Let us give Conor Friedersdorf credit for the most creative, as well as bizarre, reason for keeping Donald Trump from winning the presidency again this year. Friedersdorf says it is not about his past record or policies. No, according to him, the reason that Trump must be defeated in 2024 is because he drives people crazy with Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Friedersdorf makes this assertion in Thursday's Atlantic magazine that Trump must be kept from returning to the White because he makes some people very, very uncomfortable in "The Strongest Case Against Donald Trump."
First, Friedersdorf defines Trump Derangement Syndrome and even admits that those suffering from it are, well, deranged.
...one must go so far as to acknowledge that the anti-Trump coalition has sometimes engaged in unreason, hysteria, and abuses of power. The name for this phenomenon is Trump Derangement Syndrome.
In 2003, the conservative writer Charles Krauthammer coined the term Bush Derangement Syndrome to describe “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency––nay––the very existence of George W. Bush.” The idea wasn’t that any opposition to Bush or his policies was deranged, but rather that Bush hatred was causing some of the president’s critics to indulge in preposterous claims, such as asserting that he’d known the 9/11 attacks were coming.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is similar but more intense and widespread. I’m 44. I remember extreme hatred of numerous politicians, including Bill Clinton, Bush, and Barack Obama. But nothing comes close to the reaction to Trump’s presidency. Many Americans hold as an article of faith that Trump is a tool of Russia and a fascistic danger to democracy who ought to be thrown off the ballot in all 50 states and imprisoned for life. They believe, therefore, that pretty much anything critics do to oppose him can be excused as a righteous means to a vital end.
Friedersdorf was off to a good start until he came up with his solution to TDS... Stop Trump because he caused the derangement.
Good leaders don’t derange a huge faction of the country they are leading. Good leaders bring out the best in the people. More than anyone, Trump brings out the worst in Americans.
That’s the strongest argument against Trump. It isn’t about his policy agenda, or his character, or the legal charges against him, or his failure to make America great again from 2016 to 2020, an era of COVID lockdowns, peak cancel culture, spiking murders, and riots.
It isn’t about him. It’s about us.
So because Trump makes some people go bonkers, such as Stephen Colbert who recently dropped all pretense at comedy and went full Trump rage, he must be stopped?
One might think that journalists would be the calmest customers in trying times...but the anti-Trump audience demands a full-throated freakout on a regular basis.
