It has been more than 100 years since gas was used to illuminate street corners and living rooms. But with the rise of Trumpism and the accompanying self-aggrandizing fake information, tail-chasing, and clouds of rampant doubt to cloak actual wrong-doing, the ‘gaslighting’ term born of the the 1938 British play, Gas Light, has soared to new highs and brought civil society to new lows. Almost any utterance from the POTUS applied in criticism to others curiously seems to apply equally well about his own shortcomings.
This photo comes from a corner where homeless men (few, if any females) hold up a piece of cardboard begging for work or money, or both. The on-ramp traffic is accelerating here, but the off-ramp cars sometimes roll down a window to give cash or local prepaid vouchers for food or hot beverages. The small adhesive tab discretely shouts in ALL CAPS, “F**K TRUMP.”
While it does not elaborate on causes for injury, the pithy message does function as an exclamation point! The same slogan appears much larger in spray paint near the downtown bridges that fly over the Grand River. As with other arenas for civil discourse other than public sidewalks under the highway bridges or the metal poles that support traffic signals, very probably there are 10 or 20 other similar voices not visible for each instance where an outburst does appear. Or maybe the ratio is 100 to 1? That is an empirical question, but the fact remains, there is discontent with the things that the 45th president is associated with by words and deeds. Perhaps there were similar murmurings before the cascade of anti-war protests during the Vietnam era; likewise on the streets of Paris before their own 1700s revolution. That is not to say that a sticker on a stoplight stanchion predicts civil unrest. But as an unmistakable expression of frustration of worsening life chances and daily life, this is especially vivid. Here is a powerful, if compact, display of the many ways literacy serves those able to read and write. We can only hope that it will be words that lead to solutions for social injustice and economic distress, since the point when words end is also the place where violence follows.
Truly, gaslighting is explosive when somebody lights a match to shed light on what is going on in the dark.
