The Anatomy of “Trump Derangement Syndrome”

Wait, is this supposed to be the sane one?

I have a new piece up at The UnPopulist looking at Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s proposal to “institutionalize Trumpism” by creating a blueprint for Trump’s second administration—the plan he didn’t have in place the first time around.

I address the question of whether this is really the Trump agenda, despite his unconvincing disavowals. Of course this is his agenda. That’s what organizations like Heritage exist to do: provide an administration in waiting, staffed and ready to go. But that’s not what’s really interesting.

What is interesting is partly what’s in the agenda, which is worse than what’s reported. For example:

Another provision in Project 2025 has been described as an attempt to ban pornography. But it’s actually something more. Here is the key passage:

Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

“Pornography,” then, is not about dirty pictures—it’s about “transgender ideology.” Its targets are not Donald Trump’s former companions like Stormy Daniels—its targets for prosecution are “educators and public librarians.” Because Project 2025 began work before the Republican primaries, it was also intended to support the other prominent Republican option, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the whole “Moms for Liberty” pro-censorship agenda, which has also targeted teachers and librarians.

My readers know that I am no fan of “transgender ideology.” But I also oppose using the power of the state to target any “ideology,” that is, to target ideas. And we know from the way Ron DeSantis implemented this in Florida that it will be used to target homosexuals and to ban innocuous books and Norman Rockwell paintings.

But the real heart of Project 2025 is its attempt to stock the administration with die-hard Trump loyalists who will respond to his goal of making the presidency an autocratic office. The most interesting thing I found in researching this article was an analysis of how Trump in his first term was not stopped by the “deep state” of anonymous bureaucrats. He was thwarted by the “shallow state” of his own appointees.

Many Trump supporters argue—conveniently forgetting small matters like Covid and Jan. 6—that his first administration was not a disaster despite all the dire warnings. To the extent that his first administration was not worse, it is because he was largely stymied in imposing his will by men of conscience. A study of how the “shallow state” of first-term Trump appointees blunted his worst urges lists one of their main motives: “appointees saw themselves as constitutional guardians or the ‘adults in the room’ who could protect the country from Trump's potentially unwise or illegal directives.” Project 2025 is an attempt to ensure there will be no such “constitutional guardians” the next time.

Read the whole thing.

Heritage Foundation's Far-Right Project 2025 Will Guide Trump's Second Term

The Anatomy of Trump Derangement Syndrome

You might have noticed that when you make an argument like this, a certain type of person will immediately dismiss you with the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” or TDS. (Here’s Leonard Peikoff doing it. He suddenly popped up out of retirement to post an endorsement of Trump that doesn’t even mention January 6. You be the judge of how seriously you should take it.)

This is obviously a lazy attempt at deflection—a phrase invoked to avoid having to think about evidence of Trump’s unfitness for office. But I recently got a little more insight into the mechanism of how “Trump Derangement Syndrome” works and what it relies on.

You might notice that I had another very recent piece in The UnPopulist on Trump’s disastrous immigration policy. That wasn’t where I originally intended to publish it. It was rejected where I first submitted it, on the grounds that my portrayal of Trump’s policy seemed hyperbolic and even a “personal attack” on Trump. If you read the piece, you know that all I was really doing was just describing Trump’s actual statements and policies. If it seems hyperbolic, extreme, and over-the-top, that’s not my fault. It’s Trump who is saying outrageous things and proposing draconian policies. I’m just responding to that.

But this struck me as an example of how “Trump Derangement Syndrome” actually works in people’s minds. You hear it from die-hard supporters and random people on the internet. But I think it is already distorting some of the press coverage of this election.

Here is the problem. What Trump is saying and doing is so unhinged—for example, repeating wild stories that Haitian immigrants are eating dogs and cats—that if all you do is simply describe it, you are the one who sounds crazy.

Trump says, for example, that he will use the military to jail his critics. 

I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the—and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military….

The worst people are the enemies from within, the sleaze bags, the guy that you’re going to elect to the Senate, shifty Adam Schiff.

As a congressman, Schiff led the prosecution in Trump’s first impeachment trial.

Or maybe Trump says he thinks we should suspend the Constitution: “A massive fraud of this type and magnitude [i.e., the election he actually lost] allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

So you say, “Trump says he would suspend the Constitution,” or “Trump wants to send the military after ‘enemies within.’” Then your listener says, “Oh, come on, you’re totally exaggerating. You’re suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.” But in dismissing you, your listener is moving himself farther away from an accurate grasp of reality. He is the one becoming—dare I say it?—deranged.

You can see how maddening this is for those of use trying to keep our grip on reality.

Donald Trump has intuitively mastered the techniques of propaganda, which include the Big Lie—a lie so bold and sweeping that people believe it because they don’t think anyone would have dared to make it up—and also the Incredible Truth: a fact so outrageous that people refuse to accept its reality. If you do something mildly outrageous, people will become angry with you for violating the rules of decorum. But if you go way beyond that to do or say something completely insane, no one will believe you’re doing it—even as you do it right out in the open.

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The Death of Godwin’s Law

“Trump Derangement Syndrome” has its origins in “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” which was used to describe the truly hyperbolic reaction on the far left to George W. Bush—the sort of people who held up “Bush=Hitler” signs at protests. So the “Derangement Syndrome” line was developed as a defense against political hyperbole.

But what Trump realized is: What happens if you yourself embrace the hyperbole and go out and embody it? All the rules intended to keep political discussion productive by protecting against hyperbole then work to protect you—and to protect you precisely because you embraced the worst possible views.

This is the fate that has been suffered by Godwin’s Law. The internet adage coined by Mike Godwin in 1990 was originally just descriptive: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” But then it also became prescriptive: an injunction not to do that. The form in which I first heard it—which could not have been very long after Godwin coined it—was stated like this: The first person to compare his opponent to Hitler automatically loses the argument. A comparison to Hitler was considered an admission that you can’t answer the other person’s argument without resorting to hyperbole.

But if there’s one thing Donald Trump is good at—and I think there is only one thing he is good at it—it is probing for weaknesses in our cultural and political systems. He discovered that if you just go out and use openly fascist rhetoric, you can require your opponents to violate Godwin’s Law. You can make a response that is actually reasonable seem unreasonable.

So you can talk about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the country and foreigners bringing in “bad genes.” Have two of your chief supporters host and recommend an interview with an open Nazi apologist. Go onto a livestream with a guy who regularly hosts neo-Nazis. Talk about how you wish you had the kind of generals Hitler had. Refer to Nazis as very fine people. And then scream about how unfair it is when anyone points this out.

When I recently proclaimed the death of Godwin’s Law (also at The UnPopulist) this is what I meant. Godwin’s Law worked when racist and authoritarian ideas were championed only by a small and disreputable minority, when it was something no one in mainstream politics dared to state openly. But if they do state it openly, then the rule fails.

But notice one last thing. Anyone who uses this charge of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” needs to know that when we hear it, it’s pretty clear to us who has actually lost their bearings when it comes to Trump. This phrase is invoked to wish away the reality of Trump’s statements and policies and blind his supporters to reality. The paradox of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is that the phrase is used only by the very people who are suffering from it.

And it produces all the symptoms of derangement: forgetfulness, selective blindness, hallucinations, paranoia. I regret to say that this self-induced cognitive decline has made Trump supporters a danger to themselves—the victims of an untold number of scams—and as January 6 showed, it makes them a danger to others.

There is no greater reason to remove Trump from the political scene than to begin the process of healing this derangement.