Gas Lighting

Gas lighting is a current topic.  Republicans seem very adept at it.  Now, Kadizzle will relate a true gaslighting story.  Far away and long ago our family had a farm in the hills of West Virginia.  It was remote and had no running water, nor electricity.  One thing it did have was free natural gas.  The gas was free because there was a gas well on the property.  If you had free gas you had to waste it, so we always kept a gas flame lit in the yard.  Usually we threw yard waste and sort of made it a campfire. 

Once as was the custom we were there as kids and had a city kid with us.  The city kid did not know there was a gas line running to the fire pit.  It appeared to simply be logs on fire.  My brother had a radio and told the city boy he could control the fire with the radio.  Little did Marty the city friend know my brother had his other hand on the gas valve.  Brother would turn up the volume on the radio and the flame would go higher.  Marty bought the whole nonsense.

That evening when no one was there to control the gas to the fire Marty looked out the window with the radio in his hands.  Marty turned the volume up and down.  It was a bit windy and the wind made the flames go higher and lower.  Marty had it in his head that he was indeed controlling the fire with the radio. Now that is how gas lighting works.  You tell the Fox News watchers there are people attacking at the border, and they believe it because you sent troops down there.