Democrats can’t seem to have a conversation or sit for an interview without invoking President Donald Trump as the cause for whatever pinch they are in, as a diversionary tactic to deflect blame, or simply a foil for whatever invented crisis de jour is raging. So, yes, the Left seems to default to Trump Derangement Syndrome as sort of a universal theory of every bad thing — but that raises the question of whether the rift that exists between people who have supported Trump (or have expressed any inclination to do so) and those so deeply steeped in TDS for such a long and sustained period can ever be healed.
Trump will eventually go away, but will TDS ever subside?
I’ve crossed swords with some of these folks, and while they can be rational about things not Trump, when it comes to anything Trump-related — or perceived to be — the TDS force field around them cannot be penetrated by logic or reason.
I’m not sure this rift can ever be closed.
If you ask the Democrats what is causing the rift, I’m going to wager that within the proximity of the word “Trump” — either immediately pre or post — will be either the word “autocrat” or “autocracy.”
But what is this “autocracy” of which they speak?
In the TDS-addled mind of a Democrat, “autocracy” seems to mean a singular person — namely, Donald J. Trump. I would argue that if autocracy truly exists, and I believe it does, it isn’t just one person; it exists as an aggregation — a group, a cabal within the bureaucracy (or perhaps the bureaucracy itself), sometimes independent of the head of government.
In “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” the 1979 article that essentially was the basis for President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy, Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote:
“Traditional autocrats leave in place existing allocations of wealth, power, status, and other resources which in most traditional societies favor an affluent few and maintain masses in poverty. They worship traditional gods and observe traditional taboos. They do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations. Because the miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable to ordinary people who, growing up in the society, learn to cope, as children born to untouchables in India acquire the skills and attitudes necessary for survival in the miserable roles they are destined to fill.”
Kirkpatric echoes Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in America’s Declaration of Independence that “accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
In general terms, Kirkpatrick notes, “Traditional autocrats tolerate social inequities, brutality, and poverty while revolutionary autocracies create them.” If you consider autocracy as a movement rather than being vested in a person, it seems plausible that we are already at the mercy of an autocracy that thrives in our apathy and acceptance of known misery rather than risk making it worse for fear of being noticed.
I’m constantly asked why I continue to support Trump, given that he seems autocratic, especially through his use of executive orders, the expansion of executive power, and his legal operations on the margins of the law.
Without accepting their premises, my response has always been twofold.
First, my support for President Trump is because he is not the autocrat — a continuous, generational autocracy already exists, and it is one that looks a lot like the Democrat Party. It does so because it was created by Democrats, and it resists conservative ideas as it supports and funds leftist programs and agendas that dovetail with the progressive ideology and initiatives of contemporary Democrats.
Second, actions are not autocratic when they aim to destroy the autocracy that already exists. Autocracies are seldom, if ever, destroyed without direct action — especially when they masquerade as sufferable evils.
I believe, in totality, President Trump’s actions are directed toward the Jeffersonian concept of righting ourselves by abolishing the shadow autocracy to which we have become accustomed.
The only way to close the rift is to destroy it.
