I was accused of TDS several weeks ago as well. Unfortunately this person voted for dRump in all three of the last elections and still believes he will succeed in making America Great again. Just some pain along the way but everything will be fine, right?!! This person has a PhD and a transgender daughter at home but fails to see reality in front of him... Thank you, Mike, for making us feel less alone! Your are appreciated!
OMG, the willful ignorance and blinding cognitive dissonance of this educated idiot is infuriating. It's not just the deplorable uneducated maga who are the problem.
I hate to say this, but as a physician/scientist, I have been shocked at colleagues who still feel that Trump is doing a great job. No matter what hard facts I present to these few (thank God), they deviate back and focus on the faults of the Democratic Party.
I do not view the Democrats through rose-colored glasses; they have really screwed up with the wrong choice of candidates for POTUS and for their inaction in dealing with immigration. I too am not a bleeding-heart liberal. I do not believe transgender (male to female) athletes should be playing in women's sports. I do not believe there should be quotas on admission to universities or higher levels of education, but that admissions instead be based on merit and probability of getting the best applicant hired for the job.
Know also that without a doubt, a lot of taxpayer dollars are squandered on what most people would consider BS. When I was drafted in 1970 (Vietnam) for the US Army, 4000 physicians at Brook Army Medical Center went through basic training that involved teaching us (a) how to march to a full military marching band and (b) what we should do in case of a nuclear attack (basically, bend over, put your head between your knees, and kiss your ass goodbye). All of this occurred while children were dying of.a diphtheria epidemic in San Antonio. This kind of nonsense needs to be ended, but not the DOGE (Destroy Our Great Economy) behavior of Musk and Trump.
It certainly is a comfort to know there are some sane, sensible, intelligent, and articulate people out there. I don't consider myself an academic, or particularly smart in any way, but sometimes speaking to people around me and online, it's like I'm living in TikTok. Mike's writing and this forum are becoming my happy place.
Mike Brock, thank you very kindly for having taken the time and made the effort to craft this article and address this painfully significant issue.
I found your Substack some weeks ago utterly by accident, no doubt based upon the recommendation of Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Hubbell, Rebecca Solnit, or someone else whose writings I read, along with yours, religiously.
I myself have been sick to my stomach since the Nov 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. Since the day of the Inauguration the first word on my mind in the morning is "cash-flow." And I mean "cash-flow" for every Average Joe & Joette such as myself. At my age and tax-bracket, a minor hiccup in cash-flow could mean the difference between solvency and spiraling, irreversible debt. That is the State of the Union, no doubt, for more of us than not. Thank you for caring about this on a micro- and macro-level.
It is both refreshing and reassuring not to be lied and/or spoken down to by someone who has such a beautiful way with words.
In solidarity with your efforts on behalf of The Public,
Another spot on essay, Mike. You must be exhausted. Producing your daily volume of brilliantly insightful commentary is no small task…
America is approaching a critical mass - constitutionally, legally, ethically, morally, economically. Is this finally our national China Syndrome, a tipping point? Where the sum of our epistemic failures exceeds our ability to control the meltdown reaction resulting from so many willful evasions and denials of reality?
TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is exactly that: it is the collection of signs and symptoms manifested by Donald Trump (e.g., malignant narcissism, sociopathic personality, dystonic egomania, vocabulary at 4th grade elementary school level, racism, authoritarianism now manifesting fascism). Most of these characteristics were cited by Bandi Lee and 27 additional psychiatrists and psychologists-- Lee, B. X. (2017). The dangerous case of Donald Trump: 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assess a president. First edition. St. Martin's Press.
However, many observers of Trump are not old enough to see the similarities with another figure notable in the history of man's inhumanity to man. If the main stream media and those in Congress were more avid readers, then they would be familiar with:
"This has consisted in the following of certain rules such as: never to admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong; take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.
