On Trump Derangement Syndrome

“It’s the biggest sociological reboot in American history, or perhaps human history: For this, the conformists among us will never forgive Donald Trump. For the rest of us, it’s a liberation of far deeper and lasting significance than the merely political.” (- Michael Hurd, below)

A post in The Neo-Liberal Drawing Room (May 5, 2025) shared this from Objectivist psychologist Michael Hurd. He began:

“Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS) refers to an unhinged hatred of Donald Trump and all things connected to him. To me, the fascinating question about TDS is not what those who succumb to it hate — but what they love. What they hate is obvious. But what do they love?

Hurd continues:

From my observation, people with TDS do not really love anything. What they suffer from is anxiety, of the deepest and most metaphysical kind. They must relieve their anxiety; and one thing — epitomized by MAGA — stands in their way. Their anxiety is a profound terror of reality. The reality they dread includes, but is not limited to, a world in which they must stand on their own two feet, think, judge and conclude for themselves. Donald Trump is like an oncoming Mack truck, set to collide with the nursery school delusion that one need not think in order to survive and flourish. At no time was this more evident than during the COVID era. It was THE defining moment which separated those with self-esteem from those without. Trump, especially his third run for President in 2024, became their touchstone of liberation from the ethically putrid, psychologically comatose universe represented by the competing dystopian universe of Fauci, Biden and the billionaire, state-connected totalitarians who pulled their strings.

Trump is a wholly difference politician that his opponents have still not figured out.

Consider two facts about Donald Trump. One, he absolutely always speaks with confidence and certainty. Fifty years in the public limelight and he has never blinked. NEVER. Two, he’s nearly always right. In the end, if not always at the time, he wins. His business and political careers are stories for the ages; and something tells me we have not yet reached the climax of his story. In our current era of subjectivity, meandering uncertainty and toxic femininity (yes, I mean that), Donald Trump stands as the antithesis of everything we are all commanded to hold dear — and he overcomes it. Often with a single Tweet. It all gives Trump the nearly superhuman aura of a mythical figure capable of doing the one thing that nobody can truly do, and that actually isn’t even necessary: saving us from ourselves.

Hurd then reaches a very interesting conclusion:

In the end, after all the dust settles on our intellectually and emotionally explosive era, Donald Trump’s greatest contribution will be: to have shown the experts were wrong. About everything: economics, politics, ethics, gender, philosophy, trade, climate change, the Federal Reserve, socialism, wokeism, everything. The Donald Trump era is “The Emperor Has No Clothes” fable on steroids, if not on crystal meth.

TDS’ers Psychology

“What do TDS types love?” continues Hurd.

People who loathe Trump do not love Communism. Communism is destruction, and it’s impossible to love Communism any more than a person contemplating suicide loves his noose, his gun or his poison. Nor do they love freedom. That’s a lie they tell us, and many of them lie to themselves.

What they detest more than they can express is the idea that someone can be free of the pack, in the deepest, widest sense of that term. In our era, Donald Trump is the utterly improbable white knight on horseback coming to rescue us from the falsehoods (woke, Pollyana, p.c., psychobabble, feminism, secular subjectivism, all of it) that have defined the last few generations, since the post-World War II era. Starting with the Baby Boomers right through the millennials and Gen Z. We were ALL exposed to the crap. Either we succumbed; or we voted for Donald Trump.

It’s the biggest sociological reboot in American history, or perhaps human history: For this, the conformists among us will never forgive Donald Trump. For the rest of us, it’s a liberation of far deeper and lasting significance than the merely political.

Comments

There were many good comments. I stated:

Check out ‘The UnPopulist’ and writers like Cato’s Walter Olson to see TDS in action. Very emotional and all bad-news-all-the-time. Just nothing good to say. I fear some of this is disproportionate to those who might be described as social misfits. The anecdote is to stay scholarly and focus on issue by issue, criticizing Statism and praising movement away from Statism.

There is much more to say. The main point is that the enemy is Statism, not Donald Trump or Republicans or Democrats. That is the premise upon which the current political situation should be evaluated. In this regard, the TDS, left libertarian, and Progressive Left factions should check their premises.

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