Trump Derangement Syndrome: Going Sane

This is a round table discussion by three friends who were accused of having Trump Derangement Syndrome. It’s defined as having an overly emotional reaction to Trump. The person having it is paranoid and fails to perceive reality. The implied solution – possibly hospitalization and certainly a round of psychotropic drugs, probably powerful antipsychotics (does this remind you of what Russia does to dissidents?).

Mary Godfellow: My friend knows the lawyer who represented a woman accusing Trump of raping her at Epstein’s digs when she was a 13 year old virgin. She was screaming. Trump said “Shut up. Do you want the same thing that happened to Sally Sue to happen to you? Sally had disappeared. I get really upset by this. I was molested and threatened when I was little.

Sandra Smith: I wasn’t molested and I get upset hearing this. So he is not just a pervert, he is sadistic. Happy that a little girl who wouldn’t cooperate was killed. THAT’S why my skin crawls looking at him.

Harriet Holmes: My husband is a construction worker. I heard that Trump hires blue collar men to work for him and when they are done refuses to pay them, saying “So sue me.” He drinks out of gold cups on the backs of those men. Their bodies give out in their old age. I am infuriated by this.

Sandra Smith: I directly saw Trump ridicule and imitate a disabled man in the audience. This disgusts me so much I want to throw up. I do anyway when I look at him. But our president doing this in public? I don’t care what he has “done for our country.”

Mary Godfellow: What upsets me a lot is how he tries to get out of everything he has ever done. He’s like a mafia king – Teflon Don. When we heard the tape of him bragging about grabbing women’s genitalia he claimed it was a fake made up voiceover. His constituents called it “locker room talk.” The guy who broadcast that tape got fired. Why is that? Are we to have no moral standards for anyone holding office ever again? Sure, men in office have had affairs – but THIS stuff?

Because of these women becoming upset and emotional they have Trump Derangement Syndrome. Republicans using that ploy are draconian. Here’s why: Long ago Scott Peck MD wrote a book called People of the Lie in which he said families of schizophrenic children deny the child’s emotions and perceptions. If, for example, a kid were to say “Daddy is molesting me” (unlikely because saying the truth brings on punishment) the mother would say we need to get you some therapy because that’s not happening.” Trump Derangement Syndrome does the same thing. If you see something terrible about the man, and you react to it emotionally, you are crazy.

I say having emotional reactions to outrageous behavior on that man’s part is a form of going sane. Having no reaction, demanding people not react so they “look sane,” is going crazy. There is such a thing as pathological calm.