipulators.” The last Republican governor of the Empire State left office 15 years ago. The last Republican senator departed 23 years ago. Eight out of 27 members of the NY Congressional delegation are Republican. Biden won 61 percent of the vote in 2020: Hillary won 59 percent in 2016.

Doesn’t sound like mastery to me!

The New York media–including the national media based there–are reliably left/Democrat. There is only one non-Democrat major media outlet in the state (the NY Post). So how are the Republicans convincing people that they aren’t safe?

In fact, the last major Republican figure in the state–Rudy Giuliani–won because of the last crime epidemic in New York. He was popular because he was instrumental in making New York relatively safe, in comparison with other cities, and in contrast with its recent history.

Kathy Hochul is thus engaged in gaslighting about gaslighting. In her desperation and her palpable panic that New Yorkers will indeed vote with the evidence before their eyes of New York’s crime relapse the only way that she can think of responding is to tell them is that it’s all in their heads, and that it was planted there by the Republicans. The same Republicans that have been political roadkill in New York–especially New York city–for decades.

It’s self-evidently absurd. And it’s hard to think of a more telling admission of the political bankruptcy of the Democratic Party, especially on the issue of crime .