by George McClellan, America Outloud:

Younger folks who are unacquainted with the 1944 black-and-white movie Gaslight, a gothic romance thriller starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, and Angela Lansbury, can be forgiven for not understanding that this movie is the root source of the term now in vogue.

Many of our famous catchphrases come from literature and movies. In this case, a bad guy tries to convince his wife she’s crazy and losing her marbles by manipulating the gas illumination in their home as a device to convince her she’s really nuts. A good guy saves the day, and all ends well, unlike our lying politicians constantly telling us what we saw or heard wasn’t what we saw or heard. That’s gaslighting!