Trump Derangement Syndrome - Orange man bad. Read the OP! (ᴛʜɪs ᴛʜʀᴇᴀᴅ ɪs ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴋɪᴡɪ ғᴀʀᴍs ʀᴇᴠɪᴇᴡs ɴᴏᴡ) 🗿🗿🗿🗿

I suppose you do have a point with Antifa being a vocal minority, but Twitter checkmarks and news media will none-the-less play cheerleader for them, praising their victories of ousting the eeeevil Republicans while downplaying their violence and criminal activity.

I think where we differ is how we're defining "direct action." What you're thinking is probably along the lines of protests, marching, and riots. The way I'm looking at them is more along the lines of a religion or cult, where converting the masses is the goal, not protesting in the streets. Hence, even a tweet or blog espousing their beliefs and how anyone who thinks differently than them is a fascist Nazi bigot qualifies as "direct action" in my book.
I wonder if "Direct action" consists of people in tech companies writing up enemies lists to censor when their friends in journalism generate enough fuss to "justify" it. Have HR people been caught intentionally railroading/passing over/simply firing people for wrongthink, or do they have to be more subtle about it because of discrimination laws?
tl;dr TDS is so stronk because Trump 'fights back.'

The main advantage the left in America has over the right is its ability to denigrate the right without much consequence.

Those on the right are portrayed as literal garbage people, generally and particularly and especially contemptible. Stupid and ignorant. Saying someone is racist is saying they are scum. Saying someone hates woman is saying they are scum. And on and on and on.

The most important right-wing politicians haven't been effective just about ever at returning the favor. Until now. Trump straight up calls people on the left scum. He doesn't go into high dudgeon politicospeak that glazes people's eyes and sounds fake as hell. Republican voters, and potential voters, having been disparaged as literal garbage people for 15 years in 2016, went nuts for the guy who gave them a taste of the pleasure the left gets drunk on daily. That's why his rallies are packed to overflowing. What have Republican voters wanted? What Trump gives them.

Republicans are not allowed to do this. It's against the rules. When they get slandered and libeled, they are supposed to accept or ignore the premise and launch into platitudes. Change the subject to taxes maybe. Or stammer about how outraged they are with statements that stumble over themselves in multiple ways. But a direct counterattack, saying you're full of shit and a horrible little shit yourself, Trump is the first Republican to really successfully do that.

All of this really pisses of the adult babies who see the advantage they had as their birthright. And now it's been taken away from them by an Orange Man. He doesn't react the way Republicans are supposed to. He talks shit bluntly and connects with his target audience at a deeply effective level. And he wins victories by the virtue of this difference.

They've lost their minds because he smacks them in the face instead of on the arms when they smack at his face. It isn't fair. It was never supposed to happen. Who the fuck is this guy who goes to the mattresses when we go to the mattresses? They can't handle this kind of challenge. Insane panic and rage is the result.
Also they can point to a certain writer in Der Angriff who recommended a more offensive strategy against their political opponents, Trump is Hitler confirmed! /sneed .
Nothing could be more mistaken than to defend oneself. That is just what the Jew wants. He can invent a new lie every day for the enemy to respond to, and the result is that the enemy spends so much time defending himself that he has no time to do what the Jew really fears: to attack.

More seriously this is probably a trap Anglo conservatives fall into from time to time, they all think their role is to screen out the bad ideas progressives come up with and tweak the good ones into something actually workable. Eventually the progressives get remembered mainly for the good stuff they promoted and not for the garbage, and use this reputation to try to convince everyone that conservatives are and have always been evil sticks-in-the-mud who stand in the way of positive change for perverse reasons. When they're used to that semi-cooperative role it's hard to realize that they're after your head now, not simple political change and react accordingly.
 
Last edited:
Like I said, I experienced it myself last night with my friend. We usually don't talk politics because we just don't like to, and we know that we each lean to opposite sides of the spectrum. I guess it's for that reason that I was shocked at how consumed he was by the leftist dogma, going on about all the horrible evil things that it's so obvious Trump is guilty of and how we're this close from Trump declaring himself dictator for life because anyone can see he's a complete psychopath. And if I had the audacity to say that maybe things aren't nearly that bad, he just couldn't fathom that I would think that way because everyone he talks to online is saying the opposite, so clearly his must be the correct worldview.

