ASPartOfMe wrote:
My long time fear that seems to be coming true has been a smarter, more stable version of Trump emerging. I am unsure at this time whether DeSantis will be able to overcome Trump’s cult of personality in 2024. Either way is big time trouble because the Democrats seem incapable of 1. Nominating a candidate that voters do not want to gag voting for. 2. knowing how to properly react to the threat. Do nothing and get steamrolled again. Fight fire with fire as some have been doing and thus become morally indistinguishable from the MAGA’s sn further alienate swing voters on the issues. The answer if there is one is somewhere in between but what that is nobody has figured out yet.
While I was wrong about DeSantis unfortunately I was right about the basic concept. The Trump Administration if not Trump himself is going about it in a smarter way showing they learned from their mistakes the first go round.
What I wrote about the Democrats in 2022 seems prescient. That said I underestimated their ability to screw it up.
The basic thing I wrote about the anti Trumpers said still rings true. They are still split into those two basic camps.
We need to talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome. It is a true phenomenon and a term that is partially misleading in that it puts the onus completely on his opponents. Ten years on I still can’t believe I have to say this Trump is a master politician and manipulator. He has his opponents wildly swinging between he is a moron and he is Hitler. He said Ted Cruz’s wife was ugly and his dad was in on the JFK assassination. Ted Cruz is one of Trump’s most die hard supporters. We see variations of this over and over the Republican party. These people are skilled politicians in their own right and he has them right where he wants them.
Morons can’t do that. Something to think about for those dismissing all Trump voters as sheep. In short Trump derangement syndrome is Donald Trump manipulating opponents into making irrationally bad decisions.
Personal Note:In a 2016 post to this thread I wrote about how in Hebrew school(Not a religious school but one that supplements mainstream education) they drummed into us that it can happen here, not to be fooled by Jews doing well in America, Jews were just as assimilated in German society. A poster said that education(and the unedited concentration camp footage shown to us) must have traumatized me. Maybe it’s denial but I don’t remember that. I can say it mitigated my Trump Derangement syndrome in two ways. Because I understood it can happen I have not been completely in shock by the events of the last decade. Also it made me less prone to paranoia, as bad as this is it is not close to Nazi Germany.
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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity.
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
14 Jun 2025, 5:51 am
