Lately, I have been noticing a lot of people, especially journalists and cable news commentators, using the term gaslight.
For someone who loves both words and old movies (but more on that later), this was a new idiom for me. Sort of similar to the “big lie” Nazi propaganda technique, gaslighting describes a concerted effort to influence people in a way favored by rabble-rousers, despots and habitually dishonest politicians.