Gaslighting: insisting ambiguity exists where it does not

My Sunday movie wasn’t a movie, but a series of commercials. Every December the Detroit Film Theater shows the winners of the British Arrows, awards given out for best commercials. They’re a hit in America because the British sense of humor is so different from ours. But last Sunday was still November. Yeah, the Arrows are being shown at the DFT next weekend and I won’t be able to see them then. So I found their website and watched them. And I found out why going to the DFT is an advantage. Their show is just 85 minutes, showing the ones most appreciated by an American audience. I watched over two hours, which wasn’t all of them, and there were many that were just meh. Here are some of my favorites: Paris 2024 Paralympics: Sport doesn’t care about disability. BBC Sport, Welcome to the City of Love – love (of sport) makes us do crazy things. Co-op, Owned By You: A team created animation where each frame was printed on a receipt printer. This explains the process, but alas doesn’t show the final result. Sainsbury’s Big Christmas: A giant gets help Christmas shopping. Barclays, Make Money Work for You: Children playing the parts of adult workers. Apple, Flock: The flock is security cameras with wings watching what you browse on your phone. This is an ad for the Safari browser. Erste Bank, Silent Night: A bit of history and the effect of the most recorded song in history. Montefiore Einsteins Cancer Centre, South Bronx: a video on the rise of break dancing and recognizing the spark in someone else. Papaya, Swing: two guys on gigantic swings (made me wonder about what protected them from falling off). Volvo, Moments: The important ones might be the ones that a good car might prevent happening. This from the viewpoint of a man about to be a father Frameless, Immersive Rembrandt: A piece of art – men in a boat in a stormy sea – brought to life. Scambaiters, Daisy vs Scammers: Daisy is an AI that will happily waste a scammer’s time so they can’t scam you. Report scammer’s numbers to Daisy. British Airways Period Drama: The video explains an airplane’s safety to the residents of a manor house, including showing men on horses how to buckle their seatbelts. Disney, The Boy and the Octopus: This is more like a 4 minute movie rather than an ad. It shows a boy with a small octopus living on his head. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos wrote about how AI is making life worse. Creativity: Stealing existing art to recreate lifeless versions of what humans have made. Critical thinking: AI using students consistently performed worse at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. People ask an AI tool a question and accept whatever answer it gives. Mental Health: About half the people who reported mental health issues used AI for support, though that support probably wasn’t helpful. Workers: Entry level positions are disappearing. In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted David Schuster of Blue Amp:

The New York Times recently reported what all of us with a functioning optic nerve have seen: Donald J. Trump, the once bombastic showman and snake oil salesman, has shrunk his public schedule and limited his appearances to a tight mid-day window. But instead of addressing concerns like an adult, the President keeps raging like a tyrannical toddler. He has denounced the reporting as unfair, sneered at journalists, and bellowed about his “perfect” tests — as if the nation were comprised only of other gullible children distracted by shiny objects. Whereas previous U.S. Presidents embraced the burdens of office at dawn, Trump appears only after most of the nation has eaten lunch. And when Trump does appear, reporters and staff keep seeing moments that look like fatigue overtaking leadership vigilance, the sort of slump that in most offices would prompt a supervisor to ask whether the employee needed time off or a medical check.

In the comments Wolf Hour posted a cartoon by David Horsey. It is captioned “Elon Musk dines alone...” and shows him surrounded by a feast while a black child stares at him.

Musk: What are you staring at, African kid? Child: Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I haven’t eaten since you killed USAID.

Wolf Hour added:

The disastrous DOGE project has now ended in failure but the damage lives on. Estimates put the death toll from Musk's brutal cuts to USAID at 600,000 people, mostly children, in a year. Bill Gates said it was “the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children.”

Back in October (I think) the nasty guy went to his doctor for an MRI, but afterward couldn’t say which part of his body had been imaged. Of course, the medical report issued to the public praised what fine health the MRI showed. Pundits replied that MRIs are not done without an important medical reason, so they’re not buying it showed fine health. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California did some fine trolling by issuing an MRI report of himself from “Dr. Dolittle.” Excerpts:

His cardiovascular scans are the best we’ve ever recorded – his arteries were described as “shimmering,” and his resting heart rate was so steady the EKG machine asked if he was “meditating or just naturally enlightened.” ... While we do not typically comment on the health of other elected officials, we are aware of a letter released today from the White House claiming that President Trump is in “excellent health.” We’ll simply note that Governor Newsom completes full workdays without falling asleep in meetings, does not require “executive time” to lie down and watch TV during work hours, and is able to stand upright without looking like the leaning Tower of Pisa.

