Anyone subjected to moonbats is familiar with Trump derangement syndrome. The condition renders liberals more irrational than ever and even deranges people who were previously known as conservative, destroying the credibility and evidently the minds of figures like Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg. But does TDS represent an actual psychiatric disease like those listed in the DSM? Practicing psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert says yes:
Clinically, the presentation aligns with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders: persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulation and impaired functioning. Patients describe sleepless nights, compulsive news checking and physical agitation. Many confess they can’t stop thinking about Donald Trump even when they try.
That is what they call living rent-free in someone else’s head. Here is where it crosses the line into psychosis:
They interpret his every move as a threat to democracy and to their own safety and control.
Moonbats allow these delusions to ruin their lives:
One patient told me she couldn’t enjoy a family vacation because “it felt wrong to relax while Trump was still out there.” Others report panic attacks or trouble sleeping after seeing him in the news.
It isn’t really about Trump:
For many, he functions as a psychological screen onto which unresolved fears and insecurities are projected.
Recall that Bush Derangement Syndrome preceded TDS.
Call it “obsessive political preoccupation”—an obsessive-compulsive spectrum presentation in which a political figure becomes the focal point for intrusive thoughts, heightened arousal and compulsive monitoring. …
From a diagnostic standpoint, it overlaps with obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and trauma-related syndromes.
As with transsexual psychosis, TDS has gotten out of control due to collective reinforcement:
Social media, partisan news outlets and aspects of modern therapy have turned emotional validation into moral virtue.
Liberals encourage each other to believe their hebephrenic hatred of Donald Trump proves they are good people.
Again like transsexual psychosis, a psychiatry industry saturated with moonbattery results in professionals making the problem worse:
Therapy, once a space for cognitive restructuring, has in some quarters become an echo chamber for emotion. Rather than challenging distorted thoughts, many therapists affirm them, mistaking empathy for effectiveness.
Rather than indulging patients in their moonbattery, therapists can do more good by encouraging “cognitive reappraisal” — although they run the risk of alienating patients who may denounce them as white nationalist Christofascistic threats to Our Democracy.
TDS is a problem for all of us:
We can’t have a healthy democracy if half the country experiences the other half as a trauma trigger.
If Trump is the personification of evil, anyone who agrees with him is evil. Yet Trump’s political success is largely due to taking no-brainer positions that no reasonable person could disagree with: defending the border from foreign invasion, cutting down on wasteful government spending, replacing DEI with merit, stalling the nuclear weapons program of Islamic maniacs who chant “Death to America,” not allowing men in women’s restrooms and sports, et cetera. It follows that in the addled minds of moonbats, people with reasonable views are evil.
Imagine these neurotic loons consolidating control of the government nationally as they have been doing in California and New York, and you can see why finding a cure for TDS is of paramount importance.
On a tip from Varla.