Really drives home Scott Adams's "one screen, two movies" analogy for me. We're looking at the same world but seeing two totally different realities.

I'm surprised you managed to keep a friend suffering from TDS this long,

had a friend I knew as a kid get dragged into Reddit during the 2016 election and started paroting the major democratic talking points about trump. We were still able to keep or friendships going and would often spar about politics but he kept getting more vitriolic last year. I think it came to a head when he was declaring that the NRA was owned by the gun companies and that they would never do anything to prevent mass shootings, I showed him that the NRA had a majority of there funds come from small donations and that they were advising the banning of bumpstocks. You could see that he could not understand that and kept trying to insist that they were owned by the gun manufacturers. We went out to lunch that day and he requested that we never talk about politics. About a month ago he blocked me on every social media site and after I asked him why he did that my friend of roughly 7 years told me he couldn't be friends with someone like me.

I honestly think that's the worst aspect of TDS, I could admit when the president was being retarded, I could admit when something was stupid, I could give him that a good chunk of republicans were corrupt, I would routinely dunk on the religious zealots with him but he could never give in any wat shape or form to my arguments. No matter how often I proved him or how much evidence I brought he would just parrot what the talking points of the day were and would never admit to being wrong. People suffering from TDS can't admit when they are wrong or misinformed and will get aggravated if you disagree with them.

The issue is they made their politics part of there personality, most younger TDS sufferers grew up with Bill Mar and John Stewart where it was consistently reinforced to them that the Dems are the smart righteous people and that the republicans are the retarded bad guys that only exist because there is the other half of the bell curve. It doesn't matter what you do or how smart you are if your a Dem your smarter and better than any republican out there. What's worse is they had show after show beet into them that republicans have no reason for their beliefs. The republicans were a joke which is why they have such a hard time understanding anyone who doesn't have their beliefs because they were taught since youth that your opponents have no reason to think like that.

I think that's also the reason why there is a huge contingent of people online who voted for Trump but refuse to call themselves republicans. They were taught Republicans were bad people and even if they agree with the Reps current platform they can't bear to be one of them.
 
You know, something I must say, I'm genuinely impressed about how Trump is how he is so chill on twitter despite how pretty much, 99% of the platform hates him and is actively pestering him.

I only need to see a random SJW/danger hair/gender special trying to ruin someone's life for disliking the last Jedi (yes really), or harassing in masse/incite suicide to an artist for drawing a woman that isn't ugly and fat to make my blood boil.

And if there's something all SJWs have in common is that they all hate him. I just can't imagine having to deal with all of them on a daily basis.

Save for the celebrities that he has blocked, he honestly takes it extremely well. Heck, he uses their hate against them to look good. Very few people could take it as well as he does, honestly.
 
Last edited:
I'm surprised you managed to keep a friend suffering from TDS this long,

had a friend I knew as a kid get dragged into Reddit during the 2016 election and started paroting the major democratic talking points about trump. We were still able to keep or friendships going and would often spar about politics but he kept getting more vitriolic last year. I think it came to a head when he was declaring that the NRA was owned by the gun companies and that they would never do anything to prevent mass shootings, I showed him that the NRA had a majority of there funds come from small donations and that they were advising the banning of bumpstocks. You could see that he could not understand that and kept trying to insist that they were owned by the gun manufacturers. We went out to lunch that day and he requested that we never talk about politics. About a month ago he blocked me on every social media site and after I asked him why he did that my friend of roughly 7 years told me he couldn't be friends with someone like me.

I honestly think that's the worst aspect of TDS, I could admit when the president was being exceptional, I could admit when something was stupid, I could give him that a good chunk of republicans were corrupt, I would routinely dunk on the religious zealots with him but he could never give in any wat shape or form to my arguments. No matter how often I proved him or how much evidence I brought he would just parrot what the talking points of the day were and would never admit to being wrong. People suffering from TDS can't admit when they are wrong or misinformed and will get aggravated if you disagree with them.

The issue is they made their politics part of there personality, most younger TDS sufferers grew up with Bill Mar and John Stewart where it was consistently reinforced to them that the Dems are the smart righteous people and that the republicans are the exceptional bad guys that only exist because there is the other half of the bell curve. It doesn't matter what you do or how smart you are if your a Dem your smarter and better than any republican out there. What's worse is they had show after show beet into them that republicans have no reason for their beliefs. The republicans were a joke which is why they have such a hard time understanding anyone who doesn't have their beliefs because they were taught since youth that your opponents have no reason to think like that.

