What is gratitude? Part 2.

(American) Thanksgiving is bearing down upon us, and this time of year always encourages people to make public lists of the things they're grateful for. But hardly anyone talks about toxic gratitude. That's what I'd like to tackle in this week's post.

My posts this week and last week were prompted by a post in a private, Pagan Facebook group. Last week's post is here. I'm not naming the original poster because it's a private group. 

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So: toxic gratitude.

I thought I'd made this phrase up all by myself, but as ever, the internet has beaten me to it. Google's AI stole its definition from this Times of India article, in which toxic gratitude is defined as "expressing thanks without truly meaning it". 

AsierRomeroCarballo | Deposit Photos

The article says you can spot toxic gratitude when it's prompted by social pressure (or, I would add, religious pressure); the result of either being manipulated by someone or by your attempt to manipulate someone; and over-apologizing or over-thanking someone. 

Manipulation is kind of a side trip into gaslighting, which I've talked about before. Go check out those links if you're interested. Today, what I want to look at are social pressure and over-apologizing/over-thanking.

Let's take on over-apologizing/over-thanking first. There's nothing wrong with thanking someone who has done you a favor -- we're all supposed to do that, right? But there's a line. To me, it ought to be a one-and-done. Well, maybe a two-and-done. But thanking me over and over -- or apologizing more than once -- puts the onus on me: I'm constantly being forced to express my gratitude to you for the favor/support/whatever, or to forgive you even if, by your actions, you've done nothing to earn it. (I get in trouble every time I link to that post about forgiveness. Fair warning: my take on the subject is very different from the Christian viewpoint.)

Look, it's not my job to constantly reassure you that you did a good thing or I still love you or whatever. To me, that sounds very much like a you problem. It feels to me like your boundaries aren't stable, and you need for me to reinforce them for you. Not a sign of a healthy relationship. Plus I'm not going to do it.

It's a short step from there to manipulation of the "Say to me this exact thing in this exact way!" variety, which I have no patience for. Or the "Believe everything I believe and hate all the things I hate, or you're part of the problem!" variety, which I also have no patience for (and to be honest, I thought we'd all left that cliqueish crap behind in junior high).

I'm not talking about instances where, for example, a person is spewing hatred and lies and expecting everyone around them to show their loyalty by kissing his ring; of course, that's wrong (not to mention dangerous for our country). I'm talking about interpersonal relationships on a smaller scale: If you want to gather like-minded people around you, you have to accept that some of those people will have opinions that differ from yours. In fact, one sure way to push your friends away is to demand that they behave exactly the way you want them to. That's your insecurity talking. It's a you problem, and one I can't solve for you.

Since we've sort of segued into the topic of social pressure anyhow, let's talk about gratitude journaling. As I said at the outset, 'tis the season to profess what you're grateful for to everyone you know. 

There's a benefit, for sure, in recognizing the good things in your life. But I see a danger in pressuring people to post online a list of stuff they're grateful for. For one thing, most people aren't going to post negative stuff on social media, for obvious reasons. But if you don't express those negative feelings somehow, even privately, or if you're determined to put a positive spin on everything, then you're gaslighting yourself with toxic positivity: "Even the bad stuff has its upside!" And it's a short step from there to... well, selling yourself short. Keeping your light under a bushel basket. Making it your business to make everyone else happy at the expense of your authentic self.

If your life sucks right now, own it. I think there's a lot of wisdom in this quote by a therapist: "When my clients can't summon a genuine feeling for gratitude in their lives and the activity of gratitude journaling feels superficial and dismissive of their real experiences, I invite them to appreciate the crap for what it is -- crap."

Sometimes life is crap. Sugar-coating it just gives you sugar-coated crap. The only healthy way out is through. 

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These moments of bloggy gratitude for those who read this post all the way to the end have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Happy Thanksgiving!

