Trump Derangement Syndrome Is Worse Than COVID

COVID reminded us how fragile our personal safety was, our obsession with the Donald is the avatar of our inability to stay united.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016, the divisions that had been right in front of us, hidden in plain sight and charged rhetoric, became glaringly obvious. There has always been the Left/Right, Liberal/Conservative divide in America but for eight years, with Obama in the White House, those on the left side could at least pretend they were winning the fight.

In Chicago, we held a public radio Election Night party at Haymarket Pub & Brewery. It was packed. We had games planned, quizzes, comedy bits, music, all while celebrating what we all knew would be a victory for Hillary Clinton over the buffoon Donald Trump. As the night rolled on, the mood changed because it was not to be. No one in the room, the city, and in half of the country could fathom how Trump could have possibly won this election and that night two things occurred: the hugeness of the divide between Left and Right became overwhelmingly obvious and the country became obsessed with Donald J. Trump.

That obsession has not subsided. In fact, it’s worse than ever.

We’re reading a lot of think pieces this week about the invasion of Iraq, the longest war in American history, launched on the backs of lies and manipulated intelligence by a coterie of neoconservative criminals. We read these pieces while side-by-side reading about Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine without a hint of irony that George W. Bush and Co. were every bit as guilty as he is now. I remember the rage I felt during those early days of the Iraq War. I wrote about it so prolifically I was placed on a ‘No-Fly’ list for suggesting someone should bitchslap Dick Cheney (truth). My take on the Trump Derangement Syndrome from 2016-2020 was that it wasn’t that he was even close to as bad as those men who invaded the Middle East back in 2003 but he was ten times as embarrassing.

We were embarrassed that we nominated one of the most capable presidential candidates (in terms of intelligence, experience, and grit) than we had in decades and she lost to a loud, obnoxious fat-ass known primarily for a reality TV show and an ego that just seemed cartoonish. The other side loved it, not because they necessarily loved him, but because those they hated got owned.

The wall wasn’t built but not because of anything we did. The tax breaks he gave to the wealthy would’ve passed regardless of who the president was. He deported far fewer immigrants than did Obama. He botched the pandemic but so did everyone else. Beyond being an incredible embarrassment to the country, the worst thing Trump actually did was confirm the most conservative court (both in federal courts and the Supremes) that most of us has ever seen but certainly not that has ever been. We thought we were making faster progress and Trump’s very existence threatened that sense.

He has taken residency in our heads like a squatter we can’t legally evict. The media loves him because we can’t look away. They know that if Trump has a Hershey squirt in his pants, blames it on the Woke, and they make it a heads line, we (and I mean both we on the Left and we on the Right) will go completely bonkers, jacking up ratings, bulking up those ad rate cards, and forget about anything actually important out of our fear and loathing of an asshole with bottle-blonde wisps he calls hair.

If people were as obsessed with campaign finance reform as they are Trump, Citizen’s United would be eradicated. If people were as completely batshit about income inequality as they are about the Donald, we'd be living in a socialist utopia. Go to any well-meaning climate activist or free speech advocates and mention a MAGA hat and all of their bona fides are tossed out the window for the foaming mouth and crazy-eyed love or hatred for Trump.

Will he go to prison? I don’t care as long as he never gets to sit in the Oval Office again. Turn the effing page. Move on. He won, he lost, and yet he still occupies the national discourse. Was he worse than George W. Bush? Are you loopy? Of course he wasn’t and we let Georgie paint and hang out with Michele Obama.

Like an ex-wife you’d like to forget, get rid of the reminders, understand why things drive you nuts about her, and get over it. When you keep picking at that Trump-shaped scab, it just continues to bleed and we are a nation of scabby motherfuckers.