An Open Letter to Suckers Suffering from TDS
For more open letters guaranteed to make their intended recipients go apoplectic and have a heartattack.
Dear TDS Sufferer (aka tool),
Consider this your official open letter of diagnosis – and no, there is no cure.
You have been told you have it. Maybe by a relative, a pundit, a colleague, or a stranger in the comment section of X who types in all caps and ends every sentence with “WAKE UP.” You have been accused of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome–a term coined by clinicians and columnists with a flair for psychiatric cosplay.
Let’s be clear: TDS is truly a mental disorder. It is also a rhetorical device, a conversational grenade, and a way of obliterating criticism by reframing it as hysteria. It is the political equivalent of saying, “You are just jealous!”
🧠This Open Letter Explains What TDS Really Is
According to its most popular definitions: TDS is a hatred of President Trump so intense that it impairs people’s judgment and makes them look ugly when they talk. What’s more, it is a mental condition in which a person has been driven effectively insane due to his or her hatred of Donald Trump. It is also, paradoxically, used to describe unwavering support for Trump, suggesting the term has mutated into a kind of ideological ouroboros. In short: TDS is a mirror, and depending on who is holding it, reflects either liberal hair-on-fire hysteria or conservative smugness, the kind that comes with knowing that you are right.
🌀 The Three Stages of TDS—(An Open Letter to Your Brain)
1. Proportional Collapse: Every tweet is a crisis. Every press conference is a prophecy.
2. Hyperbolic Vocabulary: Words like “fascist,” “dictator,” “racist,” “Nazi,” and “end of democracy” become punctuation
3. Fantasy-Reality Blur: You start to believe that Trump controls the weather, the stock market, the WNBA, and your neighbor’s dog. These stages were outlined by Justin Raimondo in a 2016 editorial, and they still hold up like a cracked mirror in a funhouse.
Futile Coping Mechanisms for the Diagnosed
“¢ Media Moderation: Limit your intake of headlines if you can, although that is doubtful. Not every typo is a constitutional crisis.
“¢ Journaling: Chronicle your reactions in writing poetry. If you must scream, do it in iambic pentameter.
“¢ Cross-Ideological Dialogue: Talk to someone who voted differently. Not to convert–just to remember they are human and, perhaps, you are, too, but I doubt it.
“¢ Ritual Disillusionment: Light a candle. Delete a tweet. Whisper “covfefe” into the void.
📠Final Benediction
This open letter is not a cure. There is no cure, sucker. It is a reckoning. TDS is not about President Trump. It is about what he revealed: our addiction to spectacle, our hunger for certainty, our willingness to turn politics into personality cults. So if you have been infected, own it. Treat it not as a scarlet letter, but as a cautionary tale. And remember: the real derangement is believing that one man could break reality. We did that ourselves.
If the unhinged, unconventional ramblings of our fearless editor in briefs fancy your tickle, wander over to our Satirical Commentary page and try a line or two.
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