Sturm und drang, presidential debate edition.

inueng | Deposit Photos

Let's just start off with the obvious, shall we? The debate Thursday night between President Joe Biden and former president and convicted felon Donald Trump was, for anyone with a grain of sensitivity, painful to watch. Biden was off his game, for whatever reason (I've seen several theories, ranging from "he's 81 and tired" to "he has a cold" to "maybe the Trump team slipped him a mickey" -- yes, I really did see that one, although not in exactly those words). Biden dropped the rhetorical ball a couple of times. His "I can't believe the bullshit coming out of this guy's mouth" expression -- I assume that's what he was going for -- came off as slack-jawed, but not in a good way. 

About an hour after it was over, when I finally shook off my shock and disbelief, all I could say to myself was: "That was bad."

Indeed, the performance handed all the pundits who have never liked Biden the ammunition they've been looking for. He's lost it, they said, some muttering amongst themselves and some aloud; he should step aside and let somebody else run, they said. The New York Times editorial board agreed, and went so far as to publish it.* 

Never mind how something like that would throw the electoral process into chaos. What about all the voters who have already cast their primary ballots for Biden? Wouldn't that disenfranchise us?

And never mind how things turned out when President Lyndon Johnson pulled out of his primary race for a second term in 1968. Chaos ensued. The Democratic Party ended up nominating Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey -- who lost to Richard Nixon.

Historian Allan Lichtman has correctly predicted the winner of nine out of the past ten presidential elections.** He has no time for the pundits who want to kick Biden to the curb right now; debates don't matter, he told CNN. Lichtman has developed 13 keys to determine which candidate will win, and even after Thursday's debate, his system is still leaning toward a Biden win in the fall.

Another historian, Heather Cox Richardson, who blogs at Substack, has pointed out that Trump used a technique called a Gish gallop during the debate: "It's a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don't know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them. It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has."

The editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer saw through Trump's bullshit. In an editorial this weekend, the board said it was Trump who should drop out of the race. The editorial recapped Trump's greatest hits, among them his 31 felony convictions and three additional felony trials to come, and his bombastic rhetoric about how awful everything in America is: "Throughout the debate, Trump repeatedly said we are a 'failing' country. He called the United States a 'third world nation.' He said, 'we're living in hell' and 'very close to World War III.'

"'People are dying all over the place,' Trump said, later adding 'we're literally an uncivilized country now.'" Trump, the editorial goes on to note, told 30 lies during the 90-minute debate. There's more -- read it yourself at the link -- but it wraps up with, "There was only one person at the debate who does not deserve to be running for president. The sooner Trump exits the stage, the better off the country will be."

I could not agree more. 

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*That editorial was the last straw for me. I've finally canceled my NYT subscription.

**The only election out of the past ten that Lichtman's system didn't get right is Bush vs. Gore in 2000. He said Gore would win. Given that the Supreme Court had to decide the winner, I think we can give him a pass on that one.

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These moments of decisive blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get out and vote!

In which I admit to being a snowflake.

Or a flake, at least. I had every intention of posting last Sunday night, as is my usual practice, but somehow the day got away from me. When I realized what had happened, I told myself I'd just post the next night. I've sometimes skipped Sunday and posted on Monday night instead. But that didn't happen this past week, either. So I apologize for flaking out on you last week, and I hope not to do it again (too many more times). 

Clker-Free-Vector-Images | Pixabay | CC0

Now about my snowflakery. 

As a retired person, I have the luxury of being able to watch the House January 6th committee hearings -- even the daytime hearings -- in real time. This past Monday, one of the topics was former President Trump's fundraising efforts after he lost the 2021 election to Joe Biden. Here is the scam in a nutshell: First, Trump lied that the election was stolen. That's been dubbed the Big Lie. Then he sent millions of emails to his supporters, asking them to donate to something called the Official Election Defense Fund to help fund the legal fight to "stop the steal." And his supporters did donate -- $250 million total, $100 million of that in the few days after the election. 

