From: AlleyCat <katt@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,can.politics,alt.politics.trump,alt.politics.liberalism,alt.politics.democrats,alt.politics.usa.republican
Subject: Re: H.R. McMaster Thinks Donald Trump Is Shitty at Making Deals (And Trump Is Not A Billionaire)
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2024 14:33:20 -0500
Organization: AlleyCat Computing, Inc.
['oh.no.this.definitely.is.NOT.going.to.can.politics' psycho gratuitous bullshit crosspost removed]
[subject line vandalism by commie tip-toeing to suck boyfriend's cock, repaired]
On Wed, 28 Aug 2024 12:23:46 -0700, Rudy Canoza, forever the mental and physical midget, who was *NEVER* a
three sport letterman, like me, and who was *NEVER* a bouncer, like me, and who was *NEVER* an assistant golf
pro, like me, and who was *NEVER* a lifeguard, like me, and who *NEVER* dunked a basketball, like me, and has
*NEVER* laid as many women as me, says...
Yeah... that's why HE'S a BILLIONAIRE and you and McMaster are not.
> Trump is not a billionaire.
Yes, he is.
Forbes: What's Donald Trump Really Worth?
The answer: $7.5 billion, according to our most recent tally, last updated on May 2, 2024.
How Rich Is Donald Trump? $7.5 billion
Truth Social's Parent Company: $5.6 billion
Who owns that?
Real Estate: $1.1 billion
Clubs & Resorts: $810 million
Cash: $410 million
Other Assets: $100 million
Bloomberg:
March 25, 2024
Trump's Net Worth Hits $6.5 Billion, Making Him One of World's 500 Richest People
Time:
Reports on how much Trump is worth vary. While Forbes' current estimation of Trump's real-time net worth is
$2.6 billion, and Bloomberg pegs it at $3.1 billion, that amount could increase by billions given the new
merger between Digital World Acquisition Corp. and Trump Media and Technology Group that was approved on
March 22.
So... fuck the fuck off, butt-fucker.
--
alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, can.politics, alt.politics.trump, alt.politics.liberalism, alt.politics.democrats,
alt.politics.usa.republican
===============================================================================
"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 explicitly 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."