I turn on the news and want to scream – another poll with Hillary Clinton in the lead!  How?  She's all but dropped out of the race, and a new Clinton scandal breaks every half-hour.  So how is she winning?

It makes my head spin.  Hillary disappears – her numbers go up.  She mishandles classified information and breaks the law – her numbers go up.  She's nailed for her Clinton Foundation pay-to-play scheme – her numbers go up.  I feel as though I've been blindfolded and spun in circles, confused, off-balance, questioning reality. 

Or is that the point?  The feelings I've just described, along with loss of joy, depression, and withdrawal, are characteristics of a victim of abuse – gaslighting, to be exact.  And that's exactly what our government and media have been doing to the American people.

Urban Dictionary defines gaslighting as "an increasing frequency of systematically withholding factual information from, and/or providing false information to, the victim – having the gradual effect of making them anxious, confused, and less able to trust their own memory and perception."

The term comes from the 1938 British play Gaslight, wherein a psychopathic killer (Gregory Anton) plots to drive his wife (Paula) insane.  Gregory dims the gaslights, and then, when Paula notices, tells her she's imagining it, or he rummages in the attic and then scoffs when Paula says she hears footsteps.  He hides objects, removes pictures from the wall, and plays other tricks to make Paula doubt her sanity. 

Hillary's email scandal is a glaring example of this psychological warfare.  FBI director Comey tells us Hillary violated security, broke the law, mishandled top-secret information, and flat-out lied about damn near everything.  He stood before the nation and ticked off guilty verdicts one after another. 

Then, poof!  It all just went away.  No indictment, no headlines, no outrage, nothing.  The media's message – what email?  What scandal?  The whole private server flap was effectively erased from history, and we're left asking what just happened. 

This "now you see it, now you don't" routine leaves us uncertain of what we saw or heard.  How can we be sure if others contradict us and there's no confirmation from the media that it ever happened?  We begin to doubt our perceptions, lose faith in what we think we know. 

The "providing false information to the victim" facet of gaslighting is just a fancy term for lying.  Obama and Hillary set a new standard for prevarication in 2012 when they said a video inspired the Benghazi attack.  They lied to the dead Americans' families, to the American people, to the U.N. General Assembly, to anyone who would listen.  For two weeks they stuck to the lie, expanded the lie, sent the video maker to jail to reinforce the lie, and would not back down until emerging evidence finally toppled the lie. 

The unchallenged lies continue to come rapid-fire with no repudiation from the media.  We can keep our doctor and plan.  ISIS is J.V., on the run, not an existential threat to Americans.  Hillary never sent or received classified information.  The $400 million (update: make that $1.7 billion) in foreign currency delivered to Iran wasn't ransom.  And the list goes on.  We're besieged by lies until we question everything and trust nothing.

But far more dangerous than lies are the media blackouts.  This is third-world stuff I never thought I'd see in this country.  Media blackouts are how dictators come to power, how tyrants defeat the people, and how despots keep control.

The national media has erected a wall of silence between Obama and Hillary and the American people.  It's a complete blackout, where mainstream media refuses to report anything that might damage Obama or hurt Hillary's chances of winning this election.  The press bias is so blatant, so widely recognized, that a foreigner, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, called them on it. 

Even more pernicious than the political blackout is the media void on the pending internet giveaway.  Oh, you didn't know we're handing off the internet?  Well, how could you?  Probably the biggest story of the century, and it's 100% buried.

Fact is, Obama's handing off our internet to foreign interests.  That's right: in less than three weeks, the United States will abdicate control of the internet.  Yet the only sound from the  press is crickets.  Oh, there's an occasional article acknowledging the ICAAN transfer but telling us not to worry – Russia, China, Mexico, or the U.N. would never censor the internet.  Again, journalistic malfeasance endangers democracy and our Constitution. 

The government and our media use gaslighting to destroy our moral compass, control elections, and silence opposition.  And now they're using it to steal the 2016 presidential election.  They've pulled out all the stops for this race because if they can grab this one, its game over. 

Thus, we see polls that show Hillary in the lead despite her never-ending scandals.  Of course, we can't question these polls – only tin-foil hat, conspiracy nuts doubt the numbers.  Yet stories like this and this keep popping up.  And pollsters are outed with exposés like this one. 

But why would they manipulate polls?  Well, to demoralize Trump supporters, for one – to depress turnout.  But the bigger reason is to set up voter fraud.  Shhh!  How many times must they tell us?  There is no voter fraud.

The truth is there are many more stories of voter fraud than I can reference in this article, stories like this one.   Or backup plans, as you can see here.  And then there's good old-fashioned ballot box stuffing.  The story at the link details how Judge Newcomer wrote, "Substantial evidence was presented establishing massive absentee ballot fraud, deception, intimidation, harassment and forgery."  

So no, you're not imagining it.  Our government is indeed lying to us, straight up.  You've witnessed it firsthand time and again.  And yes, the once free press is interfering in our election by shielding Hillary from scandals.  Those scandals are conspicuous by their absence in the media.  And yes, the polls are being manipulated.  And yes, there is widespread voter fraud.  Trust your perceptions; follow your instincts.  You're not wrong.

In the final act of Gaslight, a Scotland Yard detective, Brian Cameron, exposes Gregory's games, brings Paula back from the brink of madness, and arrests Gregory.  Our Detective Cameron is the alternative or new media.  Drudge, Breitbart, and others unmask our abusers, publish the facts, and bring us the uncensored truth.  How many will seek that truth and what we do with it remains to be seen.  Of course, whether this new media even exists after Obama hands off the internet also remains to be seen. 

In Gaslight's closing scene, Gregory reveals his motive to drive Paula insane: access to a hidden cache of priceless rubies.  As he's led away to prison, Gregory tells Paula of his monstrous obsession:

Between us all the time were those jewels, like a fire – a fire in my brain that separated us – those jewels which I wanted all my life.

So it is with our government, only their elusive treasure is power.  Ultimate control, absolute power burns like a fire in their brain.  It's what they live for.  Like Paula, the American people are obstacles to that power, hurdles to be overcome, defeated, vanquished.  They will use every trick, employ every weapon to reach their goal of tyranny.  Will we succumb to the mind games, be beaten into subservience?  Will we ignore the truth?

We watch the gaslights dim and flicker, hear footsteps in the attic...