When I first heard the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS), I thought it was a joke, of the sort you might hear – indeed I did hear – on Dead Ringers (Friday, 6.30 pm, BBC Radio 4). Turns out it’s dead serious. When the film director Bob Reiner and his wife were murdered last week, President Trump went on Truth Social, not to express shock, nor outrage, nor grief, not to sympathise with friends and family, nor commiserate, nor soothe the nation, but to attribute the deaths, through some bizarre concatenation of circumstances, to a mental illness. Apparently Reiner had been suffering from TDS. It is characterised as a monodelusional psychosis. People who are in every other walk of life apparently sane, become so angry with the President, that they are literally driven mad.
It’s not a new phenomenon. It’s not even peculiar to any particular side of the political aisle. There was a George W. Bush Derangement Syndrome, and a Barack Obama Derangement Syndrome. I’m even led to believe – though I’m inclined to think that it surely must be fake news – that it appears in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5, Text Revision 2022). And there have been attempts to legitimise it through law. This year, politicians in both Minnesota and Ohio have tried to introduce a bill recognising TDS in medical and legal contexts, and requiring the National Institute of Health to study it and report annually to Congress. Political interference in medical diagnosis and treatment is not a new phenomenon either. Gender Dysphoria has disappeared from the US radar, and the current Health Secretary doesn’t think much of vaccination.
Societally, we tend to be a bit casual about dubbing our fellows, who might stand out from the crowd, as mad. The English language bursts with idiomatic expressions for craziness. See that guy? He’s one sandwich short of a picnic, not the full shilling, out to lunch, bonkers, raving, barking, bananas, daft as a brush, mad as a snake, “a nut job”… We take offence on behalf of people who are black, Roma, LGBTQI, or a member of many other disadvantaged or minority groups who are frequently disparaged, but for some reason people who have lost touch with reality seem to be fair game. On the whole, I don’t think we should casually refer to somebody as being one raven short of an unkindness or, more colloquially, “aff ’is heid” unless we really wish to assign him a DSM 5 diagnosis, and even then we, at least among the medical community, should be silenced by the constraints of confidentiality. From time to time, doctors have been known to render and make public a diagnosis formulated remotely, and it usually lands them in trouble. It was just something they saw on the telly. Bad idea. I certainly don’t think doctors should say, for example, that President Trump has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, unless the diagnosis is made on the basis of a psychiatric history and mental state examination, and even then, it would be nobody else’s business.
By the same token, I don’t think people, Presidents or otherwise, should be issuing putative diagnoses post mortem. Why speak ill of the dead? Maybe the President didn’t care for Bob Reiner’s movie A Few Good Men, with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and Jack Nicholson, a fine legal drama in which a young Tom Cruise exposes in court the corrupt dealings of a crusty and thoroughly unpleasant military commander (Jack Nicholson). Reiner was politically active, and anti-Trump. It seems to me that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is a form of gaslighting. You deliberately attempt to unnerve a critic, or opponent, by suggesting to them that they might be going crazy. That’s not a new phenomenon either. Totalitarian regimes have a long history of incarcerating political dissidents in lunatic asylums. Their views are obviously so unbalanced, and they are so unhinged, that they clearly need to be locked up in a padded cell for their own protection. You can see why people have tried to deflect Trump Derangement Syndrome back on those who variously ascribe the diagnosis. It is they who are unwell or, in other words, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. This, it seems to me, is the key to the music of Dmitry Shostakovich, a sane man who found himself to all intents and purposes incarcerated in a madhouse. That is why the music is so sardonic, and often so harsh.
Seasoned political dissidents know only too well that expressions of anger can be counterproductive. This is why they turn to humour, especially political satire. Going back to Dead Ringers, I laughed out loud on Friday at the recurring joke of President Trump (brilliantly impersonated) casting aspersions upon various well-loved persons, from Shakespeare’s Romeo, to Leo DiCaprio’s Jack in Titanic, to Bambi’s mother, all dying a pathetic death. “Horrible person, evil person…” It occurred to me on hearing the sketch, that the BBC, faced with an impending lawsuit now inflated to somewhere between $5,000,000,000 and $10,000,000,000, is “doubling down”. Re Splicegate, the row about Panorama’s editing of a Trump speech, allegedly to make it appear that after his presidential defeat in 2020, he was inciting his supporters to violence, it suddenly occurred to me, and I became convinced, that the BBC are not going to settle out of court. They are not going to back down. It’s a bit like the bombardment of the French Fleet by the Royal Navy at Mers-el-Kébir, near Oran, on July 3rd 1940. That was the moment during World War II when the world came to realise that Britain had no intention of suing for peace.
And I can see why. This is an existential crisis. Plenty of people on the right, on both sides of the Pond, wouldn’t mind if the BBC ceased to exist. We all moan about the BBC, but when the threat comes from outside, it is time to circle the wagons. Personally, I would miss Michael Barclay’s Private Passions, Matthew Bannister’s Last Word, Michael Rosen’s Word of Mouth, Laurie Taylor’s Thinking Allowed, Tim Harford’s More or Less, and a live concert on Radio 3 most evenings. Oh, and The Briefing Room, with David Aaronovitch. On Thursday we stepped into the briefing room, together to find out about the US National Security Strategy (NSS). I pricked my ears up because I’d only just written about it. The panel of experts highlighted the recent dramatic divergence of US foreign policy, particularly with respect to relations with Europe, and with Russia. Europe and Ukraine painfully thrashed out a financial package overnight on Thursday – Friday, while Russia and the US have been meeting in Miami at the weekend. There doesn’t seem to be much of a meeting of minds between the US and Europe. Europe is, we are told, facing “civilisational erasure”.
I was critical of the National Security Strategy in this blog last week. Unlike Dead Ringers, I wasn’t trying to be funny, and I hope my language was not intemperate. Admittedly I called the NSS “tosh”. Maybe I’m suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
jamescalumcampbell 