(I remember seeing tears well up in Bush’s eyes after the attack — a stark contrast to the ghoulish Rudy Giuliani whom I never saw show any sorrow despite the carnage happening right in his own city)
The term was later applied to those who, as Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune put it, “advanced some combination of the ideas that Barack Obama was a Kenyan-born, Muslim Antichrist who was plotting to seize everyone’s guns, take over the state of Texas, impose Sharia and cancel elections.”
Now Trump and his supporters think it’s their turn to use this neologism against their detractors. Unfortunately for Trump and his basket of deplorables, this expression cannot be used with the same meaning as when used against the detractors of Bush and Obama. As described above, Derangement Syndrome is an “extremely hyperbolic and irrational negative reaction to almost anything” the object says or does. In the case of both Bush and Obama (thanks to the way we do politics in this country) the negative emotional feelings towards those presidents reached a level that was not justified by anything those presidents did (Bush’s Iraq war debacle and economic bankruptcy disaster notwithstanding — he’s still not Hitler).
People use exaggeration and demonization precisely to raise the object’s perceived offenses to a level that justifies their anger and/or hatred.
But Trump is a whole other story. In Trump’s case, his offenses are so obnoxious, so nasty, so stupid, so outrageous -- that hyperbole is unnecessary. His baseness and character are so lacking in moral principles that exaggeration becomes difficult. I mean, we have actually heard this guy on tape bragging about sexually molesting women and being able to get away with it. We also have heard him — on tape, twice! — size up young (in one case a ten year old, in another 14 year olds) girls and then tell them he’ll be dating them in ten years (the ten year old) or “a couple of years” (14 year olds).
Donald Trump has been making disturbing comments about young girls for years - Vox
He has mocked a disabled reporter by imitating him in the way a nasty 12 year old would mock a classmate. He did this right after he slandered the Muslim community of New Jersey by making the outrageously false accusation that “thousands and thousands” celebrated the attacks of 9/11. Trump was pathetically trying to mischaracterize the reporter’s response to questions about an article he wrote back then that Trump and his deplorables were using in a ridiculous attempt to “prove” Trump’s slander to be true.
Donald Trump Criticized for Mocking Disabled Reporter
Then we have Trump’s rowdy rallies.
The first time violence broke out at one of his rallies, he condoned it. He defended his supporters who punched and kicked a black protester because “what he did was disgusting”. The protester was shouting “Black lives matter.” The next day he retweeted outrageously false black on white murder statistics that he got from some white racist web site in an obvious effort to supply more racist justification for the beating.
The second time violence broke out, he encouraged it. “Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt each other anymore.” “I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will.”
The next time he incited violence. “Knock the crap out of him, would you? I promise you I will pay your legal fees.” As violence became routine at his rallies he blamed MoveOn and George Soros.
As the voting time neared and thinking he would lose, he made unfounded claims of the election being rigged. As always, after making claims like this, he offered absolutely no proof or explanation. Against this backdrop he went before a crowd and raised the possibility that gun rights supporters could take matters into their own hands if Hillary got elected because, of course, she was going to abolish the right to bear arms. Trump suggested that the Secret Service protecting her should be disarmed to “see what happens to her”. Some of his supporters openly talked about violent rebellion and assassination if Trump didn’t win.
Trump’s supporters talk rebellion, assassination at his rallies - The Boston Globe
I could go on and on and on and on with literally “thousands and thousands” of such examples.
I’m just kidding. I'm using ‘Trumperbole’ (I think I just coined a new word. A neologism, like ‘derangement syndrome’) But I could easily say that there are a hundred such examples — and that would be an understatement.
So, the above five paragraphs illustrate my point perfectly. I just gave several examples of Trump’s disgraceful and disgusting behavior without using any hyperbole whatsoever. Even if you remove the three adjectives I used (outrageously, pathetically and ridiculous) the matter of fact description of Trump’s offenses are as damning — if not more so — than any hyperbolic screed I could conjure up.
As a matter of fact, the description I gave barely scratches the surface as to the depth and profoundness of Trump’s idiotic insults, his nasty mean spiritedness, his moronic commentary and his despicable lies. A full appreciation of this would require thoughtful contemplation and reflection — a cogency that would not be possible if one were deranged.
So let us engage in an exercise of just such an examination.
Take the example of Trump mocking the disabled reporter which I linked to above. The whole thing started with Trump promoting, as the Snopes article put it, an easily debunked “urban legend” about, as Trump put it, “thousands and thousands” of Muslims celebrating the attacks of 9/11. The “urban legend” is really an example of right-wing “fake news” -- of which there are many -- that Trump has promoted like it had his name on it. Yeah, that’s right, the guy who has become famous for accusing the media of fake news was promoting fake right-wing news. Most of the false things he says are fake news that he gets from the right wing media. I wrote about it in previous posts.
Fair and Balanced: Trump is the King of Fake News
Fair and Balanced: Trump On ISIS Founder: "I Really Like Him as a Person"
But this Muslim celebration news wasn’t just fake, it was a monstrous and harmful slander against the Muslim communities of New Jersey.
