Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:44 pm
It is an increasingly reasonable assumption to make that the mainstream media thinks we’re all idiots, and by and large, this recent election has given them reasonable cause to believe it’s true. As we have seen, not only is fake news at epidemic levels but the mainstream media shares responsibility for its success.
The right wing has been the big beneficiaries of this new move toward fake news, and Trump enablers abound not only on social media and the right wing media, but even on mainstream media platforms (who can forget Corey Lewandowski, Joe Scarborough, and others?).
However, wanting us to believe that Trump’s “more nukes” stance and support for a new arms race means he is anti-war is just a bit much to take. The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent tweeted that startling news this morning,
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Behold how Trump's threat to escalate nuke arms race gets incorporated into the deepening delusion that he is "anti-war" https://t.co/JZ0hEVZ1oC
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) December 27, 2016
In an op-ed appearing in the LA Times, Justin Raimondo, author of “Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement,” wrote about Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS, in defense of all things Trump, but specifically in response to Sargent’s own tweet of an article appearing in The Hill:
Via @thehill:
"Nuclear experts: Trump tweets could provoke global crisis":https://t.co/4nzE1Ob6IY
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) December 27, 2016
There are figures on the left you can name who promote ridding ourselves of our military, but it is difficult to understand how renewing the Cold War arms race, including our nuclear arsenal, brings us closer to peace.
And these are experts after all. Remember, though, for conservatives, actual science is “junk” science while a bunch of BS they make up to maximize profits is actual science.
Most of us, or if you are too young, your parents, were happy to have the threat of imminent death removed. With nuclear winter off the table, all we had left to face was the destruction of our planet by non-military means, an equally fatal, if slower-acting global warming.
If that isn’t bad enough, Raimondo goes full-on strawman in his conclusion, leaving legitimate questions about who, specifically, is deranged (looking at you, Mr. Raimondo):
If you ask a TDS victim what might help them feel better, they’ll use the word “normalize.†As in, we mustn’t “normalize†Trump. What they’re really saying is that normal means of dealing with him aren’t enough. Which raises the question: If he’s another Hitler, if he’s in league with Putin, then why is assassination out of the question? Poke a TDS victim and you’ll find they don’t think that “solution†is out of the question at all.
This is the final stage of the TDS epidemic: violence against a democratically elected leader. Unless a cure for TDS is found, this is where we are headed.
Apparently, if you oppose Trump, you want to kill him. Somehow, actual death threats against President Obama from Raimondo’s fellow conservatives was completely acceptable. Well, you can’t be conservative if you’re not morally flexible.
When Raimondo says, “In the advanced stages of the disease, the afflicted lose touch with reality. Opinion is unmoored from fact,” we should believe him. Like his hero Trump, he is living proof.
It is remarkable enough that anybody on the right could even talk with a straight face about “Trump Derangement Syndrome” after years of afflicting us with their Obama Derangement Syndrome. They say we must normalize Trump while they refused for eight long years to admit Barack Obama was our legitimate president – let alone an American.
What all this proves is that there is a Trump Derangement Syndrome, but the sufferers are promoters and enablers of Trumpism, who, no matter how deplorably their hero behaves say he can do no wrong. And not, as Raimondo claims, those on the left, who are its victims.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
