Beware Trump Derangement Syndrome
The Grand Old Party lately has spoken of a mind-altering condition that affects critics of Our Tremendous President: Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The idea, of course, is that those afflicted with TDS can only see the many, many, oh-so-multitudinous negatives in the man that it makes them want to scream.
For the record, I have experienced this syndrome and know it as a place of gut-clawing agony. When dealing with a man who acts like a middle-school bully, you’re going to lose your cool once in a while. But for those still trying to act like adults in America, avoiding TDS should become a thing, if only for our collective peace of mind.
Let’s look at two examples.
TDS must explain the breathtakingly stupid decision by Kathy Griffin to pose with a bloody mask of the president, as if holding — jihadist-style — his severed head.
Melania Trump summed it up well: “As a mother, a wife, and a human being, that photo is very disturbing. When you consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it.”
Word up. Suggesting that it would be cool to decapitate the president — or anyone, for pity’s sake — is also damaging to the idea that your side has the better path forward.
Like so many news stories these days, Griffin’s posting of the failed commentary and CNN’S decision to fire her was quickly supplanted by another bizarre moment, also fueled by TDS: The president’s coining of a new word — “covfefe.”
No doubt, there are plenty of reasons social media delighted over “covfefe.” Having a meme allows for so much creativity and fun, and it certainly made for good times to see what folks came up with. And then there’s the reality that many people feel a thick weariness at Trump’s willful coarseness — even when he gets the words right. The apparent slip at just after midnight wonderfully supports the assumption that this is a man so out of his league and over his head and under water and off his rocker that he can’t even let Twitter’s autocorrect do its work — “press coverage.” (Try it. It worked on my phone.)
Trump could have won this one. A few hours later he tweeted out what could have been a fun moment of self-deprecation. “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’ ??? Enjoy!”
But then he let his spokesman, Sean Spicer, argue to reporters that, “The president and a small group of people knew exactly what he meant.” You know, secret insider stuff that for whatever reason the president of the United States believed wouldn’t attract attention as long he posted it really late at night.
Really, it’s exasperereatewing. Doesn’t Trump want to win? The moment also suggests that TDS isn’t just for critics; it even applies to those who work for the blustery buffoon, and of course it does.
For the Trump White House, every morning must feel like a hangover fraught with questions about what all went down the night before.
Here’s the thing about TDS: It could ruin us. Especially journalists. We ought to be on guard every time the bandwagon takes off.
A recent piece by New York Times columnist David Brooks explains this well. In the beginning of the Trump presidency, the baggage he brought with him from his remarkable campaign led his critics “to set our outrage level at 11. The Trump threat was virulent, and therefore the response had to be virulent as well.”
But, Brooks argues, as Trump’s presidency grinds on, mostly off the rails, we see that Trump hasn’t become a great Satan systematically dismantling democracy. In fact, he’s “gotten smaller and more conventional.”
Yet, “the ‘resistance movement’ still reacts as if atavistic fascism were just at the door, when the real danger is everyday ineptitude.”
Of course, Brooks made that observation shortly before Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, an important caveat. Nonetheless, keep the overall point in mind the next time someone hands you a bloody prop, or a covfefe, to post for the world to see.
These are Kafkaesque days. Don’t let them lure you to the dark side of TDS.
Email editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett at plunkett@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @chuckplunkett