Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is proving to be a long-lasting affliction that holds its victims in a state of mental paralysis long after the ‘danger’ has seemingly passed. The victims number in the tens of millions and are spread across the globe. Trump may be residing in Florida, but his influence remains undiminished.
An upside to the TDS disorder is that it allows the brainwashed and brainwash-able to be clearly differentiated from those of sound and rational mind. This is valuable information.
When Donald J Trump began his political career he encountered significant opposition. The resistance to his new career followed a very familiar trajectory. First, he was ignored. Then he was mocked. Then he was attacked. Then he won.
Leading the derision and attacks were late-night ‘comedy’ hosts who play for cheap gags and constantly require a villainous target for their flimsy routines. The writers have hours of expensive TV time to fill and their job is made easier by a reliable go-to punching bag. The bombastic, uncouth, unscripted entrepreneur was the perfect muse.
While is expected that liberal, California-based, show-biz types would pretend to be offended by the brash conservative New York property developer, they were not alone in the anti-Trump crusade. Mainstream news channels flocked to the cause, and roughly 95% of all Trump media coverage throughout his political foray was demonstrably negative. The attacks of the serious news people were, however as flimsy as the jokes. CNN presenters specialised in distorting off-the-cuff remarks to make Trump sound ridiculous, or racist, or sexist, or whatever the outrage crowd might have positioned at the top of their daily hit-list. Trump’s only crime was his choice of words, which were often misquoted, taken out of context, selectively edited, and spun for effect.
To an individual capable of free and independent thought and resistant to Trump derangement syndrome, the relentless barrage of attacks posed a range of intriguing questions. Why does the establishment hate that man with such passion? Does he pose a threat of some kind? Why is the coverage so uniform in its condemnation? Why are newsreaders from competing channels all reading from the same script? Who could be coordinating such a campaign? What else is going on? What am I missing here?
To the average easily-convinced television watcher, Trump assumed the form of a ghastly and terrifying monster as TDS took hold. He was Emmanuel Goldstein during the Two Minutes of Hate in Orwell’s 1984. The face of a diabolical villain was displayed on a TV screen, and it was the patriotic duty of all citizens to scream pure hatred for two minutes of each day. It was therapeutic and demonstrated full allegiance to The Party. The consumers of televised news were similarly trained to hate Donald Trump. Many were unaware it was even happening. Trump derangement syndrome seeped into their consciousness. The Trump name became a trigger for high blood pressure and shouting soon ensued.
The truth is that Trump made a fool out of the commentariat. His detractors looked extremely stupid in Nov 2016. Despite the odds being stacked against him, despite all the negative press coverage, despite the mountain of money thrown at his campaign by both Republicans and Democrats, Trump won the election in one of the biggest betting upsets of all time. CNN had Hillary Clinton as a 91% chance on election night. Apparently reputable newspapers went even further, this poor deluded journalist went for 99%. And they were all spectacularly wrong. Reality emerged to slap the face of pollsters, political experts, armchair pundits, news anchors, Washington insiders, and odds-makers on a historic November evening.
The Evolution of Trump Derangement Syndrome
After the tears were shed, and blue haired women screamed into the sky like banshees, how did the losers react to their embarrassment? They doubled down on the hate of course. Trump was Hitler, end of discussion. His supporters were fascists and Nazis, white supremacists, evil enablers who should be beaten and killed on sight. This level of hatred gave wings to the ANTIFA mobs who circled the edges of Trump rallies accosting and terrorizing conservative families as they departed.
In 2020 the mainstream media was handed a new stick to beat Trump with. The networks played a deceitful game that involved personally blaming Trump for every American Covid-19 death. Leading voices on the left would go further to suggest that Trump had personally murdered hundreds of thousands of his citizens, and that did not include those poisoned when he commanded his followers to drink bleach – Jonestown style. The word pandemic was missing from their script. People were dying across the globe. Was every political leader suddenly a mass-murderer? The rhetoric of hate swelled like a crescendo leading up to the 2020 election. And even with the outpouring of hate, it still took The Heist of the Century to defeat the incumbent.
Trump has now left office, but the hatred and fixation remain. Those that have been trained like Pavlov’s dogs cannot simply unlearn this process overnight. They are now perhaps even more susceptible to future programming. They await their next target, Manchurian Candidate style. Who will they scream at next – Ted ‘Cancun’ Cruz, Ron DeSantis, or Josh Hawley perhaps? How far will the brainwashing extend? What normal human thought patterns might be overrun? Are they now primed and ready for the next Goldstein to be presented?
Here’s a little test to run on your friends and associates. Drop the Trump name into a future conversation. Express mild admiration. He was certainly not the perfect president, he made poor appointments and failed to achieve many of his objectives. But he managed to accomplish quite a lot in four years. The establishment did move to thwart his endeavours, as evidenced by the failed impeachments and other assorted witch-hunts, but he was certainly no authoritarian, or a very unsuccessful one. Dictators are supposed to seize power illegally and crush dissent. None of this occurred under the Trump presidency.
The first weeks of the new 2021 administration look positively dire in comparison. While the Biden presidency will be noteworthy for its catastrophic incompetence and predictable brevity, the Trump years were stable, prosperous pre-Covid, and much was achieved. Corruption was exposed, peace deals were signed, borders strengthened, and international relations reset. Trump put America first, stood up to the malevolent influence of Communist China, tore up unfavourable trade deals, and built a movement that will last for generations. He united races, won the support of the working class, tackled the dominance of big pharma, started no wars in contrast to his four predecessors, and the list of achievements goes on.
It took The Heist of the Century to have him removed. This is not a work of fiction. The cabal of conspirators openly admitted their coordinated efforts to Time Magazine. They bragged about the scope and audacity of the effort required to ‘fortify’ democracy as they quaintly called it.
How do your acquaintances react to your balanced Trump view? How many will acknowledge his good deeds, and how many have been brainwashed to hate without end? This will be a worthy social experiment. Humans are susceptible to propaganda. Normal, loving folks around the world, with no direct connection to US politics whatsoever, spent years screaming at their television sets in unison. What a bizarre phenomenon.
The same useful idiots have also been trained to fear the virus. Healthy people in the prime of their lives are right now terrified of dying from an ailment with a 99% recovery rate. They are statistically more likely to die choking on their food. The death rate for people under 50 is the same as the common, annual influenza. That’s why we must engage and expose the lies of the propagandists at every turn.
Trump derangement syndrome is not the only recent attempt at mass brainwashing, and it provides us with a helpful case-study in mass persuasion.
G G Novack – Political Pundit, Derangement Researcher, Counter Propagandist