Page 229 from Analysis of The Personality of Adolph Hitler With Predictions of His Future Behavior and Suggestions for Dealing With Him Now and After Germany's Surrender, by Henry A. Murray, October 1943
A similar description can be found in another 40+ year old reference:
Langer, Walter C. (1943–1944). "A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler. His Life and Legend". Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Washington, D.C. p. 219. Archived from the original on 8 October 1999 – via Nizkor. With the collaboration of Prof. Henry A. Murray, Harvard Psychological Clinic, Dr. Ernst Kris, New School for Social Research, Dr. Bertram D. Lawin, New York Psychoanalytic Institute.
Also, one must not forget the stellar writing in 1938:
"Adolf Hitler, irrational, contradictory, complex, is an unpredictable character; therein lie his power and his menace. To millions of honest Germans he is sublime, a figure of adoration; he fills them with love, fear, and nationalist ecstasy. To many other Germans he is meager and ridiculous—a charlatan, a lucky hysteric, and a lying demagogue." —John Gunther, Inside Europe 1938
Ladies & Gentlemen of all ages, what we are seeing is a replay of history, but the "Joker" is Donald J. Trump, a known fraudster, a convicted felon, a rapist, a penultimate liar, a dog cheating on his wife with a "sex worker" Stormy Daniels just 4 months after his wife has given birth to their child.
This is the Chosen One to MAGA (Make America Gag Again); this is the convicted felon whose devout followers in the U.S and Congress liken to Christ. Yet these very same people project their thoughts and feelings by accusing others of TDS.
Comment to Mike Brook: Your posts are spot on. This man, shockingly voted into office by many minorities, has been at his scheming since the frauds he committed in NY dating back to the '80s (documented in depth by journalist Wayne Barrett [The Village Voice} and in Barrett's book written in 1992.
Those similarly deranged as Trump are, for the most part, but not exclusively, people who seldom read a book, and if they read anything dealing with history, they read some abridged form of CliffsNotes. Here is what I would consider required reading:
Authoritarian Nightmare by John Dean and Bob Altemeyer
Rage by Bob Woodward (also Fear by Woodward and Peril by Woodward)
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
This Shall Not Pass by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, edited by Bandy X. Lee MD (chapters from 27 psychiatrists)
How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky
What We Must Demand For Our Democracy to Survive by Adam M. Strum, 2020
Trump: The Deals and the Downfall by Wayne Barrett, 1992
Bravo. Unfortunately, I think this sort of embarrassment is a necessary for course correction.
The parallels between the 2nd terms of Trump and Dubya are eerie; I recall being told by the latter’s supporters that I was being hysterical about his incompetence and his mismanagement. Then Katrina hit, and their cell phones became silent too. Now, 20 years later, they deny even voting for him.
Mark my words: the same will be true of Trump in 20 years time.
"This pattern—where tribal loyalty trumps professional expertise, where political alignment outweighs factual accuracy—corrodes the very possibility of governance based on shared understanding. It transforms policy discourse from a search for what works into a battle over who wins. It replaces the question “Is this true?” with “Does this help my side?”". Or worse, does it help me be accepted by "my side"?
I truly believe that this is the core issue of our time which may well destroy us, or from which we can learn something profound. It's not about Right vs. Left. It's about True vs False. Right vs Wrong.
We can disagree about many things, but at some point we have to understand that opinions and facts are not the same. It's about Reality and the moral imperative to stand corrected by it when it confronts you with the truth. Otherwise there is nothing but the false, almost certainly fatal, delusions of power.
2+2=4 can never be a political statement. A tribal statement. A statement about power. It is not on a spectrum of possible answers. 3? 5? It is not up to us individually or collectively to decide. It is a factual statement about Reality. What philosophers call a "truth statement". And understanding that is the moral question we are facing right now.
