Putting “Why do people hate Trump so much?” into a search engine yields a trove of results relating to Americans pondering, proposing, and picking brains (and prevaricating?) regarding the matter. For as much as the president is admired and heroicized by supporters, his staunchest opponents’ feelings run just as deep: They hate him with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
It could be unprecedented in American history. Ronald Reagan and G.W. Bush were hated, with the former dubbed “Ronald Ray-gun” and the latter caricatured as a monkey. But nothing quite compares to what’s been informally labeled a psychological problem: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).
The site “Thought Catalog” made an attempt last year to define TDS’s etiology, reviewing a multitude of online comments and then listing “The 20 Top Reasons” people hate Trump. But these range from the silly and childish — “He’s a former reality-TV star” and “He’s rude and mean” — to the banal: “He is pro-gun” (like most every Republican). So the discerning could suspect that those thus opining may present these reasons, but that their real reasons remain hidden, perhaps even from themselves.
The latest to tackle the TDS question was American Thinker yesterday. The site quotes material from one E.P. Unim, who writes, “I’m still trying to understand what 80 million voters disliked about President Trump so much that they decided to cast their votes for a man who served forty-seven years in government and has done absolutely nothing for the American people.”
Actually, it’s more accurate to ask how tens of millions could vote for Joe Biden and how other people, so overcome with TDS, could steal perhaps millions more votes for him.
Regardless, American Thinker then rhetorically asks about these voters, citing examples from Unim, “Did they hate that he [Trump] made cruelty to animals a felony, or that he put money into stopping the opioid crisis, or that he killed terrorists without risking American lives, or that he didn’t start a war with North Korea, or that he slashed drug prices?”
The Thinker then quotes from Unim’s Trump accomplishment list directly:
Perhaps you dislike that he signed a law ending the gag-order on pharmacists that prevented them from sharing money-saving options on prescriptions?
Is your dislike for President Trump based on the fact that he signed the Save Our Seas Act, which funds $10 million per year to clean tons of plastic and garbage from the ocean?
Did you dislike that he signed a bill for airports to provide breastfeeding stations for nursing moms?
How about the fact that he signed the biggest wilderness protection and conservation bill in a decade, designating 375,000 acres as protected land, was that why you dislike him? Did you dislike that he loves America and puts Americans first?
Did you dislike that he made a gay man the ambassador to Germany and then asked him to clean up national security and un-classify as much of it as possible for transparency?
Did you dislike that he’s kept almost every campaign promise (with zero support from Congress who [sic] work against him daily!) plus 100 more promises because Washington was much more broken than he or any of us thought?
Do you dislike that he works for free, donating his entire $400,000 salary to different charities?
Did you feel that he did this for four years because he was “showboating?”
Do you dislike that he’s done more for the black community than every other President?
Do you dislike that he listened to senator [sic] Scott and passed Invest In Opportunity Zones to help minorities?
There’s far more to the list, which can be found here. But the point is that while I would take issue with some listed accomplishments — either because they’re contrary to virtue or because they’re unconstitutional — Trump’s policies are, when viewed within our culture’s context, very “middle of the road.”
This underlines how I’ve long said that millions hate what they think Trump is.
Very few hate what he actually is.
To further illustrate the point, I’ve asked Democrats to name one — just one — Trump policy they dislike. I’ve yet to get a good answer. They’ll cite things such as “his family separation policy” (prominent in the news when I spoke to the Democrats), which, of course, not only is reasonable but isn’t “his”; it was pursued by Bush and Obama as well. So, again, it appears the real reason for the hatred is rarely expressed.
American Thinker points out that the Democrats hate Trump because they want to “keep their hold on the Deep State.” There’s no doubt, too, that Machiavellian leftists have this motivation. Whatever one thinks of Trump, he is not part of the establishment, not “one of them,” not a member of the club.
Note also that this is an internationalist club, and the president has been throwing a monkey wrench into its plans. In this he embodies what these globalists really hate: The wider nationalist movement as also represented by hundreds of millions of Westerners and figures such as France’s Marine Le Pen, the Netherlands’s Geert Wilders, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
The difference, though, is that Le Pen and Wilders haven’t actually seized power, and leftists consider Hungary an Eastern European backwater.
But having such a person at the world’s most powerful nation’s helm is a different matter. Not only that, Trump snatched what was an assumed victory — one leftists’ counted on, could taste, and had based their plans on — from the Deep State’s coronated candidate, Hillary Clinton. It’s intolerable.
None of this, however, explains why millions of outside-the-establishment, rank-and-file Democrats hate Trump. To understand this, we must realize that man operates by logic less than many may assume; he’s largely driven by emotion.
This is especially true of leftists, who, detached from Truth, tend to be feelings-oriented. This is evident with Trump hatred: When you can’t actually cite valid reasons for disliking someone, it’s clear you’re in the grip of that product of emotion called prejudice.
Of course, this fault is catalyzed by demagogues and media propagandists who manipulate people’s emotions. But that they certainly have fertile ground to work with brings us to a generally overlooked point:
The hatred has changed from Reagan to Bush to Trump because, in part, the Left has changed.
As with an untended house or car, leftists experience increasing disorder with time and descend ever further into vice, or sin — and wrath is a sin. Put simply, part of the reason they hate Trump more is that they’re more hateful.
Note also that everyone needs meaning in life, and hate inspires passion just as love does (only, it’s destructive). As a woman I once heard call in to a radio show put it, “My hatred keeps me going.”
The last TDS explanation I’ll propound relates to something I wrote in a piece published earlier today. To wit:
A major reason various types of chauvinism (ethnic, racial, etc.) are so appealing is that they afford even the most lacking and unaccomplished a sense of special status. For no matter what, at least you’re not like those other people — you’re part of an elite group. Thus could Nazis revel in master race status.
As for our leftists, remember how they love to talk about how stupid conservatives are, about we’re knuckle-dragging Neanderthals? This is the same phenomenon. Leftists’ self-esteem is, often, largely based on fancying themselves members of an elite group: liberals.
Now consider a scene in the 1988 film Mississippi Burning, one in which the Gene Hackman character explains what his father said after ensuring a black neighbor’s business would fail: “If you ain’t better than a n*****, son, who are you better than?”
It’s hard maintaining an illusion that you’re part of an “elite” if those whose alleged inferiority proves your status outshine you. And I suspect that among many liberal pseudo-elites — especially “intelligentsia” such as journalists, academics, and credentialed politicians — this factor is operative.
Their illusions can be shattered and their self-image threatened if they’re “beaten” by those lessers, the boorish Trump and his unwashed deplorables. How dare he be better than they are! We must be kept in our place so that the pseudo-elites’ sense of superiority can be maintained.
While I don’t claim my list of TDS causes is exhaustive, it is food for thought. What we can know for sure is that the hatred is real and dangerous — and won’t stop with a Democrat seizure of the White House.