In Sunday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman, writing for his Substack:

The MAGA war on financial stability is being waged largely on two fronts. First, there’s an ongoing effort within some parts of the Federal Reserve to drastically weaken bank supervision — oversight of banks to prevent them from taking risks that could threaten the financial system. ... The second front of MAGA’s war on financial stability is on behalf of the crypto industry. The Trump administration and its allies in Congress — including, I’m sorry to say, a number of Democrats in this case — are moving to promote wider use of crypto. In particular, the GENIUS Act (gag me with an acronym), passed in July, aims to promote stablecoins. And the fact is that stablecoins are effectively an alternative, weakly regulated and poorly supervised form of banking.

Didn’t the weakening of bank regulation lead to the Great Recession of 2008? Goodness, people have short memories. Then again, a slogan of that time was “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.” Detroit was hit quite hard. So there might be brutal logic here in that the rich don’t lose (much) yet the poor are oppressed more and again. For many rich people widening the gap between themselves and the poor is desired because that makes themselves look all the better in comparison. Meteor Blades, a Daily Kos Staff Emeritus wrote there are two questions to get to the truth about that Venezuelan boat that was struck twice. The second strike has been described as a war crime. Or murder, because we’re not (officially) at war. Secretary of Defense Hegseth has blamed Admiral Frank Bradley. Hegseth might talk tough, but he’s not going to be responsible, similar to his boss. Both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have opened investigations into the incident and done so with bipartisan votes. So Admiral Bradley will appear before them. Blades said Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker could accomplish what’s needed with two questions:

“Did Secretary Hegseth order a second strike on the two survivors of a first strike or did you make that decision on your own with no input from him?” If his answer is that Hegseth gave the order, the follow-up question should be, “Did you warn the Secretary that a second strike would be illegal?”

A week ago an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that the Georgia election interference case has been dropped. This is the case that was started with the nasty guy calling the Secretary of State of Georgia asking him to find 11,780 votes (if my memory is good). Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did the research and produced 101 boxes of evidence plus an 8 terabyte hard drive. She indicted the nasty guy and 18 others in August 2023. The nasty guy got her removed from the case claiming she had a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor she had hired. Peter Skandalakis, executive director of Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia took over the case last month. He told the court he decided not to pursue the case. So the judge dropped it. While the case against the nasty guy probably wouldn’t proceed while he’s in office, there were still cases against 14 of the co-defendants. They’re also dropped. All4Truth of the Kos community wrote a rebuttal to the decision to drop the case.

When court-assigned prosecutor Peter J. Skandalakis dismissed Georgia’s election-interference case and justified his decision by claiming that “reasonable minds could differ” about Donald Trump’s conduct — and that therefore Trump was “entitled to the benefit of the doubt” — he wrapped a fundamentally misleading conclusion in the language of legal neutrality. But scratch the surface, and the entire rationale collapses. Worse, it shifts the burden of confusion onto the public, asking people to doubt what the evidence clearly shows. That is the essence of gaslighting: insisting ambiguity exists where it does not.

All4Truth offered these reasons: 1. This wasn’t about one phone call. It was a coordinated, multi-front effort involving pressure on state officials and a plan to overturn a certified effort. That means Skandalakis was not offering caution, but confusion. ... 3. “The ‘benefit of the doubt’ standard applies when evidence is uncertain — not when prosecutors refuse to review it. Claiming otherwise is manufactured ambiguity.”

This is the move that most resembles gaslighting: inducing the public to question the clarity of the facts while ignoring those facts entirely.

4. “Prosecutors do not owe ‘benefit of the doubt’ to a convicted felon with an established record of deception.” 5. “Multiple grand juries already determined there was probable cause. Dismissing that is not skepticism — it is disrespect for the system.” ... 7. “The statements follow a classic gaslighting pattern: asserting doubt in the face of overwhelming clarity.”

If we can demand the Epstein files be released, perhaps we should also demand the full evidence in this case at least also be released publicly.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included a tweet from The Bionic Bee, though the original author is not named.

My leprechaun can’t find his gold. My imaginary friend got kidnapped. The voices in my head won’t talk to me. And my dragon flew away. Oh my, I’m going sane.

Because of the upcoming events on my calendar I probably won’t post for at least one week and maybe not for two. Events include entering my performing group’s concert season and Brother coming for a visit.