OPINION:
A “feeling as though the world is going to end.” That could describe what millions of people could have experienced in the last 100 years. World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Sept. 11, the ISIS rampage throughout the world, all not only understandably evoked fear of the world ending, but all revolved around madness, war and genocide.
But today that feeling is brought to liberals simply because their favorite lost an election. And strangely enough, it seems compounded with every good piece of news about the economy and the national security of the United States. Weird, no?
Today’s “feeling as though the world is going to end” is now a hallmark of those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, a term meant to identify and mock people back from the edge of a mass hysteria assigning everything horrible in the history of humanity to a guy who was simply better and smarter at campaigning, and liked the American people more than his opponent.
Now the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Canada alerts us to psychologists in the United States treating patients with what some in the field are terming “Trump Anxiety Disorder.” Yes, that would be TAD for short.
Forget about facing Soviet missiles 90 miles off the coast of Florida, or al Qaeda working to get its hands on a nuclear device. No, today’s distraught don’t like the man elected president of the United States and are subjected to various Obama and Clinton henchmen (and women) constantly telling them that there’s treason, racism and Nazis, oh my!
They have been goaded by a Democratic member of Congress to confront Trump supporters; a former Obama official compared border enforcement to the Holocaust; and we hear that people are going to die because of whatever the day’s Trump Armageddon happens to be.
“’Trump Anxiety Disorder’ may not be an official diagnosis, but therapists know the symptoms,” the CBC tells us.
” ’Is he gonna blow us all up?’ So inquired one of [a psychologist’s] patients recently, fretting out loud about the volatility of U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions during a therapy session at her Washington practice …,” continued the CBC report. The psychologist “refers to it as a ’collective anxiety’ among patients who feel on edge about how potentially dire the president’s decisions could be. ’There is a fear of the world ending,’ she said. ’It’s very disorienting and constantly unsettling.’ “
In all fairness, Mr. Trump has blown up a lot. Like unemployment, which is now at historic lows. He also blew up ISIS. A few are scrambling around, but like the cockroaches they are, we’ll get the stragglers. He’s figuratively blowing up MS-13, the transnational terrorist gang also responsible for a nationwide sex trafficking ring.
Yet, the CBC reports, “In a 2017 essay for a book co-edited by psychiatrists from Harvard Medical School and the Yale School of Medicine, clinical psychologist Jennifer Panning of Evanston, Ill., called the condition ’Trump Anxiety Disorder,’ distinguishing it from a generalized anxiety disorder because ’symptoms were specific to the election of Trump and the resultant unpredictable sociopolitical climate,’ reported the network. “Though not an official diagnosis, the symptoms include feeling a loss of control and helplessness, and fretting about what’s happening in the country and spending excessive time on social media, she said.”
One clinical psychologist in the report noted it was the consumption of “media coverage” of the president that was making anxiety about the president worse.
There are so-called journalists and Democratic leadership in the news every day telling people that the sky is falling; that literally Armageddon is upon us; that Mr. Trump and most working with him are committing treason; that a foreign nation is in control of the country; and that ethnic cleansing is unfolding at the border.
All of these claims are as demonstrably unhinged as the lunatic “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that insisted Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were running a sex-trafficking pedophile ring from the basement of a pizza shop in Washington, D.C.
Here are the facts of the matter: Because of Mr. Trump’s policies, liberals like everyone else, have more money in their pocketbooks, are keeping more of the money they earn, are earning higher wages, are safer from domestic and international threats and have reason to be optimistic about the future.
We had 4.1 GDP growth in the second quarter of this year and the trade deficit dropped by more than $50 billion. This week consumer confidence was near an 18-year high. We have added 3.7 million new jobs since the election. We are in the midst of the longest positive job-growth streak in history. 95 percent of American manufacturers are optimistic about their company’s outlook, the highest level in history. More than 3.5 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps.
But … Armageddon.
Certain psychologists and academics may want to assign a “disorder” to the those responding to the hysteria coming from Democratic party leadership and media, as though their anxiety-ridden reaction is beyond their control, and perhaps even Mr. Trump’s fault. It’s not. Unsurprisingly, many Democrats are tired of being misled, manipulated and abused by people like Rep. Maxine Waters, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper and even Mrs. Clinton herself, and have decided to walk away from the party.
Liberal and leftist politicians want their own base to be depressed, afraid and paranoid about Mr. Trump. After all, when you’re consumed with conspiracy theories about Trumphitler, you don’t have any time to ask yourself about the disastrous failures of liberal leadership, and why Mr. Trump is making things exponentially better while Democrats made things worse.
• Tammy Bruce, president of Independent Women’s Voice, author and Fox News contributor, is a radio talk show host.
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