Divide and Conquer: Gaslighting Both Sides

Bullies create favourites and targets, but objectify and lie to them both

One of the saddest things in abuse cultures is watching once mentally stable people with a moral compass, bend themselves out of shape to serve the bully, abuser, despot, dictator, whatever description you want to designate the person who cares more about power than anyone, or anything else. The ones favoured by the bullies, protected by them, given benefits by them, appear to believe they care about them. This is a tragic error.

An abuse culture is constructed of three components whether it’s on a playground or in the corridors of power: favouritism, humiliation, and fear. The favourites are afraid of displeasing the bullies, while the targets are afraid because they’re being humiliated, hurt, and they’re suffering, and fear more pain may come their way.

The favourites think they are benefiting. They turn a blind eye to the suffering of the targets who get labelled “enemies” in one form or another. The gaslighting label of “enemies” gaslights the favourites into feeling justified, even righteous, that the targets are suffering. What the favourites don’t realize is that they too are simply pawns in the bullies’ drive for control and power.

Once divided, favourites and enemies will be pitted against one another. All will be conquered and have to serve at the pleasure of the psychopathic bullies. One minute you’re an oligarch wallowing in excess money, next minute you’re thrown out a window. Psychopaths can be capricious.

Pathological lying is a hallmark of the psychopath

What the favourites really should fear is that they are being lied to as much as the targets. The more the bullies’ pathological lies conjure up illusions, in place of facts and truth, the more both favourites and targets are put at risk. It is what Rebecca Solnit calls “violence against facts and truth” that should deeply worry the favourites.

Remember, the abusers will just as readily send their favourites and their children into battle to defend their bullying regime and consolidate their authoritarian power. Somebody’s got to risk their lives to battle the enemies and it’s not going to be the bullies. They’ll sit back and watch the battle on TV, safe, unflustered, unmoved. Perhaps they’ll laugh quietly.

No Kings rally rhetoric

The world is watching an illuminating example at present of favourites trying to please the bully by gaslighting on his behalf. Only a mental health professional could diagnose whether or not they believe their own lies, but they speak untruths to the public, and at the public without hesitation or apparent concern.

It’s a strange juxtaposition we are witnessing whereby for a few weeks, the favourites are conjuring up an illusion of violence, manufacturing an image of “enemy” terrorists, but these fearful fabrications are simply absent. They want to say the No Kings rallies that brought out millions across the nation on October 18, 2025 are somehow being put on by Hamas supporters and the dreaded but elusive antifa.

The only problem for the favourites - whether they believe their illusions or not - is that they lack evidence. These favourites are not citizens, they are in extremely powerful positions alongside and supporting a gaslighting approach.

As is typical in gaslighting, they use a lot of rhetoric, talk frequently in an official capacity, it’s just that they fail to supply authentic images, statistic, evidence, documents, anything.

Violence against facts and truth

While the favourites decry rampant violence, it has not materialized. The only violence appears to be what they are doing to facts and truth. As CNN journalist Aaron Blake explains, the depiction of dangerous urban violence from the favourites is relentless: “This despite a series of rulings from judges, including several Republican-appointed ones, saying the image being painted is a mirage.” Note what the judge says: it’s not real; it’s a mirage.

Gaslighting distorts reality, facts, and truth in order to destabilize and control others, including their subservient favourites. Gaslighting creates a mirage. People travel through the desert to get water and find shade, but when they arrive, there’s nothing there except for more miles of sand.