I will go on the public record as predicting that none of this - the slide into bogus strongman authoritarianism and faux christianity, the ruthless hijacking and relentless destruction of our institutions and guardrails, the avarice and arrogance of billionaires and corporations, the kakistocratic submission to a felon in chief, the abnegation and dereliction of Constitutional duties by a feckless and supine GOP, the prominence of and pride in stupidity, criminality and corruption, the disregard of decency and abandonmment of a moral compass, the repudiation of truth, science and common sense, and not least, the drunk on Koolade addled idiocracy mindlessly cheering this on - all will come crashing down, hopefully sooner than November 2026. But the long game is we are destroying ourselves. Seneca, a contemporary of Pliny and mentor of Nero, wrote, “a single day will see the burial of all mankind. All that the long forbearance has produced, all that is famous and all that is beautiful, great thrones, great nations, all will descend into one abyss, will be overthrown in one hour.” Netzahualcoyotl (“Hungry Coyote,” the poet-king of Texcoco in ancient Mexico) proclaimed, “all the earth is a grave and nothing escapes it . . . filled are the bowels of the earth with pestilential dust once flesh and bone, once animate bodies of men.”
I want to add here the intentional psychological abuse of two groups: immigrants and federal employees. While scholars and philosphers have studied genocide and collective oppression, they haven't gotten around to looking at the more initial phase of intentional psychological torture targeted towards specific groups. "Hostile workplace" is generally not intended by management, but DOGE is trying to get Federal workers to quit by making them miserable. Lack of transparency for ICE actions keeps immigrants (all of them) perpetually afraid.
Prisons intentionally humiliate prisoners as a way of keeping them in line, but prisoners generally at least know what to expect: it's a kind of routine that they can learn to psychologically resist. Prison procedures are also constrained by law and regulation.
We will need a way to include collective psychological abuse in future lists of criminal and/or impeachment charges. Such accusations might come in handy now for current lawsuits against DOGE. Any ideas?
Another eye-opening, trenchant, no-holds-barred, informative, rage-and-despair inducing essay. Thank you, Mike. But I hold out little to no hope or expectations that any of these false prophets will be held accountable. They never are, not even when an Obama "reformist" gets elected as we saw when the ringleaders of those who engineered the 2008-2009 financial meltdown got off scott-free with absolutely zero consequences. I don't imagine this crisis will result in the irresponsible being held accountable on any level. I hope I'm dead wrong in public.
This time the false prophet is the pathologically-lying, corrupt, sociopathic, reptilian American president. He’s been granted king-like powers by wing-nut SCOTUS. No doubt, the arsonist (in his “blind trust”) and his fellow pyromaniacs shorted the market just before “liberation day🤮.” Another in a long line of days full of lies, victimhood and delusion.
They’ll be in there elbow-deep, buying up stocks on sale just before deals with other nations (ya sure!) are announced from the Oval. Pop goes the market, their savvy purchases pay off and the American wealth gap further expands. This is how they do it. This one, an engineered, make believe crisis.
He’s so stubbornly stupid, entirely misunderstands trade and economics, does not appreciate that we can’t go backwards or that it’s not 70 years ago. America is a service economy now and has benefited greatly from globalism. We are 5% of globe’s population, but consume 30% of the goods. The misogynistic racist wants to go back there in every way, akin to an old grandpa stuck in a paranoid time warp. What an asshat.
This describes a lot of people (RFKJR, for example): “They were subordinating known economic principles to desired political outcomes. They weren't mistaken; they were motivated.” They are motivated, so they lie. Then they lie again. And then they lie again. And again. And suddenly, when they need to say the truth, they find that their lies have emptied the words of meaning, and they no longer have any power to protect their community from catastrophe. The Boy Who Cried Wolf is a fable about language. We are watching the truth of that fable play out. You can lie and lie and lie and then tell the truth.
> But the damage is already being done—not just to markets and the economy, but to the very concept of expertise itself. When those with the most knowledge and the largest platforms subordinate truth to political alignment, they don't just make a tactical error. They commit an epistemic crime.
Sort of like what happened with COVID and "two weeks to flatten the curve"?
I was accused of TDS several weeks ago as well. Unfortunately this person voted for dRump in all three of the last elections and still believes he will succeed in making America Great again. Just some pain along the way but everything will be fine, right?!! This person has a PhD and a transgender daughter at home but fails to see reality in front of him... Thank you, Mike, for making us feel less alone! Your are appreciated!