I think that's also the reason why there is a huge contingent of people online who voted for Trump but refuse to call themselves republicans. They were taught Republicans were bad people and even if they agree with the Reps current platform they can't bear to be one of them.
I wasn't aware he was actually this far down the TDS rabbit hole until last night. I knew he was no fan of Trump based solely on his leftward tendencies, but because we talked politics only rarely, I never really had a chance to find out how much of the Reddit dogma he'd consumed without question. God that site is such a shithole.

And yeah, I was in the same boat as you, agreeing that Trump wasn't a saint and that there's plenty of corruption on both sides of the aisle. My only crime was apparently thinking that things weren't really all that bad. It was something that my friend just couldn't admit, believing that we're literally on the verge of a Trump dictatorship any day now.

I have doubts that we'll end our friendship or anything, however. We're too much alike on everything else to let political disagreement ruin that, and we've known each other's politics for years without that getting in the way. We reunited over our shared hatred of China on the way home, for instance. We just might not talk much about politics again, which is fine by me since I hate discussing them in real life. I'll shitpost about politics online all day, but I don't take it seriously, and I wish he wouldn't either.
 
565ef9ede5bdbb14cbf7496abb32440c.png

15cfd9e21946bb4284358d450153173b.png


It's been a rough fuckin' week to be a Democrat.
 

Twitter link has video of what the play is like and it’s annoying some liberals, neocons and Lawfare people.
5F651B24-AB6D-4513-8D61-B557DD7EC5E5.jpeg

Part that gets to me is how much weight (get it’s not a ton) Dean Cain has gained since his Lois and Clark days.
27A5A420-6E22-4786-89E5-EAA059E50D82.jpeg

8AB89309-20C7-4CB6-AD17-B7D12D81E2C0.jpeg
 
I wasn't aware he was actually this far down the TDS rabbit hole until last night. I knew he was no fan of Trump based solely on his leftward tendencies, but because we talked politics only rarely, I never really had a chance to find out how much of the Reddit dogma he'd consumed without question. God that site is such a shithole.

And yeah, I was in the same boat as you, agreeing that Trump wasn't a saint and that there's plenty of corruption on both sides of the aisle. My only crime was apparently thinking that things weren't really all that bad. It was something that my friend just couldn't admit, believing that we're literally on the verge of a Trump dictatorship any day now.

I have doubts that we'll end our friendship or anything, however. We're too much alike on everything else to let political disagreement ruin that, and we've known each other's politics for years without that getting in the way. We reunited over our shared hatred of China on the way home, for instance. We just might not talk much about politics again, which is fine by me since I hate discussing them in real life. I'll shitpost about politics online all day, but I don't take it seriously, and I wish he wouldn't either.
Well if you guys are sharing your TDS friend stories, I might as well too.
I have an online friend, whom I've become friends with rather well. Several years ago, we've had light discussions on politics and social justice, and I keenly remember her saying "Online feminists aren't real feminists." Now-a-days, she thinks Anita Sarkessian is an "example of feminism done right." She's also aggressively pro-trans, pro-Antifa, pro-communism, and anti-Trump, to the point where no amount of evidence can possibly penetrate her delusional beliefs. And delusional they are; she claims to be against fascism, yet when asked if she had all the power in the world to do whatever, she stated, among other things, that the dissolution of the Republican party would be necessary for progress ('cause, you know, that's totally not something a fascist would do). She genuinely believes your Average Joe conservative endorses mass shootings like Brendon Tarrent, yet whenever I make some generalized point about the left, it's either "That's not the true left" or "The left isn't as cohesive as you think."

In our arguments, she has threatened, multiple times, to stop being friends with me, whether the issue at hand is my stance on transgenders (I'm not against them as people, I just think that a lot of the beliefs that come out of the community are insane and irrational) or me stating I want to vote for Trump. I have known this person for several years, and I enjoy speaking with her, but now I feel as though I'm standing on a knife's edge. I think it's stupid and immature to choose your political beliefs over your friends, but social media conditioning has trained these people into thinking this is completely normal behavior.