Rather than renouncing the false fake news claim, in the face of common sense (how could something like that, if true, not have become a major controversy that no one would have forgotten?) and the complete lack of evidence (of course no television footage was found of a single person celebrating, much less "thousands and thousands") and issuing a strong apology to New Jersey Muslims, Trump doubles down and attempts to use an interview of a reporter who wrote an article back in September ‘01 as proof that his “thousands and thousands” claim was true.
Trump quotes the article in a tweet and demands an apology because “many people tweeted that I am right!”
Trump's Revised 9/11 Claim - FactCheck.org
But the article doesn’t even come close to supporting Trump’s claim. It mentions unattributed and unverified allegations of “a number of people” celebrating on rooftops and says nothing about TV broadcasts of “thousands and thousands of people” celebrating, as Trump had claimed. Police investigated but filed no report. Now do you think that, on the very day those buildings came down and the days following, with the pile still smoldering and bodies being pulled out of the rubble, that the New York City police would have ignored those allegations if there was anything to them?
As if this pathetic attempt to claim proof wasn’t ridiculous enough, what he said about and did to the reporter, and his denial that he mocked his disability, makes you shake your head in disbelief and wonder how anyone can be such a yuuge asshole.*
Trump’s deplorables were working furiously, around the clock, to find any kind of evidence to support one of their favorite fake news stories and rescue their hero from looking like the stupid asshole that he is. So they found this article written by the disabled reporter, Serge Kovaleski. Like I said, it doesn’t even come within a moon orbit of supporting The Donald’s fake news story. But that’s not the way Trump and the deplorables want to see it. So Daring Don goes on the offense(ive).
Kovaleski, along with another reporter, went to the Jersey City building where the celebrations were purported to have happened. The other reporter, Kunkle, said he was never able to verify the report. Kovaleski, who was interviewed about the article, said “I certainly don’t remember anyone saying that thousands or even hundreds of people were celebrating… that was not the case, as best as I can remember.” (Kovaleski was being way too cautious. He could have said “definitely”.)
In what has to be the most pitiful display of dishonesty by a presidential candidate representing a major political party, Trump falsely accused the reporter of “trying to change his story” (as if the article was an exoneration rather than a damnation), then engaged in a shameful imitation of the reporter's disability. The reporter actually confirmed what he wrote in the article.
Normal and decent people were outraged by Trump’s despicable behavior and criticized him harshly. Trump responded by claiming that he was merely imitating a grovelling Kovaleski who was caught “trying to change his story”, and that he didn’t even know what Kovaleski looked like.
These were all obvious lies. Kovaleski was in no way “grovelling”, he didn’t change his story, his story contradicted Trump and there is plenty of evidence that Trump knew him well. (He had interviewed Trump on multiple occasions, including, in Trump's office. Kovaleski said they were on a first name basis.)
In any case, Trump’s own words before he mocked Kovaleski gave him away: “Written by a nice reporter...” How would he know? Sounds like he knows him, and “now the poor guy you gotta see this guy” (then he goes into his juvenile imitation.)
"Poor guy”? He's obviously referring to his disability. “You gotta see this guy”? Why would Trump say that if he hadn’t seen him, himself? Trump has obviously seen him and thinks his disability deserves to be mocked.
Hold on, because it actually gets worse. After the reporter makes some mild statements correcting Trump’s lies, Trump adds injury to insult: “...Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago — if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did” (coming from the man who claims to have one of the greatest memories of all time) “He should stop using his disability to grandstand and get back to reporting for a paper that is rapidly going down the tubes”
Jesus H Christ, what a shithead! What a fucking shithead!
By the way, the paper Trump was referring to (of course) -- the rapidly failing New York Times -- is still in business over three years later:
Trump Says the New York Times Is ‘Failing.’ Its Stock Is Soaring - Barron's )
You might be asking yourself, how can Trump possibly bullshit his way out of all the incontrovertible evidence proving his fake news story to be nothing but a pile of horseshit. How does he do it?
Well, you must remember the audience that he is playing to. His basket of deplorables. They will believe just about anything coming from the bullshit artist formerly known as citizen Trump.
I think I’ve made my case that the term “derangement syndrome” cannot be used with the same meaning as when used against the detractors of Bush and Obama. Hyperbole is unnecessary (and relatively close to impossible) when criticizing Trump -- and his behavior is so malign, that it is only rational to have a strong negative reaction to the things he says and does. It can actually be argued that reaction to his behavior has been understated.
However, there’s plenty of derangement associated with Trump. And it’s coming from his basket of deplorables. They are the ones who have exalted this “sad, embarrassing wreck of a man” (George Will) to cult hero status. They are completely blind to his gigantic flaws and will believe anything that comes out of his tiny, puckered little mouth.
In my next post I will make the case for the correct definition of Trump Derangement Syndrome as being a disorder afflicting Trump’s basket of deplorables.
Fair and Balanced: Donald Trump: YUGE Asshole, YUGE
