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In article <MPG.427e7a711ed907b798babb@news.eternal-september.org>,
AlleyCat <katt@gmail.com> wrote:

"Trump Derangement Syndrome" Is a Real Mental Condition

All you need to know about "Trump Derangement Syndrome," or TDS.

"Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a mental condition in which a
person has been driven effectively insane due to their dislike
of Donald Trump, to the point at which they will abandon all logic and reason."

Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com, wrote a piece in
the Los Angeles Times in 2016 that broke TDS down into
three distinct phases or stages:

"In the first stage of the disease, victims lose all sense of
proportion. The president-elect's every tweet provokes a firestorm,
as if 140 characters were all it took to change the world."

"The mid-level stages of TDS have a profound effect on the victim's >vocabulary: Sufferers speak a distinctive language consisting
solely of hyperbole."

"As TDS progresses, the afflicted lose the ability to distinguish
fantasy from reality."

The Point here is simple: TDS is, in the eyes of its adherents, the
knee-jerk opposition from liberals to anything and everything
Trump does. If Trump announced he was donating every dollar he's ever
made, TDS sufferers would suggest he was up to something
nefarious, according to the logic of TDS. There's nothing - not. one.
thing. - that Trump could do or say that would be received
positively by TDSers.

The history of Trump Derangement Syndrome actually goes back to the
early 2000s - a time when the idea of Trump as president was
a punch line for late-night comics and nothing more.

Wikipedia traces its roots to "Bush Derangement Syndrome" - a term first >coined by the late conservative columnist Charles
Krauthammer back in 2003. The condition, as Krauthammer defined it, was
"the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people
in reaction to the policies, the presidency - nay - the very existence
of George W. Bush."

Added Krauthammer:

"Some clinicians consider this delusion - that Americans can only get
their news from one part of the political spectrum - the
gravest of all. They report that no matter how many times sufferers in
padded cells are presented with flash cards with the
symbols ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, Time, Newsweek, New York
Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times - they remain
unresponsive, some in a terrifying near-catatonic torpor."

(If you don't realize the idea of TDS or BDS is - in no small part -
meant in a tongue-in-cheek manner then, well, you may well
have it.)

Trump allies believe that TDS is worse than ODS or BDS - by a lot. Wrote >conservative pundit Bernie Goldberg on Real Clear
Politics in early 2017:

"Before the election, the victims of TDS routinely compared Donald Trump
to Hitler. Guess what. They're still doing it. Articles
in respectable publications written by professors at elite universities
are warning us to be on guard, that a Trump presidency
could imperil democracy-as-we-know-it and may very well spell doom for >American civilization.

"On election night, as it became obvious that their worst nightmare was
about to come true, some libs fainted. Some vomited. Many
more threatened to leave the country, but I'm pretty sure none actually
did. As Donald Trump might say in a tweet: so sad!"

The truth is that TDS is just the preferred nomenclature of Trump
defenders who view those who oppose him and his policies as
nothing more than the blind hatred of those who preach tolerance and
free speech. Viewed more broadly, the rise of presidential
derangement syndromes is a function of increased polarization - not to >mention our national self-sorting - at work in the country
today.

We no longer live around, work around or pal around with people who
think any differently than us. We watch cable news that
affirms what we already think. We read ideological "news" sites that
tell us how good our side is and how bad the other one is.
And on and on and on.

Is it any wonder then that we are increasingly willing to lump those who >disagree with us into the "deranged" category? To say
that those who don't share our views are mentally deficient in some way?

What does it say about a President - and about a country - when the
standard response to those with whom you disagree is that
they must be crazy? Nothing good, for sure.

=====

Many clinicians, political commentators, and members of the public have >speculated upon the mental health of President Donald
Trump. Indeed, over 70,000 people self-identifying as "mental health >professionals" have signed a petition declaring that "Trump
is mentally ill and must be removed." In sociological terms, the
"medical gaze" has been hitherto focused on President Trump, and
to a lesser extent his ardent supporters.

However, in recent months, many have been questioning the direction of
this "medical gaze." In fact, more and more people are
suggesting that this "medical gaze" should be reversed and refocused on >President Trump's most embittered and partisan opponents.
Some have even suggested that these opponents are experiencing a
specific mental condition-a condition which has been labelled
"Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS).
What does DSM-5 say about "Trump Derangement Syndrome"?

