Gaslight Us to Death..............

They’re Trying to Gaslight Us to Death

We’ve reached the who-are-you-gonna-believe-me-or-your-own-eyes phase of the uprising.

NATHALIE BAPTISTE

Yesterday afternoon, after protests and uprisings over police brutality had rocked the nation for nearly a week, President Donald Trump delivered a short speech from the Rose Garden. While he spoke ominously about sending the military into American cities, the sounds of peaceful protesters being tear gassed just two blocks away bled through television screens across the nation.

After his brief remarks, the racist president—in his first public appearance since CNN reported over the weekend that he’d been hiding in the underground bunker Friday night—left the White House and sauntered past the block where protesters had just been gassed. He headed to the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, which suffered a fire during a particularly raucous evening in the nation’s capital. As he posed awkwardly with a Bible he has likely never opened, it became horribly clear that the President of the United States just gassed peaceful protesters for a photo op. Rev. Mariann Budde, told the Washington Post, “I am the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and was not given even a courtesy call, that they would be clearing [the area] with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop.”

The next morning, a local journalist regurgitated an anonymous statement from the US Park Police: There was no tear gas. Reporters on the ground and local priests countered that narrative, but the Republicans stuck with it. Some even went so far as to claim that time does not move forward. Washington, DC, like many other cities, had implemented a curfew that was set to begin at 7:00pm. The protesters were tear gassed at 6:35. Nonetheless, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) knew better, insisting that the protesters deliberately stayed out past curfew in order to get tear gassed.

The basic message from the one-time presidential candidate? The protesters manipulated time and you fell for it.

We’ve reached the who-are-you-gonna-believe-me-or-your-own-eyes phase of the uprising. And it’s not just Rubio. It seems as if everyone from the highest levels of government, to police officers, and randoms on Twitter are embarking on a campaign to make you feel as if you’re just imagining the widespread brutality raining down from the state.

It’s beginning to follow a very familiar pattern. In countless images and videos from all over the country, peaceful protesters who had been marching or chanting or simply standing with their hands in the air are met with excessive force. But then the police chief will go on television, usually with an able assist from an elected official, and declare that law enforcement was forced to deploy tear gas and pepper spray because the crowd was unruly.

On Sunday, a peaceful protester was pepper sprayed in the face and hauled away in Kansas City.