In the current issue of The Week magazine, Editor-in-Chief William Falk writes that historian Henry Adams once defined politics as the “systemic organization of hatreds.” It’s difficult to escape that feeling in today’s political climate. “Who you hate,” Falk wrote, “is who you are.” Political scientist Rachel Bitecofer adds “Partisanship is a hell of drug, especially when it’s cut with a heavy dose of existential fear.”
There are lots of burning issues to fuel the flames of our existential fears today. The COVID-19 pandemic that has made America “great” again. The emboldened white supremacist movement. Racism. The crisis in education from kindergarten through college. The millions of Americans who have been laid off while Wall Street is booming. A fast-rising rate of evictions as the result of people not able to pay their rent. The darkest cloud over all of these earth-bound crises is the continually increasing impacts of the climate crisis. The human-caused spike in global temperatures that is contributing to an increasing number of climate disasters — hotter heat waves, drier droughts, bigger storm surges and greater snowfalls.
What’s not to be worried about?
A letter to the editor on Aug. 31 stated that “The Trump Derangement Syndrome pandemic continues to rage through Daniel Brown in his latest My Turn ‘When Trump’s spell wears off.’” (Brown’s My Turn was one of the best op-eds in the Recorder’s recent spate of really well-researched and well-written My Turn essays.)
The letter writer opined that “Any birdbrain knows that Trump makes every day about us and the great USA.” This view of reality prompted me to look for the meaning of “derangement.” The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “the state of being completely unable to think clearly or behave in a controlled way, especially because of mental illness.”
Wikipedia describes Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) as a term for criticism or negative reactions to United States President Donald Trump that are perceived to be irrational, and have little regard towards Trump’s actual policy positions, or actions undertaken by his administration. The term has mainly been used by Trump supporters to discredit criticism of his actions, as a way of reframing the discussion by suggesting that his opponents are incapable of accurately perceiving the world.
The origin of the TDS term is traced to psychiatrist and conservative political columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer who originally coined the phrase Bush Derangement Syndrome in 2003 during the presidency of George W. Bush. That “syndrome” was defined by Krauthammer as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.” Krauthammer won the Pulitzer Prize for his column in The Washington Post in 1987. He was a weekly panelist on the PBS news program Inside Washington from 1990 until it ceased production in December 2013. Krauthammer was also a Fox News Channel contributor and a nightly panelist on Fox News Channel’s Special Report with Bred Baier.
The first use of the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” may have been by Esther Goldberg in an August 2015 op-ed in The American Spectator; she applied the term to “Ruling Class Republicans” who are dismissive or contemptuous of Trump. Their numbers appear to be growing as we edge up to Nov. 3. Krauthammer, in an op-ed harshly criticizing Trump, commented that — in addition to general hysteria about Trump — the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was the “inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and … signs of psychic pathology” in his behavior.
Fareed Zakaria, an Indian-American journalist, defined the syndrome as “hatred of President Trump so intense that it impairs people’s judgment.” Zakaria is the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a weekly column for The Washington Post. CNN’s editor-at-large Chris Cillizza called TDS “the preferred nomenclature of Trump defenders who view those who oppose him and his policies as nothing more than the blind hatred of those who preach tolerance and free speech.” Pointing to previous allegations of Bush Derangement Syndrome and Obama Derangement Syndrome, Cillizza suggested, “Viewed more broadly, the rise of presidential derangement syndromes is a function of increased polarization — not to mention our national self-sorting — at work in the country today.”
Accusing Daniel Brown (or any other “liberal”) of the Trump Derangement Syndrome covers an inability to find legitimate words to rationalize, much less condone, the immoral, unethical and criminal actions of this president. Any birdbrain knows that Donald Trump makes every day about him. Not us.
John Bos has moved to Greenfield. Civil comments and questions are invited at john01370@gmail.com.