OMG, the willful ignorance and blinding cognitive dissonance of this educated idiot is infuriating. It's not just the deplorable uneducated maga who are the problem.
I hate to say this, but as a physician/scientist, I have been shocked at colleagues who still feel that Trump is doing a great job. No matter what hard facts I present to these few (thank God), they deviate back and focus on the faults of the Democratic Party.
I do not view the Democrats through rose-colored glasses; they have really screwed up with the wrong choice of candidates for POTUS and for their inaction in dealing with immigration. I too am not a bleeding-heart liberal. I do not believe transgender (male to female) athletes should be playing in women's sports. I do not believe there should be quotas on admission to universities or higher levels of education, but that admissions instead be based on merit and probability of getting the best applicant hired for the job.
Know also that without a doubt, a lot of taxpayer dollars are squandered on what most people would consider BS. When I was drafted in 1970 (Vietnam) for the US Army, 4000 physicians at Brook Army Medical Center went through basic training that involved teaching us (a) how to march to a full military marching band and (b) what we should do in case of a nuclear attack (basically, bend over, put your head between your knees, and kiss your ass goodbye). All of this occurred while children were dying of.a diphtheria epidemic in San Antonio. This kind of nonsense needs to be ended, but not the DOGE (Destroy Our Great Economy) behavior of Musk and Trump.
*You are appreciated!
Their kid probably despises them.
Indeed...
Magnificent grief, Mike. I hear you. God dammit I hate this and I thank you for writing it.
You said exactly what I wanted to say, more concisely. Thank you too.
Well I love that we’re hearing one another, Nick, especially as we try to stay afloat in these high high waves.
It certainly is a comfort to know there are some sane, sensible, intelligent, and articulate people out there. I don't consider myself an academic, or particularly smart in any way, but sometimes speaking to people around me and online, it's like I'm living in TikTok. Mike's writing and this forum are becoming my happy place.
Mike Brock, thank you very kindly for having taken the time and made the effort to craft this article and address this painfully significant issue.
I found your Substack some weeks ago utterly by accident, no doubt based upon the recommendation of Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Hubbell, Rebecca Solnit, or someone else whose writings I read, along with yours, religiously.
I myself have been sick to my stomach since the Nov 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. Since the day of the Inauguration the first word on my mind in the morning is "cash-flow." And I mean "cash-flow" for every Average Joe & Joette such as myself. At my age and tax-bracket, a minor hiccup in cash-flow could mean the difference between solvency and spiraling, irreversible debt. That is the State of the Union, no doubt, for more of us than not. Thank you for caring about this on a micro- and macro-level.
It is both refreshing and reassuring not to be lied and/or spoken down to by someone who has such a beautiful way with words.
In solidarity with your efforts on behalf of The Public,
Hear, hear. Well said.
Another spot on essay, Mike. You must be exhausted. Producing your daily volume of brilliantly insightful commentary is no small task…
America is approaching a critical mass - constitutionally, legally, ethically, morally, economically. Is this finally our national China Syndrome, a tipping point? Where the sum of our epistemic failures exceeds our ability to control the meltdown reaction resulting from so many willful evasions and denials of reality?
TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is exactly that: it is the collection of signs and symptoms manifested by Donald Trump (e.g., malignant narcissism, sociopathic personality, dystonic egomania, vocabulary at 4th grade elementary school level, racism, authoritarianism now manifesting fascism). Most of these characteristics were cited by Bandi Lee and 27 additional psychiatrists and psychologists-- Lee, B. X. (2017). The dangerous case of Donald Trump: 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assess a president. First edition. St. Martin's Press.
However, many observers of Trump are not old enough to see the similarities with another figure notable in the history of man's inhumanity to man. If the main stream media and those in Congress were more avid readers, then they would be familiar with:
"This has consisted in the following of certain rules such as: never to admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong; take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.