But the Official Election Defense Fund never existed, and none of the donations ever went to pay lawyers to challenge the election. Instead, the donations went to a political action committee Trump had just created, a charity begun by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, a conservative organization, Trump's hotel company, and the outfit that organized the January 6th rally that preceded the insurrection at the Capitol. In short, Trump raised a quarter of a billion dollars on a lie, and then lied about where the money went. During the hearing, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) called it the Big Ripoff.

Moreover, more than half of the small-dollar donors to this scam -- that is, people who donated $100 or less -- listed their occupation as "retired". When this came out during the committee hearing, I got a little choked up. I felt sorry for the folks who got conned into giving money they probably didn't have to such a shyster. And I said so in a Facebook post.

I got pushback. 

A whole lot of people I know have zero sympathy for anyone who has gone along with any of Trump's lies. They believe it's his fans' own fault that they got taken in, and they deserve to lose their money.

But here's the thing: If you've been scammed, you've been victimized. It doesn't matter if the scammer is a guy claiming to be Nigerian prince, or someone who tells you to pay a bogus bill by sending them gift cards, or Donald Trump. It's still a crime, and crimes have victims. Making fun of a victim, or telling them they should have known better, doesn't solve anything. And it sure as hell doesn't help the victim.

Did Trump's victims have ample opportunity to wake up from the lie? Maybe, maybe not. Depends how deep into the rightwing media ecosphere they've been. Sure, they could have stepped away from Fox News and QAnon videos like their family members pleaded with them to do -- but keep in mind that Fox News has been in operation since October 1996. Trump's hardcore followers have been marinating in this stuff for more than 25 years. It's been said that if it hadn't been Trump who captured their slavish devotion, it would have been someone else (and we should count our blessings because that person might have actually been competent).

My friends think what Trump and his true believers have done to the country is so damaging that they should never be forgiven. I've written about my view of forgiveness before, and I've gotten pushback on that, too. I don't believe in forgiving someone who has done nothing to deserve it. However, when it comes to gaslighting, it takes a lot to wake someone up to what's going on. Seeing the violence at the Capitol on January 6th woke up some of them. Maybe the hearings will wake up others. And it seems to me that the realization they've been had is the first step toward remorse -- and feeling remorseful is the first step toward earning forgiveness. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the originators and perpetrators of the Big Lie should be forgiven; on the contrary, I hope they all rot in prison. But for folks like small-dollar donors who got sucked in? If they realize their mistake now, and take steps to undo the damage they've done, we shouldn't turn our backs on them. In my view, they deserve not ostracism, but compassion.

If we ever hope to bring this country together again, we need to find ways to breach the divide. Seems to me that compassion is a decent place to start.

And if that makes me a snowflake, so be it.

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These moments of flaky blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. The pandemic isn't over yet -- get vaxxed and boosted!

The gaslighting of Ukraine.

Vasudevan Kumar | CC0 | Pixabay

Have you ever had a feeling of deja vu while watching a congressional hearing? Probably not. I don't think it has ever happened to me until this week.

This was on Wednesday, during the testimony of Gordon Sondland, the US Ambassador to the European Union. Sondland had already changed his story once. He testified to the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors -- and then after reading about the testimony of some other witnesses, he "corrected" his own original testimony. So his public testimony before the committee last week was his third attempt to tell the truth.

While he was flinging his co-conspirators under the bus left and right, he said something that caught my ear. The comment came under questioning from committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA). Schiff was asking him to confirm that the US was withholding military aid and a White House meeting with President Trump until Ukraine agreed to look into two things: a Russian talking point that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in our 2016 election; and an investigation into corruption involving Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy exploration conglomerate, where Joe Biden's son was on the board of directors.

SCHIFF: He had to get those two investigations if that official act was going to take place, correct?

SONDLAND: [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] had to announce the investigations. He didn’t actually have to do them, as I understood it.

Under further questioning, Sondland explained that the conditions for the announcement kept changing. At first, a statement from the government would be enough. Then the statement would have to come from a Ukrainian official. Then the announcement had to come from Zelensky himself. And he would have to do it in public. Trump wanted Zelensky "in a box," Sondland explained.