I want the whole world to go back to what it was ten years ago, but I fear as if the Pandora's Box has been opened and there's no going back.
 
Well if you guys are sharing your TDS friend stories, I might as well too.
I have an online friend, whom I've become friends with rather well. Several years ago, we've had light discussions on politics and social justice, and I keenly remember her saying "Online feminists aren't real feminists." Now-a-days, she thinks Anita Sarkessian is an "example of feminism done right." She's also aggressively pro-trans, pro-Antifa, pro-communism, and anti-Trump, to the point where no amount of evidence can possibly penetrate her delusional beliefs. And delusional they are; she claims to be against fascism, yet when asked if she had all the power in the world to do whatever, she stated, among other things, that the dissolution of the Republican party would be necessary for progress ('cause, you know, that's totally not something a fascist would do). She genuinely believes your Average Joe conservative endorses mass shootings like Brendon Tarrent, yet whenever I make some generalized point about the left, it's either "That's not the true left" or "The left isn't as cohesive as you think."

In our arguments, she has threatened, multiple times, to stop being friends with me, whether the issue at hand is my stance on transgenders (I'm not against them as people, I just think that a lot of the beliefs that come out of the community are insane and irrational) or me stating I want to vote for Trump. I have known this person for several years, and I enjoy speaking with her, but now I feel as though I'm standing on a knife's edge. I think it's stupid and immature to choose your political beliefs over your friends, but social media conditioning has trained these people into thinking this is completely normal behavior.

I want the whole world to go back to what it was ten years ago, but I fear as if the Pandora's Box has been opened and there's no going back.
I held out hope for everyone in my friend group who was heavily afflicted with TDS, and that was the entirety of my friend group because I was pretty deeply entrenched with left-wing politics by 2016. I know I've rambled about it on here before, but I gave up on it awhile ago. Nevermind getting them to understand what Trump's been doing, even getting them to a neutral mindset or in the very least one that's not foaming-at-the-mouth hostility just feels like it's impossible.

I stuck with it for about three years, but they refused to budge and I got sick of getting spammed with "It's Mueller Time" memes, but things have changed quite a bit since then, and they didn't really like to talk about Mueller, anymore. I still did. I liked talking to them about Mueller a lot, and I saved all of the crap they spammed me with.

I valued our friendships a lot; enough to endure that insanity and try to calm them down for three years, but it was well past the stage where there was even a friendship anymore, and long past past the point where there was any reason to keep trying. They refused to help me rebuild the bridges, and if I couldn't rebuild them then I could sure as fuck burn what was left into charcoal and then piss on the ashes.

I never hear from any of them anymore, and I don't mind it a bit. Three years of that was quite enough.
 
I give kudos to Trump for this on this topic: he's help let a lot of masks slip and really show the qualities of our relationships with friends and family. Helps make everyone feel a bit more "honest" about each other if that's the word for it. If you're unable to maintain a functional relationship with anyone when it comes down to some guy that ultimately neither of you will be greatly affected directly by, let alone even ever meet in person, you both were probably much better off without each other in the bitter end

It hurts, it sucks, but at least now there's finally people finally facing the uncomfortable matter of who they can really, truly be friends with
 
I honestly think that's the worst aspect of TDS, I could admit when the president was being exceptional, I could admit when something was stupid, I could give him that a good chunk of republicans were corrupt, I would routinely dunk on the religious zealots with him but he could never give in any wat shape or form to my arguments. No matter how often I proved him or how much evidence I brought he would just parrot what the talking points of the day were and would never admit to being wrong. People suffering from TDS can't admit when they are wrong or misinformed and will get aggravated if you disagree with them. [/SPOILER]

The issue is they made their politics part of there personality, most younger TDS sufferers grew up with Bill Mar and John Stewart where it was consistently reinforced to them that the Dems are the smart righteous people and that the republicans are the exceptional bad guys that only exist because there is the other half of the bell curve. It doesn't matter what you do or how smart you are if your a Dem your smarter and better than any republican out there. What's worse is they had show after show beet into them that republicans have no reason for their beliefs. The republicans were a joke which is why they have such a hard time understanding anyone who doesn't have their beliefs because they were taught since youth that your opponents have no reason to think like that.

