2023 - The Year of the Excuse?

More gaslighting

US dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2022 is “gaslighting”. Not surprising really with the amount of gaslighting that has taken place. Interest in the term was up 1,740% over the previous year and unlike other popular search terms, searches remained high throughout the year, rather than spiking at particular moments.

The term comes from a 1938 thriller play called “Gas Light”, written by British playwright, Patrick Hamilton. A newly married couple, Jack and Bella, move into a house with a top floor flat that is closed off. Bella starts to misplace small items and Jack convinces her that she is going mad.

Bella learns that the flat was closed off after a wealthy woman was murdered there for her jewels. Unbeknownst to her, every night, her husband goes up to the flat to search for the jewels. When he goes upstairs, Bella hears footsteps but Jack persuades her that she is just hearing things.

To top it off, when searching the upstairs flat, Jack turns on the gas lights which cause the lights in the rest of the building to dim. Bella is once again convinced that the dimming lights are a figment of her imagination, hence the term gas-lit.

For the term to become word of the year, it clearly shows that people have felt gas-lit throughout 2022. They were told that a genetically engineered virus with mutations that are unlikely to have arisen naturally, definitely originated naturally. They were told that the fairly non-lethal virus would definitely kill them unless they avoided other humans and wore compliance nappies (diapers) on their faces. They were told that the only way to go back to normal was to get injected with a miracle substance from God. They were told that normal trials and procedures were unnecessary because everything was Safe and Effective. They were told that this manna from heaven would stop them catching and getting ill from the virus. They were told that anyone who didn’t inject themselves was selfish and not allowed to take part in society. And worst of all, they were told that side-effects, injuries and deaths hadn’t happened.

But hopefully our 2022 gas-lighting story ends the same way as all the other great gas-lighting stories.

Bella meets a police detective who convinces her to expose her husband, Jack, as the murderer. As revenge, she returns the gas-lighting and convinces Jack that she is helping him escape before reminding him that she is insane and so not accountable for her actions. The play ends with Jack going to jail.

But does the fact that people are starting to realise they have been gas-lit mean the gas lighters are getting nervous?

Will 2023 be the Year of the Excuse? Who will come up with the best get out of jail card?

We’ve already seen a number of high level resignations but not everyone is fortunate enough to escape that easily. So instead they are creating excuses and it’s starting already. A few examples for you below.

Professor Peter Hotez tweeted the following on Christmas day.

Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD @PeterHotez

If at times I appeared too militant around vaccines and immunizations, my apologies. With highly transmissible virus pathogens we know vaccines = our most potent public health interventions. My outspokenness was borne out of pure desperation to save lives.

He’s sorry he “appeared” too militant around vaccines and immunizations but it was out of pure desperation to save lives.

And this will be the format of the excuse in 2023. “We’re sorry that these things happened to you but we were doing everything we could during a dire situation. We know a few people died as a result of our actions but ultimately for each person who died or was injured we saved a thousand more lives.”

Accept the apology but don’t believe the excuse. It is just more gas-lighting to save their skins and avoid any investigations/prosecutions.

We are also hearing the same excuses from the big corporations.

When AstraZeneca’s Executive Vice-President for Europe and Canada was cross-examined about harms caused by the vaccine, she was deeply sorry but said there is enough data to judge what the impact of the vaccine was. She uses the deeply flawed Lancet data which claims that the vaccines saved over 20 million lives in the first year of vaccination.

So look out for the excuses in 2023. Accept the apologies but don’t allow more gas-lighting using spurious data. Otherwise this will be their get-out clause.

2023 needs to be the return of sanity, law and order. No threats of violence or Nuremberg II show trials (where the ring leaders get away with everything and given high powered jobs) but instead proper investigations, inquiries that aren’t whitewashed and real prosecutions for any wrongdoings. It might sound implausible but with so much progress made in 2022, it may not be so far-fetched.