This is motivated by running on in the econoblogosphere to Trump supporters who when confronted with hard facts they cannot refute revert to name calling that those stating actual facts are suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS). I have recently seen it thrown out "liberally." What is going on here?
The beginning of this odd label dates to the George W. Bush era, specifically 2003 when the late Charles Krauthammer, a supporter of W. upset by widespread criticism apparently coined the term "Bush Derangement Syndrome" (BDS). to describe persistent W. critics, apparently especially Barbra Streisand. As it was, while the term was out there it was not that frequently used during Bush's presidency as later, although it was used enough to become established as a legit term.
When Obama came in its obvious successor, Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS) became a serious phenomenom. The first version of it was the infamous "birtherism," led by non other than Donald J. Trump, now POTUS. This was a total lie, which at an obscure moment in 2016 that got no notice, Trump admitted officially was a lie. But reportedly now his most supremely fave adviser is Lou Dobbs of the CNBC network, who was also long a hard core birtherist.
We were subjected to a later stream of less obviously false accusations against Obama that the ODS crowd accepted without question, even as their factual underpinnings were undermined. So we had a string of supposed scandals that to this day anyone living in the Fox News etc bubble believes without doubt. So there was there "Fast and Furious," a complicated matter of US guns being sent across the Mexican border that later ended up killing US people. This is a complicated matter with arguably some Obama admin input, but ultimately it was a W. Bush program that went sour.
Another hot deal for the ODS crowd, still showing up was the supposedly great IRS scandal that in the end also turned out to be a big nothing, although this fact has probably had less reporting. So after the big Tea Party win in 2010 a bunch of their groups showed up at the IRS claiming to be "general welfare" groups but not "political" groups. Of course they were all political groups, and it was a low level IRS employee, reportedly a Republican, who initiated the obviously completely appropriate investigation of a bunch of groups claiming tax exempt status for not being political who were blatantly political. In the end they all got their undeserved tax breaks after the ODS gang got going with their false stories that this was all due to Obama plotting.
Then we got the great Benghazi scandal, which combined the ODS birther crazies with anti-Hillary Clinton crowd, with Hannity and the Fox gang not missing a beat. What really had them going was that the unfortunate Benghazi incident happened just before Obama's reelection in 2012. This allowed the ODS crowd to merge with an old anti-Hillary Clinton crowd to have 8 House investigations of the Benghazi incident, all led by GOP House chairs. Early on the ODS crowd hoped to have something to impeach Obama, but that soon faded away with the emphasis shifting to Hillary as she clearly became the Dem frontrunner for 2016. Of the 8 investigations of her, the 7th by the House intel comm was the most thorough, ultimately deciding there was nothing there aside from the GOP-led Congress cutting funding for diplomatic security. Immediately following this report GOP Speaker Boehner appointed Trey Gowdy to further pursue this ODS fantasy, with this culiminating with th famous 11 hour hearing with Hillary that ended with them falling apart over her not having had late Amb. Stevens to her house for dinner, while his parents protested against any politicization of his unfortunate death.
Which brings us to the Trump era. So his super intense followers have of course decided that anybody being too critical of Trump must be guilty of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). The problem for these folks is that Donald Trump has been publicly identified as having made now more than 10,000 false statements. So when they come swooping in to declare somebody as suffering from TDS, more often than not they are pushing some outright lie drawn from the fevered and deranged fantasies coming out of the Fox bubble of false reality. These poor schlobs do not even know that they are just repeating lies well-known to be lies as they attempt to undo accurate critiques of Trump policies.
These poor pathetic TDS folks might want to claim some sort of equivalency with their ODS counterparts. But their problem is that the critics of the ODS people, now morphed into being the (anti) TDS people, and thwie guy Trump has gone far beyond records lying. So, they just end up lying more for him and whining that their critics are guilty of TDS, which is a joke.
So, I have a new categor.y. Let us call these people who spout hislies as truth the Real Trump Derangement Syndrome (RTDS) people. I mean these poor RTDS people seem to really neeed a home.
Baekley Rosser
Comparisons are ODS.
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