Page 229 from Analysis of The Personality of Adolph Hitler With Predictions of His Future Behavior and Suggestions for Dealing With Him Now and After Germany's Surrender, by Henry A. Murray, October 1943
A similar description can be found in another 40+ year old reference:
Langer, Walter C. (1943–1944). "A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler. His Life and Legend". Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Washington, D.C. p. 219. Archived from the original on 8 October 1999 – via Nizkor. With the collaboration of Prof. Henry A. Murray, Harvard Psychological Clinic, Dr. Ernst Kris, New School for Social Research, Dr. Bertram D. Lawin, New York Psychoanalytic Institute.
Also, one must not forget the stellar writing in 1938:
"Adolf Hitler, irrational, contradictory, complex, is an unpredictable character; therein lie his power and his menace. To millions of honest Germans he is sublime, a figure of adoration; he fills them with love, fear, and nationalist ecstasy. To many other Germans he is meager and ridiculous—a charlatan, a lucky hysteric, and a lying demagogue." —John Gunther, Inside Europe 1938
Ladies & Gentlemen of all ages, what we are seeing is a replay of history, but the "Joker" is Donald J. Trump, a known fraudster, a convicted felon, a rapist, a penultimate liar, a dog cheating on his wife with a "sex worker" Stormy Daniels just 4 months after his wife has given birth to their child.
This is the Chosen One to MAGA (Make America Gag Again); this is the convicted felon whose devout followers in the U.S and Congress liken to Christ. Yet these very same people project their thoughts and feelings by accusing others of TDS.
Comment to Mike Brook: Your posts are spot on. This man, shockingly voted into office by many minorities, has been at his scheming since the frauds he committed in NY dating back to the '80s (documented in depth by journalist Wayne Barrett [The Village Voice} and in Barrett's book written in 1992.
Those similarly deranged as Trump are, for the most part, but not exclusively, people who seldom read a book, and if they read anything dealing with history, they read some abridged form of CliffsNotes. Here is what I would consider required reading:
Authoritarian Nightmare by John Dean and Bob Altemeyer
Rage by Bob Woodward (also Fear by Woodward and Peril by Woodward)
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
This Shall Not Pass by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, edited by Bandy X. Lee MD (chapters from 27 psychiatrists)
How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky
What We Must Demand For Our Democracy to Survive by Adam M. Strum, 2020
Trump: The Deals and the Downfall by Wayne Barrett, 1992
Yet somehow these dRumpers believe that WE are deranged and everything happening now is Biden and Obama's fault?!!!
That beautifully descriptive phrase ‘the intoxicating promise of power’. Sums it up nicely!
Bravo. Unfortunately, I think this sort of embarrassment is a necessary for course correction.
The parallels between the 2nd terms of Trump and Dubya are eerie; I recall being told by the latter’s supporters that I was being hysterical about his incompetence and his mismanagement. Then Katrina hit, and their cell phones became silent too. Now, 20 years later, they deny even voting for him.
Mark my words: the same will be true of Trump in 20 years time.
"This pattern—where tribal loyalty trumps professional expertise, where political alignment outweighs factual accuracy—corrodes the very possibility of governance based on shared understanding. It transforms policy discourse from a search for what works into a battle over who wins. It replaces the question “Is this true?” with “Does this help my side?”". Or worse, does it help me be accepted by "my side"?
I truly believe that this is the core issue of our time which may well destroy us, or from which we can learn something profound. It's not about Right vs. Left. It's about True vs False. Right vs Wrong.
We can disagree about many things, but at some point we have to understand that opinions and facts are not the same. It's about Reality and the moral imperative to stand corrected by it when it confronts you with the truth. Otherwise there is nothing but the false, almost certainly fatal, delusions of power.
2+2=4 can never be a political statement. A tribal statement. A statement about power. It is not on a spectrum of possible answers. 3? 5? It is not up to us individually or collectively to decide. It is a factual statement about Reality. What philosophers call a "truth statement". And understanding that is the moral question we are facing right now.
