A Muppetty* Explanation for TDS
June 26, 2021
Since the beginning of The Former Guy’s term in office, the MAGA crowd has mocked liberals for having “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS). They’re not entirely wrong—but a constant state of bewildered outrage is a perfectly natural reaction to having such an absurd villain placed in the most powerful position in the world by people we thought we knew and understood. How can we be expected to just get over how incomprehensible and deranged it is that ANYONE would take anything the serially bankrupt game show host says seriously—never mind vote for him for president?
Sometime before the 2016 election, I went to a comedy fundraiser at a house in Astoria, Queens. (The event was to raise money for my friend’s dog’s bladder condition. The dog is still alive and well!) One analogy that one of the comedians** made then has stuck with me ever since. I’m paraphrasing, but the gist of it was that New Yorkers couldn’t take Donald Trump seriously because to us he was just another weird New York City character who was always hanging around—no more serious than the Times Square Elmo, the seedy costumed character hustling tourists for tip money.
For the past five years, I’ve thought of that analogy many times as I’ve tried to come to terms with the fact that nearly half the country was—and many continue to be—enthralled by such a moronic game show clown. I couldn’t believe we actually ELECTED the Times Square Elmo. I couldn’t believe we weren’t able to impeach & remove the Times Square Elmo after his blatant crimes and obstruction. I couldn’t believe that so many people camped out for tickets and packed themselves into rallies (even risking a deadly, contagious disease) to see the Times Square Elmo and listen to his incoherent diatribes. And I still can’t believe the Times Square Elmo has self-proclaimed “patriots” willing to go to jail and kill and die to overthrow democracy for him and install him as dictator.
The cult-level adoration is even more absurd when you factor in that Donald Trump is not merely the costumed Elmo begging for dollars in Times Square—he’s the Times Square Elmo if the Times Square Elmo also happened to be a sexually-assaulting predatory racist who spent his entire life using lawyers and accountants to line his own pockets by ripping off the kind of salt-of-the-earth people who STILL worship him. (Well, I guess I should say as if The Former Guy was even MORE of a sexual assaulter than the Times Square Elmo. The Elmo costume guy didn’t have a great history either.)
Sometimes I wonder why the MAGA cult settled on Donald as their lord and savior. If they needed a weird C-list celebrity from past decades, why not Pauly Shore? Why not The Situation? The Situation even has the tax fraud background the cult seems to think is a bonus! And then I remember, oh right…neither Pauly Shore nor The Situation successfully branded himself as the belligerent defender of white male “Christian” dominance.
Fortunately, support for the twice-impeached presidential version of the Times Square Elmo has dwindled since he incited a violent insurrection (not that he ever broke the 50% mark when it came to popular support in the first place). It’s been relief not having to see/hear about his tweets now that his social media bullhorn has been snatched from him for inciting violence. It’s like half the nation is suddenly freed from a toxic relationship we never willingly entered into in the first place.
“So why are you still writing about him? Trump Derangement Syndrome?” the QAnon/MAGA cult might want to ask. My answer might be, for therapy? But also because he’s not entirely gone. QAnon seditionists seem to be plotting another coup to install their mentally deranged muppet hero as dictator for life. It sounds ridiculous, and there’s no constitutional basis for it, but most sane people also thought it was ridiculous that this country could elect the alleged rapist/racist Times Square Elmo as president in the first place.
Despite the evidence of their eyes and ears, die-hard MAGAts are determined to believe that he’s brilliant, no matter how rambling and incoherent he is, no matter how cartoonishly stupid the things that come out of his pie-hole are. Once MAGAts and QAnon cultists pledged their fealty to the serially bankrupt realty TV game show loudmouth, it became useless to try to reach them. Every moronic thing he said throughout his one-term, impeachment-tainted presidency made them dig deeper in their devotion to him. As Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
And it’s terrifying that even though probably only 12% of the country’s population really supports him now, through gerrymandering and an electoral system rigged against Democrats, he and the clown car of seditionists who support and emulate him are still a danger. We’re still threatened by all the sexist, racist attitudes he embodies and exploits. So the derangement can’t just go away, as much as I’d like it to.
It's pathetic that so many people in this country are so consumed with white grievance, and so determined to cast themselves as the country’s “true” victims, that they’re willing to join the cult of someone as ridiculous as the arrogant sexually assaulting/racist Times Square Elmo. They’re so desperate to hear someone affirm their whines of victimhood that they’re all-too-willing to latch onto their self-branded champion of unquestioned white male dominance, no matter how cartoonishly stupid and corrupt he constantly proves himself to be, and how ridiculous that makes them look for continuing to worship him.
*My apologies to Elmo and Muppets in general.
*I don’t remember the comedian’s name. I would reach out to my friend to ask her, but since nobody reads this blog anyway and it’s mostly just for me to vent into the vacuum of cyberspace, I’ll hold off for now.