I've been in that box.

So this is a story about Basement Guy. You may remember that nickname from Mom's House, as I mentioned him in passing. I had met him in grad school.

When I was still in broadcasting, child care was a constant worry. I worked nutty hours -- often different shifts around the clock in the same week, especially after I went to Mutual-NBC Radio News -- and traditional child care just didn't cut it. I was always having to patch together something in addition to before-school care and after-school care. An au pair would have been perfect, but I couldn't afford to hire one on my salary.

When Basement Guy moved in, I asked him sometimes to watch the kids for me. His son was close in age to my daughters, so I figured it wouldn't be too heavy a lift for him. But he always balked (which in hindsight was a good thing, as he turned out to be a sociopath).

At last he came up with an offer: He would watch my kids for the summer if I'd buy him a truck. A used truck was okay. He was going to spend a couple of weeks in Costa Rica to do research, he said, so I'd have time to find him one while he was gone.

The offer appealed to me because a) I needed the help and b) he'd been using my car. So I said okay. I even asked a friend who had a friend who frequented auto auctions to keep an eye out for a truck for BG.

But then his request kept changing. He didn't just want any old truck -- he wanted a Ford F-150. It had to be black. It couldn't be any older than a certain model year. It could be a work truck, but not too beat up, and the seat shouldn't be all sat out. And he told his son about how cool it would be when I picked him up at the airport in his new-to-him truck.

In short, he was setting me up to fail. He'd boxed me in. The odds of my finding the specific truck he was looking for were slim to none. The friend-of-a-friend's report confirmed my misgivings: There were no trucks like that at the auction.

So I picked up BG at the airport in my car. He insisted that he drive, so I moved over and let him take the wheel. On the way back to my place, he said, "I guess you didn't get me a truck."

"No, I didn't," I said.

He was silent for a few moments. Then he said, "Well, I wasn't going to watch your kids this summer anyway."

Which is how I know in my gut that Trump was never going to give Ukraine the military aid, and he was never going to give him the White House visit. There would always be one more condition put on the things that were so valuable to Zelensky -- one more "favor to ask, though."

The only reason Ukraine got the military aid in the end is because of the whistleblower. The one who uncovered Trump's scheme to gaslight a foreign government in order to get dirt on a domestic political rival. The one Trump wants to meet face-to-face.

I hope that whistleblower is already in witness protection.

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The NaNo project continues apace. I got behind this week due to having a life (how dare I!) but I caught up a bit yesterday. I'm less than 15,000 words away from winning, which is totally doable, given I'll be off work starting Thursday for Thanksgiving.

In fact, let me get on that...

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These moments of bloggy deja vu have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends and fans!

Alternative facts and other lies.

Pixabay | Public Domain

As a sort of part 2 to last week's post on gaslighting, we now have a new concept to wrap our brains around: the alternative fact.

In case you've been out of touch, this all started when the media posted side-by-side photos of the crowd on the National Mall during Barack Obama's first presidential inauguration in 2009, and Donald Trump's inauguration this past Friday. Then, following the Women's March on Washington yesterday, further comparisons were made among the crowds at all three events.

By any objective measure, the crowd at the Trump inauguration came up short. I won't post the photos here (they're probably under copyright anyway). But the New York Times ran a story yesterday about a couple of British crowd-sizing experts who said the same thing: the Trump inauguration drew the smallest crowd of the three events. (I agree with those experts on the parameters of the Women's March; my daughters and I attended the march, and I am here to tell you that Independence Avenue was wall-to-wall people from the Capitol grounds to 14th Street. We had to keep ducking down side streets to get to a spot where we could see and hear what was going on.)

None of this sat well with our new President. White House press secretary Sean Spicer called a news conference yesterday to read a statement that said, basically, the Trump inauguration was not only huge -- it was the most-watched in history. Which is also not true, even if you count in television ratings. But Spicer took no questions from the press -- he just read the statement and left the room.

