The 1944 film Gaslight is based on Patrick Hamilton’s play, about a woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is going batty. In the movie, Ingrid Bergman’s character Paula is constantly manipulated by her husband Gregory, played by Charles Boyer, and slowly she feels like she’s going insane.  Gregory gradually isolates his wife from the outside world, claiming that it’s for her own good. He leads her to believe she’s stealing things without realizing it and hearing noises that aren’t here. Eventually, Paula doesn’t know who or what to believe anymore.  The title of “Gaslight” refers to how Gregory manipulates Paula: She sees the gaslights in their home going dim and then getting brighter for no reason. Her husband convinces her that it’s all inside her head. Gregory uses persistent denial, contradiction, misdirection, and lying to make Paula feel unsure of their own sanity.

Like Paula, America is constantly being manipulated by Trump and his enablers.  Every time Trump opens his mouth, he makes us doubt the facts, science, and our own feelings and thoughts by manipulating the truth.  We need to fight to regain our sanity, and we must honestly question Trump’s intentions.

So what are Trump’s intentions? Well, it’s pretty simple, he’s out to pad his pockets, retain power, and he’ll do anything to keep his position in the White House. By refusing to concede, by casting doubt on the integrity of the election, and by “gaslighting” America, he’ll do anything and everything to hold on to power. Just as Charles Boyer’s character was obsessed with grabbing his wife’s inherited fortune, Trump is making a power grab for American Democracy. 

So how do we escape?  Well, the closing scene in Gaslight shows Paula catching Gregory red-handed with her Aunt Alice’s jewels. Gregory knows he’s discovered, but tries to deflect his guilt and throws Paula into confusion again, telling her that everything is in her head. Sound familiar? Trump claims he won the election, and that there was widespread voter fraud.  He also claimed that COVID-19 has rounded the corner and that after November 4, we won’t hear about it anymore. He claims his administration has done a great job in tackling the virus when in fact we have entered another devastating wave that has claimed over 200,000 American lives with no signs of abating. Like Gregory, Trump insists on us accepting this alternate reality. At first, he claimed COVID-19 was a hoax, it wasn’t real, and then he claimed it wasn’t a big deal, just flu.

After all the suffering Gregory’s character caused Paula, she does get her revenge. Eventually, Gregory is arrested by the Scotland Yard officer Cameron, caught in the act of trying to steal Aunt Alice’s jewels, and he’s tied to a chair in the attic. Paula finally realizes that she’s not insane, and decides to give Gregory a taste of his own medicine. When she sees her husband alone and bound to a chair in the attic, he tries to convince her to cut him free so that he can escape. She taunts him, proposing that the knife in her hand might not be real, and refuses to cut him free. Then she calls in Cameron, and Gregory is hauled away.

I doubt that Trump will concede, and I believe that he will never admit defeat.  Trump will never face the truth, and like Gregory, he may have to be hauled out of the White House on January 20^th. After the last four years, I sincerely hope that America can regain it’s sanity.