By Robert Arvay
Sometimes what seems like a small annoyance can be a sign of a serious underlying malady. I am not speaking of a medical issue.
Most conservatives have long recognized that Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) infects many people, making them irrational and hyper-emotional — but it’s worse than that. It may be an intractable, devastating spiritual illness, long-term, and perhaps voluntarily incurable. If it is all that, and if more than forty percent of our population has it, then something unimaginably awful has happened.
Many of us may have shared the experience I shall relate, or something comparable to it. A friend, whom I shall not name, was a stalwart conservative with a presence on the internet, who masterfully pointed out all the reasons why Hillary Clinton, if elected president, would inflict terrible damage on the republic. Many of us read this person’s work and formed a modest following. Then Donald Trump descended the stairs.
It was as if someone had flipped a switch. Suddenly, Hillary was not so bad after all. It was candidate Trump who was not merely a misguided choice for the presidency, but an unmitigated monster with no redeeming qualities.
Not to worry, I thought. The competing campaigns would reveal Trump’s strengths and expose Hillary’s many and damning scandals. That happened. It was done. Okay, I thought — now our friend would come to the only sensible conclusion, a conservative conclusion. It could not be otherwise.
No. It got even worse. As time went by, it became clear that every minor blemish on Trump was declared Nazism, and every catastrophic feature of Hillary was either ignored entirely or was someone else’s fault. Whatever Trump said or did, it had to be vile and repugnant, if only because he was the one who said it.
I hope the following does not describe my friend, but you will have seen it for yourself in many others. What is not so easy to see is the spirit.