On Gaslighting and Dissolution
Luke Cyphers has written some incredible posts on the hot mic scandal that capture what is happening in our fair city quite well (starting with this one). In another post on the mayor's attempt to do damage control after the hot mic scandal hit the press, Cyphers notes:
For instance, consider the mayor's Sun column following the scandal, in which he states:
The difference between the terms is considerable. The word merger invokes a process that is voluntary for the parties involved and much less painful. It taps into an ideology prevalent in late capitalism which is dominated by mergers and acquisitions and ever increasing concentrations of wealth and power. This ideology insists consolidation produces "synergy" and "a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts," and claims that consolidation hardly ever results in a diminution of services.
By contrast, by sticking with the word defunct, we're less able to airbrush away the harsh reality that the mayor is seriously considering. The city going defunct almost certainly means the loss of dozens of jobs and accumulated employee benefits and, almost always, tax increases and drastic reductions in services.
Are you questioning your reality yet? Wait--there's more. In the city council meeting following the hot mic scandal, the mayor makes it sound like he has always been completely forthright about how on the cusp of going defunct our city is and how he was elected with the mandate to do whatever it takes, including dissolving the city, to fix our fiscal problems. For example,
There is no doubt a warranted discussion of fiscal prudence in this video, but it is tempered with plenty of optimism, and in no way does this prudence approach the hot mic level of extreme austerity we're dealing with a year later. Rather, for the mayoral candidate, budgets are the chance to "set the tone for the city" and "to operationalize our dreams" (of course, the only time I'd expect to hear the words "operationalize" and "dreams" together in a sentence is in a sci-fi movie involving an android invasion).
Clearly, the public mandate the mayor now thinks he has to do whatever it takes to "right the ship" is one of the more dangerous manifestations of his gaslighting. This way of wielding power is similar to the method Naomi Klein describes in Shock Doctrine:
How can we stop the mayor's gaslighting? Unfortunately, unlike victims of gaslighting in relationships, we don't have the luxury of "flying far and not looking back" like this article suggests. It is my hope, however, that a post like this will help. One tactic I've found that helps me keep my sanity and my bearings in reality given what's going on in the city is to conjure up hypothetical scenarios to test whether I'm angry for good reason. The whole "what would Bernie do" sentiment in my last post about the city and labor relations was one such attempt. This time, I will close with another:
Imagine that we're passengers on a plane and that, an hour into our flight, we overhear the pilot and co-pilot discussing the strong possibility that the plane will crash. Then, in the midst of the uproar this causes in the cabin, the pilot gets on the intercom and tells us passengers "you all knew going into this that there was a strong chance we'd crash...it'll most likely be totally ok. We found a lake in Utah we can crash land into with very little pain...some passengers have even been thanking me that I'm giving them advanced notice". Next to you, a passenger yells "wait, what?! I bought a ticket to Phoenix. I thought we were going to Phoenix!"
Read is hard to pin down. Like an electron obeying the laws of quantum physics, he appears able to occupy two or more different places at once. He has a habit of saying one thing, then saying something completely contradictory, and proceeding as if there's nothing strange about that.Later on, almost in passing, Cyphers states that the mayor's "gaslighting...[has been] a fixture of city government for the past year." This is certainly the case, and it needs to be unpacked further. The term gaslighting refers to a form of manipulation in which a person, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. I can think of no better example than the hot mic discussion involving the city's dissolution and the mayor's attempt at spin that has followed.
For instance, consider the mayor's Sun column following the scandal, in which he states:
Somebody took exception that I’m willing to utter the word merger. I don’t find that word threatening. Indeed, perhaps a dozen people have since told me that they were glad somebody was willing to mention the unmentionable.Read never uttered the word merger in the hot mic conversation. However, he did talk about the possibility of "dissolving" the city sooner rather than later and about the strong potential of going "defunct."
The difference between the terms is considerable. The word merger invokes a process that is voluntary for the parties involved and much less painful. It taps into an ideology prevalent in late capitalism which is dominated by mergers and acquisitions and ever increasing concentrations of wealth and power. This ideology insists consolidation produces "synergy" and "a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts," and claims that consolidation hardly ever results in a diminution of services.
By contrast, by sticking with the word defunct, we're less able to airbrush away the harsh reality that the mayor is seriously considering. The city going defunct almost certainly means the loss of dozens of jobs and accumulated employee benefits and, almost always, tax increases and drastic reductions in services.
Are you questioning your reality yet? Wait--there's more. In the city council meeting following the hot mic scandal, the mayor makes it sound like he has always been completely forthright about how on the cusp of going defunct our city is and how he was elected with the mandate to do whatever it takes, including dissolving the city, to fix our fiscal problems. For example,
Unlike most victims of gaslighting in relationships, we, the residents of the City of Plattsburgh, are at least fortunate enough to travel back in time and see whether this description syncs up with reality. Putting aside all the mayor's rosy campaign videos that try to tap into the public's desire to attract millennials to the city and make Plattsburgh a world class tourist destination(!)--even in the October 2016 mayoral debate, when specifically asked about the impending budget crisis, Colin Read doesn't sound like the doomsday economist he has now become.I did want to stress that if we can’t make the city viable, and you’ve heard me say this many many times before, and I’ve written about it for years and years…then our whole area is in jeopardy
There is no doubt a warranted discussion of fiscal prudence in this video, but it is tempered with plenty of optimism, and in no way does this prudence approach the hot mic level of extreme austerity we're dealing with a year later. Rather, for the mayoral candidate, budgets are the chance to "set the tone for the city" and "to operationalize our dreams" (of course, the only time I'd expect to hear the words "operationalize" and "dreams" together in a sentence is in a sci-fi movie involving an android invasion).
Clearly, the public mandate the mayor now thinks he has to do whatever it takes to "right the ship" is one of the more dangerous manifestations of his gaslighting. This way of wielding power is similar to the method Naomi Klein describes in Shock Doctrine:
Any strategy based on exploiting the window of opportunity opened by a traumatic shock relies heavily on the element of surprise. A state of shock, by definition, is a moment when there is a gap between fast-moving events and the information that exists to explain themBy occupying two or more places at once on these key issues, by simultaneously operating in crisis mode and stating there's no crisis, the mayor is both disorienting and pacifying the public and then seizing upon this opportunity to make it look like the only alternative is the one that he himself formulates (eg, eliminating automatic pay increases and benefits, eliminating entire departments without significant public discussion, and soon, embarking on a dangerous path of big business-centric development using DRI funds that harkens back to 1960's urban renewal--on which, more in future posts).
How can we stop the mayor's gaslighting? Unfortunately, unlike victims of gaslighting in relationships, we don't have the luxury of "flying far and not looking back" like this article suggests. It is my hope, however, that a post like this will help. One tactic I've found that helps me keep my sanity and my bearings in reality given what's going on in the city is to conjure up hypothetical scenarios to test whether I'm angry for good reason. The whole "what would Bernie do" sentiment in my last post about the city and labor relations was one such attempt. This time, I will close with another:
Imagine that we're passengers on a plane and that, an hour into our flight, we overhear the pilot and co-pilot discussing the strong possibility that the plane will crash. Then, in the midst of the uproar this causes in the cabin, the pilot gets on the intercom and tells us passengers "you all knew going into this that there was a strong chance we'd crash...it'll most likely be totally ok. We found a lake in Utah we can crash land into with very little pain...some passengers have even been thanking me that I'm giving them advanced notice". Next to you, a passenger yells "wait, what?! I bought a ticket to Phoenix. I thought we were going to Phoenix!"
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