So, President Donald Trump is apparently driving people crazy.
Some more than others.
The Washingtonian has a story about how all the people seeking therapy to deal with their "Trump Derangement Syndrome" are taxing the mental health of the therapists.
The American Psychological Association has even documented the phenomenon. According to its 2018 Stress in America survey, 62 percent of Americans say the current political climate is “a significant stressor” for them; more than two-thirds say the nation’s future is stressing them out—a “significant increase” from 2017, the report says. “Trump May Not Be Crazy,” read a headline from Politico Magazine just before the survey came out, “But the Rest of Us Are Getting There Fast.”
In 2018, Newsweek reported how therapists were noticing "collective politically induced anxiety among patients" and dubbed it "Trump Anxiety Disorder." Sufferers have a real fear of the world ending.
Another therapist wrote in Washington Post last year that some of her patients blame the media’s fixation on Trump.
She quotes Steve:
Sally and I value that our political views are compatible. We have always enjoyed discussing current events, and our careers relate to politics, as you know. I initially took comfort in the fact that we went through the shock of Trump’s victory together, but something has changed. Sally is constantly reading news updates on her phone and watching CNN, even in the middle of the night. It’s gone too far. It’s no longer something that connects us; it’s now a wedge between us.
Obviously, Donald Trump behaves in a way that we've not seen in Presidential politics. He is overt, explicit, and exaggerative in a way most politicians mask with mannerly etiquette.
However, the degree to which people have gone overboard with their hatred is pretty amazing... and disturbing... in its own right.
Remember way back when Hillary Clinton and her female supporters proudly co-opted the phrase “Nasty Woman” and wore Nasty Woman T-shirts as a symbol of empowerment?
And do you remember when those same nasty women came apart at the seams on election night and recounted how they lay on the floor of the Javits Center sobbing or went to the restrooms to vomit? Remember actress Amber Tamblyn had a panic attackand envisioned having to give her unborn baby to Canadians or Swedes(not Mexicans?) to save it from a Trump presidency.
And remember those same nasty womenchopping off all their hair or dying it black? Some women foundthey could no longer date, and Salon was reported onthe very real illness known as “Post-Trump Sex Disorder.”
This might come as a surprise to the political left, but people on the right believed Barack Obama was an existential threat to America, too. When he promised to "fundamentally transform" America, the right heard that as a rejection of American ideals in favor of perpetual Alinsky-infected class warfare. (Obama was not entirely unsuccessful in ushering in the latter.)
However, during the entire Obama administration, I never saw a single story about conservatives seeking therapy because of their hatred for the President.
Even during the brief rise of the Tea Party demonstrations, conservatives did not march through the streets, disrupt institutions, and migrate en masse to therapy.
For example, look at North Carolina - where Republicans were shut out of power for more than a century by a corrupt Democratic Party machine that controlled hiring at all state institutions and most of the cities and counties, too.
Shortly after the GOP victories in 2010 and 2012, the left launched it's weekly marches on the capitol in an attempt to shut down governance. For years they did this.
Conservatives simply do not do this. They don't shut down institutions because they lost an election. They'll make jokes about Obama for eight years, but are never driven to sobbing in the shower over his re-election.
Perhaps it would be instructive for therapists to examine why.
Pete's Prep: Thursday, July 25, 2019
- Bloomberg Law reports: "Sen.Bernie Sanders’(I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign has been hit with an unfair labor practice complaint alleging illegal employee interrogation and retaliation against staffers."
- From the Asheville Citizen-Times: NC Rep. Cody Henson (R-113) resigned after pleading guilty to cyber-stalking his estranged wife.
- National media folks were disappointed by yesterday's hearings featuring Robert Mueller, according to Newsbusters.