Trump Derangement Syndrome, revisited
I’ve certainly tackled giving explanations for the TDS phenomenon before, but the topic came up again today in this thread (see especially the first comment and the many responses to it). So I thought I’d add a bit more.
I want to start by saying that the depth and breadth of the phenomenon defies a complete explanation. That’s not to say there aren’t many rational examples of reasons to dislike Trump; see the list in this comment, plus the added:
None of these, singly, explains it. Even all of these together don’t explain it. They do not explain the absolute visceral bile, the intensity, the insanity, the tendency to foam at the mouth and act irrationally, stupidly, murderously.
Some people merely dislike Trump and won’t vote for him – but we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about those who believe he is the personification of evil, and that it is therefore virtuous and right to hate him with every fiber of their beings. Often, they’ve been macerated in propaganda to that effect, and it takes root and then builds and builds with every new “fact” about him. He’s a rapist. He’s corrupt in the financial sense. He’s a liar. He a bigot and white supremacist. He murders innocent people and rounds up old abuelas to send them back to their doom. The fact that he really often is rude and a bully adds to the reasons to hate him, but that’s not the root of it.
I also submit that people who suffer from TDS ordinarily know others who share the sentiments, and they reinforce each others’ belief system. Especially for women, there’s often an extra layer of Trump reminding them of an abusive or otherwise upsetting man in their lives, perhaps a sibling or father or uncle or boss or date or boyfriend or ex or co-worker or fellow student. Someone by whom they felt victimized. But although it may be the case that more women exhibit TDS – after all, more women than men are Democrats – it is by no means confined to women.
Before TDS, there was Reagan DS and Bush DS, and let’s not forget Palin DS. But TDS is more intense and more widespread, in part because Trump really does have an abrasive personality and seems to take delight in stirring up antagonism.
What to do if you’re confronted with a loved one or friend with TDS, and it’s become a big problem between you? I would suggest a therapist except for the fact that finding an unbiased one would be quite a task these days. So I think you should go to the Braver Angels site and start reading. You can even join, although you don’t have to do so in order to get the benefit of what they have to offer. If you find anything helpful there, use it and perhaps even show it to the TDS sufferer in your life. Pay special attention to this, as well as this.
And good luck. You’ll need it.
neo, you make a good case on how Trump’s unique (very unique) personality could exacerbate the DS portion of TDS, but my sense is that’s not it. I think you’re right to relate it to RDS and BDS (and Palin and Romney and…).
Over the past several decades a lot has changed to ramp up and amp up political opinions in the U.S. and Rush Limbaugh and FoxNews played no small part in the changes we see. Prior to Rush, Democrats had a monopoly on colloquial messaging. So they could mostly be convivial in their attacks on Republicans. In popular culture Republicans were portrayed as rich, entitled, uncaring elitists and no one did anything to erase that stereotype from the culture. There were also some jabs at Leftists (smelly hippies, Meathead on “All in the Family…”), but even Archie Bunker almost certainly voted Democrat.
FM radio was the culture. It’s where the cool kids hung out so the Left was taken completely unawares when an unknown from Cape Girardeau, Missouri started building an audience on AM radio that would eventually match Johnny Carson’s numbers. And, suddenly, there was real money in spouting off about politics for 3 hours a day. Conservatives tend to take insults and attacks relatively calmly, especially humor. Many on the Left do not. I think so much of this “DS” is the Left’s response to the Right becoming effective messengers. When it was just William F. Buckley for an hour on Sunday morning, when nobody was watching, the Left let it go. They still made fun of William F. Buckley, but they didn’t take it personally because Buckley didn’t encroach on the culture, which the Left believed they owned.
And, eventually, Rush led to Roger Ailes and FoxNews and the Left really went insane. And now podcasting, which the FCC cannot control. Look at the intense vitriol towards someone as unthreatening as Dr. Jordan Peterson
It seems to have been ramping up steadily for over 40 years. An analogy to a spoiled toddler throwing a tantrum is not only apt, it may be more than an analogy and be precisely what is going on. Spoiled toddlers who always get their way don’t lash out. Why bite the hand that’s feeding you if it’s feeding you everything you ask for? Had there been a Rush Limbaugh and FoxNews when Ford was in office I think Ford Derangement Syndrome would have been as off the charts as what we see today. Many, many on the Left do not have well reasoned views and lose control in the presence of any effective opposition. I think what we are seeing is the nature of the Left as it has always been, reacting less and less sanely as the lies of the left are confronted more and more effectively.
