Nathan Radke

Well, I will say this.

If the secret police come to your house, which, of course, in an authoritarian state is not an unusual thing to happen, and they find that your encyclopedia still has those pages in it, you're now, like, you're a traitor.

Despite the fact that you could say, but you were the ones who told me this guy was a hero.

This is the thing about gaslighting.

It doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't have any kind of consistency.

It's full of all these weird contradictions.

And that in itself is part of the weaponizing of this.

Because what this does is it makes people feel completely disoriented.

It makes people feel like everything is possible.

Nothing is true and everything is possible.

And I mean, it should be fairly obvious why this is a poisonous thing to have in a relationship, either with a partner or a leader, because you just end up in a state of bewilderment.

You end up with nowhere that you can stand that feels safe.

You lose confidence in your own ability to discern reality.

And ironically, that makes you even more reliant on the person who's gaslighting you.

Yeah.

I mean, we like to think that we have a really firm grasp on reality, but the truth is, exactly as you say, it doesn't take very much for us to start to think, wait a second, can I trust my own perceptions?

Can I trust my own memories?

And of course, perception and memory are flawed.

But when you're being gaslit, it gets cranked up to 11.