It was left up to Trump's counselor, Kellyanne Conway, to try to explain the whole thing away. In a heated exchange this morning with Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press," Conway claimed Spicer's comments were "alternative facts." Todd, to his credit, immediately responded, "Alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods."

I suppose Conway should get some credit, too, for keeping a straight face throughout the exchange. There's video of it at the link, if you care to watch it. Be sure to pay attention to the part where Conway threatens to cut off Todd's access to the White House if he keeps challenging her.

Alert hearth/myth readers have already drawn the correlation I'm driving at here. This whole thing, from denying the numbers, to discounting the photographic proof, to accusing those who challenge the official narrative as promulgating "fake news" -- my friends, this new administration is gaslighting us. And it's only day 3.

I'm not saying the news media always get the story right; they don't. But serious journalists don't willfully get things wrong, either, and certainly not something as easily disprovable as this. Anyone who tries to tell you they do is lying to you. Don't fall for it.

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In more cheerful news: Other Realms Vol. II hit the virtual shelves at Amazon this week. The stories in this volume don't pretend to be anything but fantasy (unlike some of the news coming out of the White House...okay, I'll stop), and I'm pleased to have a short story -- an epic fantasy called "The Auguror's Apprentice" -- included in the collection. I continue to be impressed by the caliber of writing in our group of authors, and I think you will be, too.

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These moments of provable bloggy facts have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

On gaslighting, chiefly.

Ingrid Bergman in "Gaslight" (1944) | Public Domain

This week, I'm going to continue my policy of no political posts -- even though we're about to swear in a new President whom only 37 percent of Americans approve of, and whose behavior toward the traditional media has earned him the nickname "Gaslighter-in-Chief," to go along with all the other unflattering nicknames he's picked up.

So what is gaslighting? Unless you're familiar with 1940s Hollywood movies -- or unless you've been unlucky enough to come into contact with a psychologically unstable individual who wanted to make you crazy -- you may never have heard the term before.

Gaslighting is a technique used by people with certain mental disorders, including Narcissistic Personality Disorder, to control their victims. The perpetrator uses a variety of tactics to isolate his victim, and then repeatedly calls into question facts and events that the victim knows to be true. The perpetrator's aim is to divorce the victim from reality. Eventually, the victim becomes filled with self-doubt and believes she's going crazy -- making her fertile soil for the perp's continued abuse.

The term comes from the 1944 movie "Gaslight." Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for her performance as Paula, the niece of a dead opera singer whose murderer was never found. Paula enters a whirlwind courtship with a man named Gregory, played by Charles Boyer. They marry within a few weeks of meeting, and move into the dead woman's London townhouse. Gregory then proceeds to isolate Paula, telling her it's for her own good because she's become a kleptomaniac -- and indeed, it appears she stole his watch and placed it in her handbag without remembering she had done it. She also hears footsteps in the attic where the dead aunt's things have been stored -- but the attic entrance has been sealed up. And she is sure that the gas light fixtures in the house periodically dim, but Gregory tells her it's all in her imagination. (Boys and girls, natural gas was used for home lighting before electricity became popular. My grandmother's house had wall sconces with both a light bulb socket and a gas nozzle.)

Spoiler alert: Paula is not crazy. Gregory is her aunt's murderer, and married her to gain access to the house to search for the dead woman's jewelry. He'd be okay with shipping Paula off to the nuthouse -- it would give him free rein to conduct his search.

As it does in the movie, gaslighting starts gradually. The perpetrator's behavior may seem a little weird to you, but you make excuses for him. Then you begin defending yourself as he criticizes things you do that you thought were normal. Eventually, you doubt your own perceptions and can't tell what's real any more.

So how do you cope with a gaslighter? The best advice I can find on the intarwebz is to get away from him as fast as you can. Unfortunately, the US will be stuck with this Gaslighter-in-Chief for four years. Just remember, folks -- no matter what he says, we're not crazy.

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These moments of non-gaslit blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.