Prior to his entry into politics, Trump was not even a curiosity to me. I’m not a television watcher, so I had no interest in his TV career. I knew about his mixed success as a casino owner, as the figurehead for other enterprises, many of them failures, as a developer and real estate magnate, as someone famous for being famous.
When he entered politics, it was like watching a political immune system go into a cytokine storm. That made it interesting. When I saw the alignment, the attacks, the sustained, focused efforts, the absolute in-the-tank behavior of the media, well…..it made me sympathetic to the character I normally would have been disinterested in, had disregarded because he is not at all like me, in values. But seeing him stand up under this highly-coordinated, sustained and unfair attack – that had me respecting his character.
I think TDS is at least partly, maybe mostly, the product of subjecting suggestible personality types to a relentless psychological campaign. I think it’s reflective of how our modern media society is geared, how it operates. But for me, my support of Trump is based purely on his performance as a politician and policy maker. His interests align in many ways with mine, with it comes to this country.
I never got the COVID jab and was never tempted to. The more it was flogged, the more I looked closely at those flogging it, and said ‘no way’. It’s much the same thing. Suggestible personality types were targeted and inundated with fear messaging, to bend them into compliance, in an immoral way.
With Trump, it’s hate messaging.
Ronald Reagan was also known as The Teflon President. The Dems tried to throw mud at him, but mostly it didn’t stick.
…many on the Left do not have well reasoned views and lose control in the presence of any effective opposition. — Rufus
Effective opposition: Many of the left leaning electorate, or even middlemen and women care, or think they care, about policy issues. But the leadership is comprised of a bunch of fraudsters who are only interested in building a political machine. Being expert manipulators of people, they know the weaknesses of the human psyche and have exploited the media in accordance with that.
Sarah Palin rose to some fame in Alaska because she blew the whistle on some literal fraud in her state. Plus, she was a walking contradiction of the feminist ideal. She wasn’t that effective of an opponent, but relatively easy to ridicule.
People tend to forget Newt Gingrich who was smart and gained early notoriety by busting Speaker Wright for fraudulent book sales or the like. When he took control of the House, he became public enemy #1. Prior to Gingrich, the Dems owned the House. For 40+ years IIRC.
The Democrat machine is a huge structure built out of lies. One can’t merely tear down a couple lies here or there, and do much damage. But imagine some effective opponent who can tear down dozens of lies over and over. The whole thing might come crashing down. George Stephanopoulos working for the Clintons understood that repairing the lie structure must happen within minutes or hours of the damage, or the damage might spread.
Neo, thank you very much for the link to Braver Angels. Signed up.
Women tend to be verbal, and now women are particularly educated, but much more in what passes as liberal arts than STEM.
I think women judge others more on verbal skills than men do.
Notice how corporate speech and academic speech have changed in recent decades as women gained majority in institutions.
I think many women judge Trump as stupid based on his speech, and they dislike the coarseness since they have marioneted in modern academic speech.
I think TDS is at least partly, maybe mostly, the product of subjecting suggestible personality types to a relentless psychological campaign. I think it’s reflective of how our modern media society is geared, how it operates.
That’s a large part of it.
Aggie (7:34 pm) said: “When he entered politics, it was like watching a political immune system go into a cytokine storm.”
It’s not an analysis, but it was in no way trying to be an analysis. What it is, is the best in-a-nutshell vivid description of Trump’s entry into USA (and even world) politics that I have seen EVAH.
Hats off to Aggie!!
MJR and Aggie: ” “When he entered politics, it was like watching a political immune system go into a cytokine storm.”
But recall also that at the beginning of the 2015/16 campaign, the liberal/leftist news media thought it was a joke and they provide extra media access to Trump that the other 15 or 16 R candidates did not get. The media were thinking they would get higher ratings by profiling the “fool” or the “arrogant” SOB, etc. Then as the Trump message, especially on immigration and “you don’t have a country if you don’t have a border”, and the general MAGA philosophy, took hold, the media realized they were adding fuel to the fire that eventually consumed them. They were tricked, and no one likes to be tricked in that way.
