My Word For 2019

Would have to be "gaslighting."  The wild, wonderful and frightening world of online politics is full of gaslighting, and that's why we have so much trouble seeing clearly.

I keep catching myself being successfully gaslit ever so often, from misogyny (franchised, trademarked and sold as something seemingly reasonable) to economics to general politics and, in particular, Trumpian political arguments.

The difficulty with gaslighting, as with some other concepts one starts to come across frequently, is that because it has become so common the brain no longer gets that instantaneous red alert signal.  I thank all the divines that my brain is equipped with some creature with a tiny voice but an insistent knock at the doors of my awareness until I open the imaginary door and a notice is put through it saying "psst! you got taken there."  This helps me nine times out of ten, though usually a few hours or days after the event happened.

Given that it's now going to be the season of candles, I wish that those gas lights could be turned off.