'TDS!' as a Pocket-DARVO

Writing for the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby takes a look at the origin, usage, and meaning of the Trumpists' all-purpose smear, Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Jacoby adroitly looks into the history of the term, starting with Charles Krauthammer's Bush Derangement Syndrome, which mocked the younger Bush's "more deranged detractors," and ending with how Trumpists are using it today:

Two decades on, Krauthammer's coinage has been appropriated, rebranded, and defined down -- way down. "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is now flung at anyone who objects to President Trump's conduct or opposes his policies. The term is no longer reserved for over-the-top expressions of revulsion -- like actor Robert De Niro using a televised appearance at the Tony Awards to proclaim "F*** Trump" and being rewarded with a standing ovation. Or like Kamala Harris declaring on CNN that Trump was a "fascist" who expected US military leaders to be as blindly loyal to him as "Hitler's generals."

No -- today "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is used as an all-purpose put-down to deride any Trump critics, including those who stick to serious, fact-based analysis. I've lost count of all the times I've been diagnosed with TDS after writing that a given Trump policy is wrong, counterproductive, or unlawful. [links omitted, bold added]

I am glad Jacoby is putting this out there. It needs to be said, and his column would have been worthwhile even if he had stopped with this, but he goes on to state something else that has long needed to be said:

Yet if "derangement" means the loss of proportion and judgment Krauthammer was getting at, then the most severe cases aren't among Trump's critics. They're in the ranks of his most ardent loyalists. [bold added]

Jacoby identifies the following hallmarks of actual TDS:

1. A cult-like regard for Trump as infallible;
2. The abandonment of positions once regarded as conservative non-negotiables, such as support for free trade; and
3. A giddy delight in Trump's most outrageous behavior, such as Trump's more racist comments about immigrants or his calls for violence.

Jacoby ends:

Krauthammer's original point in 2003 was that derangement is the breakdown of proportion and prudence. That breakdown isn't found among critics who quote Trump accurately and challenge his claims. The most alarming political derangement today affects those who cannot conceive that there are legitimate reasons to be appalled by the president, and so explain anti-Trump dissent as a sign of mental weakness. If reason is the measure, then those who shout "TDS!" the loudest are the ones most in need of treatment.

I would add only one thing to this perspicacious column. Jacoby correctly calls out the current usage as a tool for preempting debate, but there is a further aspect about the term that is worth keeping in mind.

In 1971, in her essay, "The Disfranchisement Of The Right," Ayn Rand noted a technique she called "The Big Projection:"

The technique of the Big Lie is a well-known phenomenon. But not enough attention has been paid to a similar technique, which may be called the "Big Projection": it consists in ascribing to your adversary the evil of which you are guilty. Soviet Russia accusing the United States of "imperialism," is an example of such Projection. So is the spectacle of four leftists (i.e., statists) accusing a rightist (i.e., an advocate of free enterprise) of "hostility to individual freedom." [bold added]

This is remarkably similar to a criminal technique (used publicly by Trump) called DARVO (for "deny, attack, reverse victim and offender"). In fact, "TDS" arguably encapsulates the whole DARVO gambit, but in the form of a term any Trump surrogate can quickly deploy.

-- CAV