Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) has been described in a variety of ways, with the Derangement Syndrome first applied to Donald Trump in a Spectator piece in August 2015, describing "Ruling class Republicans," (which are more commonly known now as NeverTrumpers) as those most afflicted.
By December 2016, after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, Justin Raimondo over at LA Times, described the stages of TDS that we have subsequently noted in the media, among Democratic politicians, and liberals across the nation.
Those stages include:
In the first stage of the disease, victims lose all sense of proportion; The mid-level stages of TDS have a profound effect on the victim's vocabulary; Sufferers speak a distinctive language consisting solely of hyperbole; As TDS progresses, the afflicted lose the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality; In the advanced stages of the disease, the afflicted lose touch with reality. Opinion is unmoored from fact. Life resembles a dark fairy tale in which the villain – Trump – is an amalgam of all the worst tyrants in history, past and present, while the heroes –Trump's critics – are akin to the resistance fighters of World War II.; This is the final stage of the TDS epidemic: violence against a democratically elected leader. Unless a cure for TDS is found, this is where we are headed.
In April 2017, CNN's Fareed Zakaria asked if TDS "is a real phenomenon, where people's hatred or anger towards Trump is so intense that it impairs their judgment."
THE TDS CONTAGION SPREADS - RUINING MARRIAGES
While I agree with the Spectator writer that establishment Republican talking heads and pundits were the first to start exhibiting the initial symptoms of TDS, in my opinion the actual contagion was brought about by the liberal media, as shown in a video compilation published in December 2017, seen below.
Today I read a piece in the NY Mag's 'Intelligencer," titled "Donald Trump Is Destroying My Marriage," which highlighted multiple points: 1) The media blames President Trump for liberals that have become unhinged (by titling the piece that way); 2) Liberal women are far more unhinged than liberal men (One describes her husband as a Trump hater, but is angry because he doesn't hate President Trump enough).
As reactions to the social media promotion of the piece shows, some actually thought this just had to be a parody piece, but sadly it isn't. The most disturbing part of this very lengthy article, which details the accounts of two couples, and four individual women, is how the women admit, readily, that after the 2016 presidential election, they changed, they became different, they sabotaged their marriages, and yet, they still blame President Trump for the conflicts in their marriages.
While readers are encouraged to click the link above and read the entire piece and share what they find to be the most significant aspects of these stories, I will highlight what struck me in the quotes shown below, indicating how unhinged the liberal women became after the 2016 election.
Sarah, SW, in her 30s:
• Where we both agree is the problems — the kind that make you think you need to separate — began after the 2016 election, when I ramped up my political activism.
• What’s funny is talking about the Trump election makes me more emotional than the end of my marriage.
• Through grad school I’d been busy, but I was still around for dinner. I’d still sit on the couch and binge-watch TV. After the election, though, the moment our kids were in bed I’d hop on the computer, or on the phone. Politically my husband and I are completely aligned, but he was lonely. He felt I was always gone, and even when I was there, I was preoccupied.
• It breaks my heart whenever he says he’s lonely. But again, I’m like, You don’t have to be lonely if you want to put up street signs with me.
Samantha and John, mid-50s, NYC:
• Samantha: We’ve been married 25 years, and we’re both lefties, and he thinks Trump is as much of a blight on the world as I do. But throughout the hiring of the Steve Mnuchins of world, the white privileged men, and with every single Cabinet member and Jared Kushner and Ivanka, he had much less rage than I did. Eventually he was like, "We can’t go to bed talking about them and wake up in the morning with you still spewing about them."
• Samantha: For him, it’s a huge learning curve. It hasn’t broken up our marriage. But the rage that I feel, the toxicity I exhibit is something he often doesn’t understand.
• Samantha: Part of what causes fights is that I don’t want to hear his side, and he hates that. Mostly I tell him he needs to think about this more clearly before he talks to me about it, and then I walk away. I’ve heard his side for 30 years. I’m ready to hear new points of view. Change can’t happen if we keep talking about excusing behavior.
• John: Pre-Trump, we got into it now and then, probably on something about women’s reproductive rights. But it was a fraction of what’s happened since. Back then, Samantha was also much, much, much less engaged in political and civic life. She’s gone from zero to 60. And while I think I hate Trump as much as she does, Samantha is much angrier and almost more obsessed with it.
The last example I am highlighting is the reason why I say that many liberal men are far less unhinged than liberal women, as the story of Craig and Debbie shows. Craig is the liberal, and Debbie is a Republican.
To make a long story short, they weren't married, but were in a relationship. He despised Donald Trump's behavior, she liked Trump's polices, they argued, but later in their telling of their story, Craig said "A few months after the election, we both decided, Let’s stop watching news and stop talking about this until we can calm down. Debbie also taught me a term that helped put things into perspective — confirmation bias. I began to recognize my own blind spots and that I was not allowing Debbie to feel safe with her perspective. When she started to talk, I’d cut her off and try to make my point. But as I started to practice deep listening, she began to feel less judged. And actually we began to have a deeper connection. We got married last January."
That right there is what has been missing in every other story in the NY Mag article, and others like them that have been written since the 2016 presidential election. Craig, a liberal man, was able to step away from the ledge, acknowledge that others have a right to their own opinion and to vote for who they wish.
In the female liberals' quoted above, and in other similar articles describing how the 2016 election damaged their relationships, they always blame President Trump, even as they describe their own descent into Trump Derangement Syndrome, and highlight their own changes in behavior.
BOTTOM LINE
The moral of the story here, is that the liberal man was able to acknowledge the part he was playing in destroying his relationship, yet all the liberal women blamed everything and anything, including President Trump, even as they detailed how they caused the destruction of their relationships.
These liberal unhinged women with TDS are in the the advanced stages of the disease, where "the afflicted lose touch with reality," and where "opinion is unmoored from fact."
Below: Hysterica NP - A Leftist Medication for Trump Derangement Syndrome
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