This week, five Minnesota Republican state senators introduced a bill that would classify “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a mental illness.
What is “Trump Derangement Syndrome?” Often shortened to TDS, it’s a pejorative term used to describe criticism of or negative reactions to President Donald Trump, with the implication that these negative reactions are completely irrational. The term is used by Trump supporters to discredit those who criticize him as being illogical and deranged.
The Minnesota bill classifies TDS as a mental illness marked by “acute onset of paranoia” regarding the Trump presidency. Symptoms include “Trump-induced general hysteria, which produces an inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and signs of psychic pathology in President Donald J. Trump’s behavior.”
Let’s start with the most obvious point: this isn’t how medicine works. The trucking industry cannot petition the government to add White Line Fever to the DSM-5 any more than these Senators can pass a bill declaring a new mental illness.
But let’s say that this bill somehow gets passed. What incentive would the bill’s five co-sponsors — Senators Glenn Gruenhagen, Justin Eichorn, Nathan Wesenberg, Steve Drazkowski, and Eric Lucero, in case you were curious — have to gain from Trump Derangement Syndrome becoming an officially recognized mental illness?
(A LATE BREAKING UPDATE: On March 17, Sen. Justin Eichorn, a married father of four, was arrested for allegedly attempting to solicit sex from a 16 year old girl.)
To answer that question, we should look to America’s new best pal Russia, the inventor of something called “sluggish schizophrenia.”
Sluggish schizophrenia, also known as slow progressive schizophrenia, was a medical condition that appeared in the U.S.S.R. in the 1960s and mysteriously vanished with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Soviet doctors tended to find evidence of sluggish schizophrenia in people with no other mental health issues — even in people who showed no signs of schizophrenia. The one thing that sufferers of sluggish schizophrenia had in common was that they were political dissidents who had openly criticized the government.
Once these dissidents were diagnosed with sluggish schizophrenia, their civil rights disappeared. They were rendered unemployable. In many cases, they were even drugged with antipsychotics against their will to wash away all those nagging desires to speak openly and honestly.
If the TDS bill were to pass in Minnesota, it could pave the way for anyone who speaks out against Trump to be adjudicated as a mental defective. This would prevent dissenters from owning firearms and, depending on the state, it might also prevent them from voting. It could even serve as a one-way ticket to those mental health work farms that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. keeps rasping on about.
Do I think this bill will pass? No, I don’t. But the next one might. Or the one after that. Or the one after that.
This bill represents one of the most blatant attacks on free speech that we’ve seen so far in the early days of this Presidency, though it certainly won’t be the last volley fired at the First Amendment.
Perhaps the real mental health condition that should be studied is American Dream Delusion Syndrome.
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