Related:
“Crisis management” (DPOTUS style)….
“Did Senator Mark Warner Just Call for a Military Coup”—
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/amy-curtis/2025/12/03/mark-warner-military-coup-n2667312
Pouring gasoline on the flames is the tried and true M.O. of the “Just burn it all down” Party.
I’ve often mentioned prior Dem campaigns, as they target Bush & Reagan & Palin & Kavanaugh. A bit of Charlie Kirk. TDS is misnamed because it’s the Dems, not the target, who are Deranged. So it’s Dem Derangement Syndrome, and as Trump leave the political scene, the Dems will became Deranged about Vance or DeSantis or whoever is the Rep candidate.
The Derangement is a product of the Dem Demonization Strategy. This DDS is exactly the relentless psychological pressure to demonize a flawed human. Similar to the DDS used against Israel & the Jews. All bad, all the time, with bad outcomes because they’re bad, evil, they want the bad outcomes.
Please consider it part of the Dem Demonization Strategy, so it can be addressed more honestly and discussed. And so those who do it can be laughed at, especially media & Hollywood figures.
Barry M @ 1:24:
I don’t know what to make of Warner. IIRC, he started out as an elected Republican, then changed parties. Granted, a very large percentage of voters in his state (VA) are Democrats, but they are concentrated in the D.C. suburbs across the Potomac from Washington. And much of the rest of the state votes Republican, which implies that he changed because of political persuasion, not just to get more votes.
Would “drama queen” fit?
Make that “malevolent drama queen”.
(Come to think of it, that designation would probably describe much of the Democratic party.)
File under: It’s my party and I sure as hell can demonize—and play at outraged, DERANGED moral indignation—if I want to…(and if there’s nothing to be outraged about, well…just invent it…).
I rather suspect that Trump wears two faces – or rather, has two personas, one for private, with his family and intimates, and the other, public persona which he has used for decades as a businessman and TV personality. The private persona is mild, sweet, a good and loyal friend, but the face that he puts on for the public is the brash, confrontational, loud one.
I have no certain way to verify this – just looking at Trump as a writer, and someone who often has to appear to an audience as someone “bigger” than I actually am. His close family and his long-time staff appear to be very close and loyal to him. I have read stories for decades about how he quietly did good things for people in temporary trouble. I suspect that he is, one on one, a very nice person – but puts on the brash façade for public consumption.
…which raises a rather interesting question:
Warner-Kelly in 2028?
Kelly-Warner?
Hmm. Not if Kamala has ANY say in ANY matter. (OTOH, when did Kamala have any say in any matter?)
…Yer right, no way. Not “diverse” enough a ticket…** and probably—don’t laugh—too “compos menti”…well, everything is relative .
**Unless one, or both, of ‘em decide to declare themselves “brown” and/or “trans”…
A counter point – if there was no such thing as TDS, Trump would not be president right now.
TDS pushes Trump’s enemies to oppose him relentlessly in ways that are dishonest, corrupt, and very often crazy. The backwards result of this is that it actually shields Trump from criticism. He knows it. Reference the “I could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot someone” comment from 2016.
A huge chunk of the electorate right now won’t believe any criticism of Trump. I don’t really blame them. Why would they? After Russiagate, fine-people-gate, the Ukraine impeachment, Hunter Biden laptop-gate, the whole E. Jean Carol affair, etc., etc., etc., you can’t take anything that the mainstream media says about Trump seriously.
And that’s before you get into the Biden/Harris administration lawfare, which I believe was a big factor in discrediting Harris and her party in the general election.
So now, when Trump does things that really are sketchy, like pardoning crypto kinpins and central American drug lords (yes, he did that this week too), even Trump skeptics like me take the mainstream reporting with a grain of salt because we know that it has been misleading, incomplete, and often flat out false with such allegations before.
So TDS has given Trump a layer of Teflon that would have made Ronald Reagan blush. It says here that but for this TDS-created defense mechanism, there’s no way that Trump, with all of his faults, would have won the GOP nomination in 2024, let alone prevailed in the general election.
From my perspective that’s really not such a great deal for the GOP. We could have had a candidate and a president who does not have Trump’s faults and limitations, but instead we’re stuck on this ride for the next three years, and after that we’ll most likely have to deal with the most partisan progressive federal government of my lifetime.
