TDS: Not such a crazy affliction after all
Wear it proudly
I’ve always been amused by supporters of President Donald Trump who take extraordinary offense at harsh disapproval of their guy. Sometimes critics of the 47th president’s words are so caustic and the tone so overwrought that members of MAGA Nation are at a loss to defend him.
So they came up with a dismissive term to fend off the Trump haters: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). The term is said to have its roots in a 2003 column by the late conservative writer and psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer, who offered it as an explanation for reflexive opposition from the left to just about anything then-President George W. Bush said or did.
More than 20 years later, it remains a clever slight of hand. It’s as if Trump supporters are saying, “There’s nothing wrong with Trump. If you don’t like him, there’s something wrong with you.” In other words, Trump supporters are trying to discredit his critics by branding them as unable to critique Trump’s actual policies (e.g “he was joking” or “they’re just mean Tweets … get over it, snowflakes”) Evidence be damned, MAGA types insist Trump’s detractors react emotionally rather than rationally.
Popularity of the term among Trump supporters reached such a fever pitch that one knuckle-headed Minnesota state senator even introduced a bill to classify TDS as a mental illness. It failed and the lawmaker was later arrested for allegedly soliciting a minor for prostitution.
As Trump’s bizarre and erratic second term unfolds, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that not only is TDS a lazy man’s counterpunch to Trump’s critics, but that even if during Trump’s first term some of their emotional opposition to the Orange Rage Machine seemed overwrought, Trump’s actions over the course of the last eight weeks have demonstrated that their fevered resistance was entirely justified.
As some have predicted, Trump’s second term will be far worse even than his first. Consider this partial list of actions Trump has taken, or has promised to, and how he has fared:
Trump has started a bizarre trade war that will spike inflation, rattle the markets and, many economists believe, spark a recession. How ironic since he campaigned aggressively against his Democratic opponent last year, citing at every turn, “runaway inflation.”
He has turned Canada from our closest ally on the planet to a nation that looks like it’s in a hostage tape. Not only has he proclaimed he’d like to turn our neighbor to the north into the 51st state, but he has branded a trade agreement he himself signed with Canada six years ago as “unfair.” Furthermore, he has also talked of a strategic U.S. takeover of Greenland and retaking the Panama Canal by force if necessary.
In order to placate his wealthy donors (and perhaps himself as well), he is pushing to make permanent the tax cuts passed in his first term. At the same time, he has deputized the world’s richest man to fire — randomly, it seems — tens of thousands of federal workers he deems unnecessary. So our fiscal crisis is so grim that we must visit agencies and fire government workers willy-nilly, or things are so fiscally rosy that we deserve more tax cuts? I’m confused.
But worse of all, in his second term Trump has hired only loyalists to be in his administration, not people with any expertise in how the government works. The goal seems to be to destroy as many of our institutions as possible and upset the world order: harass and sue media outlets for unfavorable coverage; call for the impeachment of judges whose rulings harm Trump; cut off federal research funding for “woke” elite universities; seek revenge against law firms that represented his adversaries; help dictators by dismantling the Voice of America; abandon natural allies like Ukraine in favor of murderous autocrats like Putin; and pardon violent criminals who beat up police officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Speaking of VOA, in case you haven’t see it, the Wall Street Journal eddy board penned an outstanding editorial on the subject of defunding VOA and other voices like it:
A U.S. Retreat in the War of Ideas (gift link)
As one commenter on my post put it:
Of course, Reagan, whom Trump supporters insist they love, would see it differently. As the Journal points out, Reagan understood soft power and the power of ideas, whereas Trump understands those concepts about as well as your average mob boss.
And there is Project 2025, the radical right-wing blueprint by The Heritage Foundation for a second Trump term. The Trump campaign disavowed it before the 2024 election, but the ousted director of Project 2025 said Trump has implemented the program “beyond my wildest dreams.” Fittingly, the architect of Project 2025 is now Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Most disturbing of all is that Trump has begun to defy the courts, as when a federal judge recently ordered him to turn around two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members. As I have written before, the courts are our last line of defense:
While this list above is not even half of the outrage, it is fair to say that TDS, as Charlie Sykes has written, has proved to be “prophetic.”
Sykes continues:
So, I have to ask what remains of the GOP:
You elected a convicted felon to the most powerful office in the world — broadly immune from accountability, and literally above the law in his official duties. WTF did you think would happen?
So I have to ask those who continue to support this man: do you think the half of the country that dislikes Trump still suffers from TDS? Are you having second thoughts about that branding? You ought to.
P.S. I’m still making progress in my recovery from a broken hip but my main obstacle to writing is the inability to get comfortable while sitting. I’ve lot so much muscle mass and fatty tissue in my buttocks that sitting feels like bone on seat. That explains my infrequent dispatches. I’ll try harder. Meanwhile, if any readers have suggestions, I’m all ears.
Hopefully, re "bone on seat" this, too shall pass. Take care.
Take care of yourself first! From the very inception of TDS on Urban Dictionary, it was apparent to me that it was preposterous for Trumpers to boast about a term that was a measure of your discontent for the coward. It took little time for alternative definitions of TDS, which detail the affliction of someone who channels Trump as an avatar through which they spew daily drivel . No matter how bad it gets, it will always be the radical liberals that pushed all the buttons to make him fail. In their minds he will never falter, regardless of data . Perhaps an all-out Depression II would convince a few.