America has a bad case of TDS

There are many different types of laughter. There is the good laughter caused by joy, surprise, happiness, or perhaps even ecstasy. There is laughter at the absurd when one cannot even make sense of what they are experiencing. There is also the laughter of rage and anger. There are laughs from emotional discomfort and anxiety. There is hysterical laughter in the face of death or other great peril when the danger is so extreme that you hear a person laughing and then realize it is you.

Some people laugh during funerals and other times of great grief and sorrow. I experienced this once at an Irish wake for a friend who took his own life. One person started laughing while telling a story about our departed friend, and then another person laughed, and the laughter spread around the table.

There has been a lot of laughter in America during the Age of Trump. With Trump’s return to power, almost every day there is some new shattering of norms, one of those “this should not be happening but somehow it is” moments where malignant normality and the spectacle somehow keep getting worse as the country collapses into autocracy and authoritarianism. The guardrails of democracy and “the institutions” and “the rule of law” have been laid bare and splayed open; they are so very weak. Germany’s democracy collapsed in 53 days; America’s democracy is still holding on, barely, but I am unsure it will make it to 90 days. As for the midterms in 2026? Good luck.

But for all the laughter that has happened (and is happening) during the long Trumpocene, little if any of it is truly funny. I suspect that much of this laughter has been to keep from crying because of the grand tragedy. Trying to gain a better perspective, I have repeatedly returned to physician Gabor Mate’s 2022 interview at Jacobin:

In a social sense, we have really lost the way. There are certain human needs that are not negotiable. We can’t negotiate them away. We can give up on them, but then we suffer when we do. When they’re not met, there’s going to be suffering and ill health in every sense of the word. They include having a purpose in life, having agency and authority in one’s own life, and being connected to other people. Meeting all of these needs is required for full health, full wholeness. On a social level, that means that all the institutions and political structures and ideologies that undermine those qualities need to be either jettisoned or transformed.

Both the Left and the Right have got these traumatic imprints that they enact. The Right very often consists of abused people who identify with power so they’ll never be hurt again. That’s basically it. You know, like a [Donald] Trump. Big Daddy will protect me so that I’ll never be hurt again, like I was hurt by my real daddy. And they hate vulnerability. They attack vulnerable people because they hate their own vulnerability. So that’s the thumbnail traumatic imprint of people on the Right very often.

People on the Left, on the other hand, also suffered in their childhoods, and they take that anger that’s not resolved in them and they project it into the politics, which makes them not very tolerant and much less effective. When they talk to people who just don’t see it their way, who are not aware or maybe more ignorant, or not in touch with the real issues, there’s a tendency to speak in a very hostile and very demeaning way. That’s unresolved trauma on the part of the people coming from the Left, as it was in my case. Self work, particularly for people who want to make a difference, is really important. To the degree that people don’t do it, they might attract some followers with a certain degree of charisma, but they will not convince anybody that doesn’t already see it their way.

Last month, five Minnesota Republican state senators introduced a bill declaring that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” exists and that it is a type of “mental illness.” As The Independent reports, "symptoms include 'Trump-induced general hysteria,' where a person struggles to distinguish between 'legitimate policy' and 'psychic pathology,' which is expressed with verbal hostility or acts of aggression against Trump and his MAGA supporters."

This attempt to declare “Trump Derangement Syndrome” a mental illness per Minnesota law was widely met with mockery and derision. Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy described the bill as "wasteful, frivolous and shameful....possibly the worst bill in Minnesota history." Murphy continued, "If it is meant as a joke, it is a waste of staff time and taxpayer resources that trivializes serious mental health issues. If the authors are serious, it is an affront to free speech and an expression of a dangerous level of loyalty to an authoritarian president. The authors should be ashamed, and the citizens we're hearing from are rightfully outraged."

The liberal schadenfreude and mockery grew louder when one of the bill’s sponsors was recently arrested for allegedly committing a crime that further reveals the hypocrisy and absurdity of a Republican Party that claims to be the great defender of “family values” and “morality” in America. In reality, there is nothing funny or humorous about an Orwellian thought crime law that in effect punishes dissent by declaring critics of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement to be mentally or emotionally sick. This is a standard tactic of dictators and other authoritarians where those who are “mentally ill” and “sick” because of their incorrect thinking are removed from society and put in prisons, reeducation camps, “mental hospitals” or worse until they are “cured.”

To that point, Donald Trump repeatedly attacks and slurs his critics and perceived enemies, both as individuals and as a group, as being “sick“ “deranged,” “crazy,” “lunatics,” “mentally ill,” “mentally impaired,”  and/or “retarded.” Trump has also promised to purify and purge the “blood” of the nation from “the enemies within” and other human poison.

In all, the proposed Trump Derangement Syndrome law in Minnesota is an example of how the Trump administration and its allies’ war on multiracial, pluralistic democracy and society is national. The states are being used as testing grounds and the leading edge of this revolutionary project.