I will go on the public record as predicting that none of this - the slide into bogus strongman authoritarianism and faux christianity, the ruthless hijacking and relentless destruction of our institutions and guardrails, the avarice and arrogance of billionaires and corporations, the kakistocratic submission to a felon in chief, the abnegation and dereliction of Constitutional duties by a feckless and supine GOP, the prominence of and pride in stupidity, criminality and corruption, the disregard of decency and abandonmment of a moral compass, the repudiation of truth, science and common sense, and not least, the drunk on Koolade addled idiocracy mindlessly cheering this on - all will come crashing down, hopefully sooner than November 2026. But the long game is we are destroying ourselves. Seneca, a contemporary of Pliny and mentor of Nero, wrote, “a single day will see the burial of all mankind. All that the long forbearance has produced, all that is famous and all that is beautiful, great thrones, great nations, all will descend into one abyss, will be overthrown in one hour.” Netzahualcoyotl (“Hungry Coyote,” the poet-king of Texcoco in ancient Mexico) proclaimed, “all the earth is a grave and nothing escapes it . . . filled are the bowels of the earth with pestilential dust once flesh and bone, once animate bodies of men.”
I want to add here the intentional psychological abuse of two groups: immigrants and federal employees. While scholars and philosphers have studied genocide and collective oppression, they haven't gotten around to looking at the more initial phase of intentional psychological torture targeted towards specific groups. "Hostile workplace" is generally not intended by management, but DOGE is trying to get Federal workers to quit by making them miserable. Lack of transparency for ICE actions keeps immigrants (all of them) perpetually afraid.
Prisons intentionally humiliate prisoners as a way of keeping them in line, but prisoners generally at least know what to expect: it's a kind of routine that they can learn to psychologically resist. Prison procedures are also constrained by law and regulation.
We will need a way to include collective psychological abuse in future lists of criminal and/or impeachment charges. Such accusations might come in handy now for current lawsuits against DOGE. Any ideas?
Trump IS deranged.
Just damn man. I too want a goddamn apology from these fools. The silence and cowardice of those unwilling to admit they were wrong is palpable.
Another eye-opening, trenchant, no-holds-barred, informative, rage-and-despair inducing essay. Thank you, Mike. But I hold out little to no hope or expectations that any of these false prophets will be held accountable. They never are, not even when an Obama "reformist" gets elected as we saw when the ringleaders of those who engineered the 2008-2009 financial meltdown got off scott-free with absolutely zero consequences. I don't imagine this crisis will result in the irresponsible being held accountable on any level. I hope I'm dead wrong in public.
This time the false prophet is the pathologically-lying, corrupt, sociopathic, reptilian American president. He’s been granted king-like powers by wing-nut SCOTUS. No doubt, the arsonist (in his “blind trust”) and his fellow pyromaniacs shorted the market just before “liberation day🤮.” Another in a long line of days full of lies, victimhood and delusion.
They’ll be in there elbow-deep, buying up stocks on sale just before deals with other nations (ya sure!) are announced from the Oval. Pop goes the market, their savvy purchases pay off and the American wealth gap further expands. This is how they do it. This one, an engineered, make believe crisis.
He’s so stubbornly stupid, entirely misunderstands trade and economics, does not appreciate that we can’t go backwards or that it’s not 70 years ago. America is a service economy now and has benefited greatly from globalism. We are 5% of globe’s population, but consume 30% of the goods. The misogynistic racist wants to go back there in every way, akin to an old grandpa stuck in a paranoid time warp. What an asshat.
Can’t top that!
Those who are not texting you, were never your "friends".
Eloquent !!!
This describes a lot of people (RFKJR, for example): “They were subordinating known economic principles to desired political outcomes. They weren't mistaken; they were motivated.” They are motivated, so they lie. Then they lie again. And then they lie again. And again. And suddenly, when they need to say the truth, they find that their lies have emptied the words of meaning, and they no longer have any power to protect their community from catastrophe. The Boy Who Cried Wolf is a fable about language. We are watching the truth of that fable play out. You can lie and lie and lie and then tell the truth.
> But the damage is already being done—not just to markets and the economy, but to the very concept of expertise itself. When those with the most knowledge and the largest platforms subordinate truth to political alignment, they don't just make a tactical error. They commit an epistemic crime.
Sort of like what happened with COVID and "two weeks to flatten the curve"?