Mental illnesses are officially classified in a dense and dry book
published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) known
as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth
Edition (DSM-5). This book contains 947 pages and lists
hundreds of mental disorders; TDS is nowhere to be seen. Similarly, a
review of scholarly databases such as MEDLINE and Google
Scholar reveal no academic papers on this alleged syndrome. Officially
at least, TDS is not a real, diagnosable, or treatable
mental disorder.

That said, medical anthropologists and critical sociologists have >convincingly argued that DSM-5 is a flawed document. Indeed,
social scientists have long recognized that there are numerous "folk >categories" of mental disorders that are considered real
conditions by the general public, even though they are not recognized as
such in the DSM. These include categories such as
"burnout" or "nervous breakdown."

As such, lack of official recognition does not mean that TDS is not a
real mental condition.

Lay Understandings of "Trump Derangement Syndrome"

There is no shared lay understanding of TDS, mainly because it is a folk >category rather than a professional category. As such,
there is currently much armchair speculation about the nature and
existence of TDS, without consensus.

The name itself expl//icitly suggests a "syndrome," which the Oxford
English Dictionary defines as "a characteristic combination
of opinions, emotions, or behavior." Several commentators have run with
this, putting forth suggestions about opinions, emotions
and behaviors characterizing TDS.

Shared amongst these is a notion that the everyday activities of
President Trump trigger some people into distorted opinions,
extreme emotions and hysterical behaviors. Well-known writer Bernard
Goldberg gives supposed behavioral examples of TDS among
Trump's political opponents, including fainting, vomiting, students >retreating to "safe spaces" and others demanding "therapy
dogs." Political commentator Justin Raimondo focuses on opinions,
language and cognition, writing in the LA Times that "sufferers
speak a distinctive language consisting of hyperbole [leading to] a
constant state of hysteria... the afflicted lose touch with
reality."

Such forms of highly emotional reaction could be something akin to the >fainting and screaming characterizing American Beatlemania
in the 1960s. Unlike the Beatles, however, the extreme emotional
reaction alleged to characterize TDS is not based on adoration
and admiration, but on fear and loathing.

Contrariwise, many others ridicule the notion that TDS is anything but a >malicious slur term used to discredit and delegitimize
criticism of President Trump. For example, CNN's Chris Cillizza may
speak for many when he stated: "The truth is that TDS is just
the preferred nomenclature of Trump defenders who view those who oppose
him and his policies as nothing more than blind hatred."
Likewise, Adam Gopnik writes that "our problem is not TDS; our problem
is Deranged Trump Self-Delusion."

In other words, there are polarized opinions about the nature, reality
and existence of TDS.

Conclusion

The wider public may be unaware that psychiatrists and social scientists >spend considerable time and energy behind closed doors
pondering over the existence and reality of mental conditions. This has
led the APA to revise the DSM five times since 1952,
considerably expanding the list of official mental disorders with each >revision. As far as I am aware, few psychiatrists are
currently arguing that DSM-6 should contain TDS as a mental disorder.

That said, in its official definition of mental disorder, the DSM-5
states that "a mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by
clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion >regulation, or behavior... mental disorders are usually
associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other >important activities."

Many have argued that some people have been seriously disturbed and >distressed by the policies, speech, behavior, and tweets of
President Trump, so much so that it has affected their cognitive,
affective, and behavioral functioning. Such people may need
mental health support. As such, further research is necessary to
investigate the extreme reactions toward President Trump, in the
same way that researchers investigate other extreme social phenomena,
such as Beatlemania or the like. This will shed light on
the reality of this emerging folk category that has been labelled by
many as "Trump Derangement Syndrome."

TDS as in Conservation Party of Canada members and
REform party of the United Kingdom members
and
Australia Labour PArty wanting a Republic of Australia.
--
Member - Liberal International This is doctor@nk.ca Ici doctor@nk.ca
Yahweh, King & country!Never Satan President Republic!Beware AntiChrist rising! Look at Psalms 14 and 53 on Atheism ;
Australia -Save the Nation from Donald Trump - Vote out Albanese!

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