For example, among its many actions — some of which appear to be clearly illegal and violations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — the Trump administration has issued executive orders de facto declaring “DEI” and “gender ideology” and teaching the real and complex and challenging history of the United States to be a thought crime. The Trump administration is systematically targeting the country’s educational system, including private colleges and universities, if they do not agree to comply with this ideological regime. The Smithsonian museum system was recently ordered to purge exhibits and other material deemed to be “anti-American” (this echoes events in another country during one of the darkest times in human history when “politically incorrect” art, books, and other material were purged for being “degenerate”).

The Trump administration recently gutted funding for the country’s libraries and museums through the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Scientific and other research deemed not to be in accordance with the approved ideology of the Trump administration has also been terminated.

The Trump administration’s thought crime and larger anti-democracy program is an amplification of such laws and policies in Florida, for example, where “critical race theory” was banned and educators and institutions that taught “divisive” history and concepts were punished under the “Stop WOKE” Act and other laws. Georgia has also passed a law banning the teaching of “divisive concepts,” i.e., the truth and facts about racism and the color line and its enduring role in American society. Texas, Oklahoma, and other red states have enacted draconian laws that take away women’s reproductive rights and freedoms. These laws include making it illegal to help a woman leave the state to terminate a pregnancy and basically putting bounties on medical professionals and other people who help women to exercise their reproductive freedoms and rights. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and other parts of the former Confederacy and Jim Crow terror regime are engaged in systematic voter nullification and voter purges targeting the African-American community and other members of the Democratic Party’s base.

In a 2021 interview with historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, attorney David Pepper explained the relationship between these state-level laboratories of autocracy and the larger national-level right-wing anti-democracy project:

I think it's a huge blind spot. If we looked at another country and we saw the combination of steps that are taking place in our states, what would we say? Here we have attacks on independent courts, rigged legislative elections, laws that make protests by the opposition harder, laws that create immunity for people who run over protestors with their car or attack independent election officials.

All of this adds up to a dramatic turn away from democracy towards autocracy. Some states don't meet almost any definition of a functional democracy at this point, and in places like Texas and Ohio, statehouses have a huge amount of power over national elections. These states resemble what we call "competitive autocracies":  they look and feel legitimate, even though the results of their elections are essentially predetermined and rigged….

Once you tear away at the protections and pillars of a democratic system, things can convert very quickly, and you start getting truly unhinged legislatures. Statewide elections in some states are still relatively competitive, although voter suppression and purging have taken a toll.

Yet in the statehouses there is a system that Vladimir Putin would be impressed with. For example, in Ohio, even if a majority of people voted for a Democrat, the Republicans would still be in the majority or super majority in the statehouse. When outcomes are guaranteed, there is zero accountability.

In total, Trump’s shock and awe campaign as detailed in Project 2025 and Agenda 47 is a revolutionary project to take control over all areas of American private and public life. The White Christian Nationalist “Seven Mountains” strategy is a parallel and complementary plan to remake American society into a White Christian Authoritarian theocracy by taking over government, the military, religion, education, family, business, the arts, entertainment and the media.

In a recent post on his Truth Social platform, Trump declared himself above the law like some type of Caesar or Napoleon. The United States Supreme Court has given Trump sufficient reason to confidently make such a declaration when it deemed him outside and above the law and able to do whatever he wants as long as he claims the cover of “presidential acts.”

The German word for this control over the entirety of society is “Gleichschaltung,” which means “synchronization” or “bringing into line.”

On this, historian Terrence Petty warns in a recent essay at the Forward:

 Now, it’s American democracy that is in peril. As Trump takes a sledgehammer to the rule of law, intimidates and bullies those who stand in his way, hacks away at press freedoms, guts government agencies, and continues to demonize those whom he sees as “woke,” who will dare to stand in his way?...

In Trump’s America, how far are we down the road to Gleichschaltung? Americans can still preserve the democracy we’ve enjoyed for 249 years, but only if we want to.

As has been widely reported, historian Timothy Snyder and philosopher Jason Stanley have both decided to leave Yale University and move to Canada where they have accepted professorships at the University of Toronto. Snyder and Stanley are leading scholars of authoritarianism and fascism who, since at least 2016, have been among the loudest public alarm-sounders and critics of Trumpism and the MAGA movement. They correctly warned that it is an existential threat to American democracy and society. Neither Snyder nor Stanley is sick with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

During a recent interview with PBS, Stanley summarized his reasons for leaving the United States as “I think the probabilities are not in the favor of U.S. democracy.”

When the likes of Timothy Snyder, Jason Stanley, and other leading experts of authoritarianism have concluded that it is time to leave the United States, all Americans should be very afraid. The American people have been warned. Again.