Do you realize how strange that last graf is?
(I realize it makes a kind of sense, indeed it does…but on which planet?)
Come to think of it, not just the last graf…
For every action there’s a reaction, what no one counted on is Trump. The damage has been done.
Tommyjay and Rufus,
It’s Power.
Barry Meislin – We’ve actually seen this movie before. Nearly the entire legacy of the second Trump administration will be washed away by a string of executive orders signed by which ever Democrat wins in 2028 on the first day of their administration, just as Joe Biden did to the legacy of Trump’s first term in January of 2021. Then woke, DEI, and the whole package will come roaring back with a vengeance. All of the precedent on executive power that Trump is expanding will will come back to bite us in the rear end. The filibuster won’t make it either, so you can say hello to our 51st and 52nd state, as well as at least four new Supreme Court justices.
Then the right will have to come to terms with the fact that Trump’s new voters only show up if Trump is on the ballot and that, without those voters, the GOP and the right are actually in a worse position than they were before 2016.
And what will we have to show for it? After Trump’s first term, we had three new conservatives on the Supreme Court, so that was something (something significant). This term, we have the extension of the 2017 tax cuts (again, not nothing), but what else? Executive tariffs that are damaging the economy and likely to be struck down by the Supreme Court anyway? An unpopular war with Venezuela? Good feels from owning the libs for a few years?
And then the GOP will have to confront the reality that just about any Republican would have also delivered tax cuts and conservative supreme court justices.
For the Machine Marxists, it’s about power. Trump is leading a direct – and successful – campaign to reveal and halt their corruption and treachery. And it comes just as they were so confident of their “fundamental transformation of society” that they dropped the liberal mask behind which they had long hidden.
For the bien-pensant followers, it’s about identity.
Who *are* you when your professors and thought leaders have been revealed – or revealed themselves – as bottomless nihilists and illiberal fascists?
When your comics are nasty but no longer funny, and the cultural products you use to signal status are obviously debased and empty?
When your roofer and plumber not only earn more than you despite your college degrees – but actually are smarter than you, more perceptive, more obviously in touch with reality? When your sophomoric word games no longer impress anyone?
When the blacks and other minorities you believed you were championing now talk about advancement based on merit, how welfare has damaged their communities, and accuse *you* of running an identity-based plantation?
When the pose of superiority, liberality, enlightenment in which you’ve wrapped yourself since you first watched “All in the Family” or “Maude” in your childhood – when it is no longer certain, or believed by the rest of society, who see you as an out of touch scold…
(When you did everything the “right” way for your smart set, but your children and grandkids are obvious failures – blue-haired, heavily tatted future cat ladies whose arrested development is poorly covered by various semi-medical fig leaves – “he’s on the spectrum” – while the kids of the people you’ve long sneered at seem to be doing fine…)
Does anyone expect any less furious a response?
Trump has precipitated mass mid-life crises across several post-war generations simultaneously.
TDS is acceptable. Un acceptable is the hatred that springs from it. Not hatred of Trump, who cares? But the hatred of anybody who voted for Trump, or against Hillary, Joe, or Kamala.
The media is responsible. If MSM would broadcasts Trump’s success’s he could be most popular ever. Instead, they ignore success, or spin it as failure, or divert to latest b.s.
As mentioned above, big story about pardoning “drug dealer politician”. Immediate reaction is to wonder if the guy been railroaded. Then read a little deeper, no money trail for the supposed hundreds of millions, convicted on testimony from drug dealers who got a deal.
Plenty of youtube and instagram man on the street interviews of protesters and Trump haters who repeat, out of ignorance, media spin re Trump felonies, fine people, rapist, racist etc.
They either reject the truth when told, or are surprised by it.
And CC™ provides an example of a non-terminal TDS (or Ahab Ideation (AI) pursuing The Great Orange Whale).
Is there an emoji for spittle faced rage?
Everything you’re anxious about—and I agree that there is much to be anxious about—has, in fact, already been done.
By the Democrats.
So are we worried that they’ll do it AGAIN?
Worried that they’ll do it worse this time (if there is a “this time”) than last time.
Worried that Trump will be causing them to go “six ways to Sunday” (or whatever day of the week)?
Worried that they’ll TURN vindictive? Hateful? Dangerous? Enraged? Destructive?
Afraid that they’ll become dishonest? “Transformative”? That they’ll cheat? Steal? Lie?Grift? Embezzle? Intimidate their opponents? Lawfare ‘em non-stop? Incarcerate ‘em? Ruin ‘em?? Character assassinate ‘em? Assassinate ‘em full-stop?
(Virtuously, it goes without saying…)
They did all this and they threaten to continue doing it. Not JUST threaten. (One can’t believe ‘em about almost everything but THIS you CAN believe—see, they just gotta “save the country”…)
Without Trump, they’d be doing it NOW. They know it and they understood that he stands in the way of their goal of total power. It’s why they had to destroy him, after all. It’s why they’re still trying to; trying every lousy trick in the book to achieve his defenestration. Decapitation.
“Standing athwart history yelling STOP” is pretty good, rhetorically. But Trump’s actually doing it. With his pretty darn good team (compare ‘em with “Biden”’s clutch of cabinet clowns).
Trump is, as has been noted, the counter- revolutionary, trying mightily to undo what the Democrats were hoping could NOT be undone; trying to stop their destructive dreams; trying to reverse steam on their intentional sabotage and subversion of the country, its institutions and its citizenry.
Trying to build and create hope and opportunity in contrast to the only “hope” offered by his opponents—hope of the arsonist, the gangster, the nihilist. (IOW despair, fear, loathing and unstinting hate.)
Yep, the Democrats know that Trump is standing in the way of their orgiastic Gotterdammerung.
They fully understand it.
Why can’t you?
@F
There were actually two Warners in Virginia politics, one Republican and one democrat.
John William Warner III (February 18, 1927 – May 25, 2021) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a United States Senator from Virginia from 1979 to 2009 as a member of the Republican Party.
TDS at this point in time has almost nothing to do with DJT and EVERYTHING to do with the “sufferer.”
People literally HAVE lost their minds. They are NOT adults rooted in reality.
Stable, responsible adults, by this point in time, know they have been lied to repeatedly by the MSM (which means the Ds/Leftists who control the traditional media).
The people who repeatedly told them to get experimental mRNA shots that were “safe and effective” that clearly are neither.
That there were hundreds of federal agents at the Capitol on J6.
That no law enforcement officers died that day, only protesting citizens.
That doors were held open by Capitol police and protestors led to the Rotunda, where they walked inside rope lines and took pictures.
That there was no Russia collusion of substance in the 2016 election.
Which is what the Mueller report, after three years and thirty two million dollars, reported.
That the basis of that investigation was completely fabricated.
That Crossfire Hurricane came from the HRC campaign. Her attempt to save face, so she could run another day.
The question is what causes them to elect to live in the fantasy world they chose to live in?
Because that is what they chose.
Why are they so susceptible to propaganda?
Why do they remain so wedded to their long proven erroneous beliefs?
Why are they so threatened by acknowledging that they have been played completely?
This behavior is not atypical of early adolescent females, which to me means, at a minimum, they are emotionally immature and have poor ego development.
That their ‘belonging” is of primary importance to them, and trumps rational thinking and adult civilized, respectful behavior in society.
Can’t find it now. Thought it was on Insty. A long post from an actual therapist who has treated people with TDS. They have sufficient difficulties in their emotional lives, and whatever might be downstream from there, that they seek treatment and it turns out it’s really, really sick TDS. But, according to the poster, most of his colleagues think TDS is just dandy so there’s not going to be much help there.
I’ve been cut off by a couple of folks who didn’t think I hated Trump enough. Didn’t accept the most foolish accusations…? You’re gone. Little or nothing to do with policy.
One was a women I’d worked with in a field project in a dicey area in the Sixties. She’d hung around my partner, also a woman, in our little team. And thus was around me when certain difficulties threatened and then faded. Thanked me then. Cut me off since. You’d think…. Hell if I know.
@Ray
My mistake! You are absolutely right, and I don’t know how I made that mistake since John Warner was Governor of Virginia, a US Senator, and married to Elizabeth Taylor for awhile. In my defense I will say that I was out of the country for much of the time John Warner was in the Senate. Thanks for the correction.