I think that's also the reason why there is a huge contingent of people online who voted for Trump but refuse to call themselves republicans. They were taught Republicans were bad people and even if they agree with the Reps current platform they can't bear to be one of them.

With the exception of the last sentence, this summarizes myself pretty well until somewhere around the middle of the Obama second term. I bought into the idea of Change, I bought into the idea that the left were the paragons of virtue and the Republicans were antiquated relics desperately clinging to past glory so as to preserve their own irrelevance.

Then GamerGate happened. While whatever it became is pointless, it made me for the first time stop and think because there was just rampant attacks on a hobby I loved and myself personally.

This is what the modern left really does not seem to get.The mindset that lets people just sheepishly follow them is immensely fragile. While it can shut out any attack from without, any attack from WITHIN will immediately shatter it. This is because as SOON as you question any aspect of it, the rest just rapidly collapses from there. It only took two years from my jarring hit to me voting Trump.
 
Not quite the galaxy-brained take you saw, but this one has 24 thousand upvotes on reddit (and counting).
Ah, reddit is so amazing for salt mining.

I dove in for a bit of fun on Wednesday after the impeachment trial, and caught a 1-day ban on /r/politics for laughing at the mental gymnastics. They cited one specific comment for "incivility." On a lark I asked the mods how many times the comment had been reported. Within two minutes of asking came the one word reply -- "zero."

Even the mods over there are salty as fuck, holy shit.
 
Well if you guys are sharing your TDS friend stories, I might as well too.

I lost my entire family to TDS. I was trying to find a more dramatic and overwrought way to say it, just to be comically dark, but it's actually the truth.

My whole family had some big political falling out when I was a kid that split our previously huge group into red team vs. blue team, except instead of "versus" it was "never talk to them again for any reason". I could ramble for pages about the details and make it a big sob story about the loss and tragedy and never being allowed to talk to my father and so on. But that would really just be using a group of strangers as free validation in lieu of therapy. It's only really relevant as an example of the fact that history always repeats itself unless you learn from your history.

The end result is that I was brought up with an extremely liberal family that was openly hostile to everything that didn't fit into their worldview. And it was a worldview I never really was interested in bucking. I agreed with them pretty much unblinkingly about any topic. And I guess I still do in a lot of ways (ways I won't derail the thread by specifically mentioning). Then the election happened. I didn't vote for Trump. I very very proudly and openly abstained from voting for any president, because no one in the running had won my confidence in their ability to lead the country. No one in my family was really upset, because we all knew Hillary was going to win anyway, obviously.

But then she didn't.

Suddenly I couldn't talk to my family without an inquisition. It became more and more obvious that they hated me. I got asked more than a few times if I was regretting not voting for Hillary, and it was obvious anything I said at all fell on deaf ears. It got more and more caustic and unhealthy until the point that I just stopped responding because I didn't know what else I could say beyond "I didn't even vote for Trump."

That wasn't good enough for my family. I didn't hate him enough. So I basically became a non person.

I really don't care. I can't follow a transparent lie just because it's comfortable. The only thing that's changed in three years is that I am definitely voting for Trump in 2020. Partially because fuck you, that's why.

Then GamerGate happened. While whatever it became is pointless, it made me for the first time stop and think because there was just rampant attacks on a hobby I loved and myself personally.

The one exception to losing my entire family was a single cousin who was already gone because of this exact reason. He was a huge gamerbro who sorta fell out of touch during the gamergate stuff, and since I was the next out we've been talking more and more. He summed up the whole debacle in a way that was both insightful and plain. "First they want to take away your games because they're violent, then they want to take away your games because they're obscene, then they want to take away your games because they're incorrect. Really, they just want to take away your games."
 
I think that's also the reason why there is a huge contingent of people online who voted for Trump but refuse to call themselves republicans. They were taught Republicans were bad people and even if they agree with the Reps current platform they can't bear to be one of them.
In my experience this is because the Republican/GOP establishment is a bunch of exceptional boomers. I say this because the people that I have experienced who say "I'm not a Republican but I support Trump" also have high views of Reps like Jim Jordan and Post-2016 Ted Cruz.

Ironically GOP swamp creatures like Romney and Flake in trying to distance themselves from the crowd following Trump have embodied the stereotype of the conservative pearl-clutching boomer.
 
Back