New Agriculture head Rollins terminated 78 contracts for, among other things, “diversity dialogue workshops,” a “Brazilian forest and gender consultant” and a “women and forest carbon initiative mentorship program.” That added up to $132 million, or less than 0.06% of the USDA’s annual spending.
***
That the exercise of a free trade with all parts of the world, possessed by the American colonists, as of natural right, and which no law of their own had taken away or abridged, was next the object of unjust encroachment.--Thomas Jefferson’s 1774 “A Summary View of the Rights of British America”
***
President Trump said early Monday that he was voiding all the last-minute pardons from President Joe Biden's term made using autopen. That's an interesting idea.
***
Gaslighting
Gaslighting” wass Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.
The dictionary defines the word as “The act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.”
"...the psychological manipulation of a person, usually over an extended period of time, that “causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.”
"Lie" or "mendacity" is not enough.
“Gas Light” is a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton.
There have been two film adaptations in the 1940s. One, George Cukor’s “Gaslight” in 1944, starred Ingrid Bergman as Paula Alquist and Charles Boyer as Gregory Anton. The two marry after a whirlwind romance and Gregory turns out to be a champion gaslighter. There are many clever moments--one is the rewriting of her diary--but, in originating the word, he insists her complaints over the constant dimming of their London townhouse’s gaslights is a figment of her troubled mind. It wasn’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment