On the cause of "Trump Derangement Syndrome"

[Magical Realist]

The favorite one-liner comeback for every MAGA fan--"Oh you just have TDS." Really? Please elaborate. What causes such a widespread and seemingly incurable syndrome? Why would so many normal Americans be so unanimously against one person who happens to be the President? Should they all get psychiatric help? Do we need to get the CDC involved to investigate this widespread and mysterious epidemic?

Well here's one person's explanation for why Trump is so hated by so many. And it raises an even more interesting question: how can so many of his followers, presumably normal people with common ethical standards and even religious faith, claim to love him fully knowing the kind of person he is?

"I have absolutely no problem admitting to anyone that I loathe Donald Trump. I hate the guy. But it has nothing to do with politics. He could support every single policy that I support, and I still wouldn’t be able to stand him.

Because he’s a piece of shit. Always has been, always will be.

My opposition to Trump has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with my rejection of a horrible, bottom-feeding, sorry excuse for a human being. I wouldn’t want to work for him. I wouldn’t want him as a neighbor. I wouldn’t want him as a friend. I wouldn’t even want him to be a friend of a friend.

And the truth is, most MAGA folks wouldn’t either. If you took politics out of the equation and they ran into someone just like Trump in their daily lives, they wouldn’t want anything to do with him.

A rich guy from New York City who’s a weak, insecure, egotistical clown who wears ill-fitting clothes to cover up the fact that he’s overweight, constantly whines about how everything is “unfair,” is obsessed with gaudy gold accents, and demands everyone around him kiss his ass and tell him how wonderful he is — they wouldn’t be able to stand him.

Long before Trump took over the GOP, he was a narcissistic piece of garbage.

He’s cheated on all of his wives, has been sued for fraud multiple times, stole from his own charity, created a fake university to scam people out of money, used racism while trying to block a Native American casino, and built his business reputation on a foundation of screwing small businesses and contractors out of money.

Oh, and in the middle of all that, he just happened to be close friends with Jeffrey Epstein for over 15 years.

There’s nothing in Trump’s past that showcases him as a good person in any way. He’s obviously been a horrible husband. He doesn’t really have friends. There’s no record of regular church attendance or of him spending any meaningful amount of time helping a charity or doing anything at all for anyone but himself.

Donald Trump’s entire life is nothing but a textbook example of a self-absorbed, selfish, petty, unethical, corrupt, lowlife con artist who cares about nothing but himself. Every decision he makes has one and only one consideration: Does this benefit Donald J. Trump?

That’s it.

And if I’m wrong, by all means, I invite anyone reading this to prove it. Provide the evidence that shows Trump has ever cared about anyone but himself. Show me where he’s been a good husband, father, friend, or an ethical business partner. Show me where he’s dedicated any part of his life to something that didn’t benefit him.

I’ll wait. But I’ll be waiting a while, because that evidence doesn’t exist.

Donald Trump has been, and always will be, a selfish, self-absorbed, insecure, egotistical, pathetic excuse for a human being — and that’s why I wouldn’t ever support him, even if he backed everything I supported."----By Allen Clifton, Facebook post

I would add that in 2011 he came out on The View and started the whole birther movement, falsely accusing President Obama of not being born in the US. This was long before he decided to run for president. It's what made me realize right away what of stupid jerk this guy is. Then add all the crap we've witnessed ourselves--like making fun of a disabled reporter, showing disgust for wounded veterans, mocking John McCain's hero status as a POW, slandering women of color as not being from this country, admitting to sexual assault by "grabbing women by the p#ssy", and then of course the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election and inciting an anti-government riot at the Capitol. That seals the deal for me. He is shit and the sooner he vanishes from history the happier I will be!

[Syne]

Well, if you irrationally hate someone so much, at least you own up to it.

[Magical Realist]

Well, if you irrationally hate someone so much, at least you own up to it.

How is any of what I posted irrational? Everything is a completely logical and normal reaction to something he actually did and said. The question is, why do you love him so much?

[Syne]

No, it's really not. But you'd have to be rational on the subject to have any hope of understanding that.

[Magical Realist]

No, it's really not. But you'd have to be rational on the subject to have any hope of understanding that.

?

Please elaborate. How are any of the things listed that Trump did and said not bad things? And how normal and rational is it to defend bad things anyone does?

[confused2]

I'd have thought the best (only?) defence is that good people do bad things and bad people do good things.

[Magical Realist]

How does a so-called "good" person do so many bad things? Are we not judged by our words and actions?

[Syne]

No, it's really not. But you'd have to be rational on the subject to have any hope of understanding that.

?

Please elaborate. How are any of the things listed that Trump did and said not bad things? And how normal and rational is it to defend bad things anyone does?

Pointless. You would not understand.

[Magical Realist]

No, it's really not. But you'd have to be rational on the subject to have any hope of understanding that.

?

Please elaborate. How are any of the things listed that Trump did and said not bad things? And how normal and rational is it to defend bad things anyone does?

Pointless. You would not understand.

IOW you got nothin. Just as I thought.

[Yazata]

The favorite one-liner comeback for every MAGA fan--"Oh you just have TDS." Really? Please elaborate.

I'd define TDS as irrational hatred for President Trump and often for those of us who voted for him and who broadly speaking support his agenda.

What causes such a widespread and seemingly incurable syndrome?

I'm inclined to perceive the democratic party as a coalition of the alienated. I mean, who are the democrats?

Historically, they have been the working class, alienated from the bosses. White Southerners, alienated after the Civil War. Immigrants alienated from the native born. Jews (for 2000 years the prototypical outsiders and the heart and soul of the critical intellectual left from Marx through NYC's "red diaper babies" almost to today) alienated from the Christian majority. All groups with angry grievances, people who believed that they had been treated wrong.

Then in the first decades of the 21'st century, the locus of alienation shifted, creating a political earthquake that we are still feeling today, all around the world. The white working class was abandoned as were the Jews. "Race" became a new focus and racial minorities pushed to the center of attention, alienated as they were from white America. Feminists, alienated from what they perceive as the patriarchy, and homosexuals, alienated from the straight majority made "gender" another new focus of alienation alongside "race" as "class" receded. As the baby-boom "student movement" replaced the World War II generation of university professors, academia veered left, alienated from what they perceived as the uneducated, crude and violent masses in "flyover country" (not so long ago the idealized "workers" until their factory jobs were outsourced) that damnably failed to follow the professors' pied-piper march to an imagined utopia in a cleansed and transformed America. The one constant through all the change was the sense of having been treated wrong, the anger and the grievance.

So what causes TDS? I'd locate the cause in the psychological alienation that seemingly afflicts most democrats, certainly their most rabid base. The democrats are a loose and often shifting coalition of people who feel like outsiders in somebody else's world. And that exacerbates any tendencies towards depression, fear and anxiety, or any other psychological pathology that they might otherwise have had. TDS just gives them a convenient and in their circles socially approved target to blame for all their problems.

Why would so many normal Americans be so unanimously against one person who happens to be the President?

Normal?

Should they all get psychiatric help?

I'm not a big believer in the efficacy of psychiatry, so maybe not. What they should do is find some interest that cuts across our present-day social divisions. That is one reason why I love Starbase and the Starship program so much. It attracts males, females, black, white, gays, straights, and people from just about every country on Earth. All brought together as one, into one giant family, by their shared dream of humanity's future in space.

The basic principle is this: In order to have community as opposed to a mere collection of social atoms at each others' throats while occupying the same space, the things that people share in common must be stronger emotionally than the divisions that drive them apart. That's why the politics of alienation and grievance is so fundamentally corrosive to American and the rest of Western societies.

Well here's one person's explanation for why Trump is so hated by so many. And it raises an even more interesting question: how can so many of his followers, presumably normal people with common ethical standards and even religious faith, claim to love him fully knowing the kind of person he is?

One reason is that we don't agree with the TDS sufferers about "the kind of person he is". I see him as courageous and determined, strong and transformative. He's boastful, sure. To a fault. But that's better than Barack Obama, the very picture of smugness with that little smirk of his. Trump's gross at times, but he's very funny (better at stand-up than anyone on late-night TV) and he comes across as a classic male and I like that. Much better than what our brave-new-world of gender-redefinition offers us here or here.

But that said, I think that the majority of MAGA voters support President Trump because we support his vision. We love our country and don't want to cancel our founding fathers or their legacy, nor do we want to feel embarrassed about our patriotism. We don't want the United States to follow Europe on a path of managed decline of what were once great nations. Even if the decline is led by the 'best and brightest' from Oxbridge, it's not the best path to take. Personally, I have trouble thinking of a single policy of President Trump's that I disagree with. (The jury's still out on the Iran war.) With MAGA it's typically policy and political vision rather than irrational negative emotion. We don't expect President Trump to be a perfect human being, something that's just an ideal that's probably never existed in real life, we just voted for him because his policy vision was way better than any of the alternatives.