The True Face Of Trump Derangement Syndrome
Manchester, 2012. Lewis Bigmore places his first-ever bet, aged 16, and wins £64,000 ($80,000). He realises immediately that this is a life-changing moment, he just doesn’t realise that it will change his life for the worse.
By 18, now hooked on gambling, Lewis was over £40,000 ($50,500) in debt, and over the next eleven years lost a further £80,000:
Addiction is like a massive grasp on you […] It’ll keep you down, but whilst you’re in the moment, whilst you’re properly involved in whatever addiction you’ve got […] [you’ll] be deluded into thinking it’s making [you] feel really good.
Cheltenham, 2018. After twelve years of gambling addiction, Patrick Foster places one final bet at the Cheltenham Gold Cup horse race.
Even after losing his house and his job, even after stealing money from 113 friends and acquaintances, Patrick had convinced himself that this bet would turn it all around. His horse loses.
I always say to people, I can’t explain the feeling it gave me because I’d never had it before. And weirdly, I’d never have it again. It gave me a rush and buzz like nothing else […] People talk about drugs, that was definitely my drug.
Washington D. C., 2021. Keith Scott experiences the greatest day of his life. Keith had spent the previous two-and-a-half-months living out of his car, chasing his addiction every chance he got, but he was convinced that this time, on Jan 6th, he was finally going to hit the jackpot.
…the people [who were supposed to be] giving evidence of election fraud, it was the same message that we had heard a day before, a week before. But it was like, ‘It’s coming, it’s gonna be revealed.’ Like just keeping us holding on for the next breath.
Oh wait, sorry, this one’s about a different kind of addiction.
On July 30th, 2020, four months before the 2020 presidential election (and two weeks after a poll showed Biden was beating him by fifteen points), Donald Trump declared, evidence-free, that it would be “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”
Trump repeated this claim several times in the run-up to the election, insisting that if he lost, it would be because the election was rigged, but oddly enough, he never presented any proof. He even went so far as to suggest delaying the election despite having no authority to do so and no evidence that it was necessary.
On election night, Trump tried to declare victory while the votes were still being counted (a tactic he’d already admitted he’d try months before the vote). And when he failed, he was caught on tape trying to strong-arm Georgia’s Secretary of State into “finding him” 11,780 votes.
When that didn’t work, Trump filed over sixty lawsuits, attempting to overturn the result, all of which were thrown out of court for lack of evidence, often by judges he appointed. Rudi Giuliani, Trump’s then-attorney (now financially destitute and disbarred) even admitted in court that they had no evidence of fraud. Because in court, you have to provide evidence for the things you say.
And when all of that failed, Trump incited an insurrection attempt at the Capitol building. The first non-peaceful transfer of power in the history of the United States.
But if you’re thinking the analogy I’m making is about Trump being so desperately addicted to power that he kept trying to overturn the election no matter how many times he lost or how much damage he caused, you’re only halfway there.
Because the real issue is that his supporters, even after all of these lies (not to mention the 30,573 others he told while in office), even after two impeachments, thirty-four felony convictions, and a months-long campaign to overturn the results of a democratic election, still chose to place one last bet on orange.
Trump was allowed to run for office again, breezed through the primaries without even needing to debate, and despite admitting that the “stolen election” narrative was indeed a lie, convinced over 77 million people, many of whom already understood who he was in 2016 and even 2020, to pull the lever once again.
A lot has been said about “Trump Derangement Syndrome” since Trump descended on his golden escalator ten years ago. About how preposterous it was to claim that he would make America a laughing stock on the world’s stage or promote Russia’s political agenda or desecrate the seat of democracy.
But I have to ask, isn’t the real derangement unconditionally supporting a man who has done all of the above, bragged about spying on naked, underaged girls, called a global pandemic “the Democrats’ new hoax,” blind-released 1500 criminals on his first day in office (several of whom have since been rearrested on charges ranging from domestic abuse to possession of child pornography), and, most recently, claimed that Ukraine started the war against Russia and that Zelenskyy, not Putin, is a dictator?
To the people who are “all-in” on Trump (and yes, #notallTrumpvoters), he isn’t just a politician, he’s an addiction.
And I don’t know if it’s the people pouring their life savings into Trump-branded gold bars or pumping their money into his meme coins or claiming they’d rather die than live in a country where Trump isn’t president, but I’m beginning to suspect some of them don’t have it under control.
In the immortal words of George W. Bush, “Fool me once, shame on…shame on you……you fool me, you can’t get fooled again.”
But the problem is, you can get fooled again. And again and again and again.
And for everybody hoping to return to some semblance of sanity, as painful as it’s sometimes going to be, we have to find it within ourselves to do more than tell Trump addicts that their hero is bad. Because this is no more likely to be effective (or even newsworthy) than telling a gambling addict that the game is rigged.
They don’t care about statistics or probabilities or the fundamental incompatibility of their priorities and those of the billionaires who are kissing Trump’s ring. They care about that feeling they get when they feel like someone, especially someone important, is finally speaking their language.
Like all addicts, the people who keep rolling the dice on Trump, the people who are convinced that this time he’s telling the truth, are chasing something (whether it’s hope or belonging or a candidate who can reliably make it through a sentence) that the Democrats have failed to provide.
And until they do, until voters can look at a Democratic candidate and feel hope and confidence and dare I say, pride, they’ll keep hoping that the next bet on Trump will beat the odds.
That's the best analogy by far: addiction. Trump is a high for people: a snort of pure cocaine. He's heedlessly breaking all the china in the shop and upsetting the liberals and how great is that? So yes: no amount of logic, reason, civic pride--whatever--is going to course-correct Trump supporters.
"And until they do, until voters can look at a Democratic candidate and feel hope and confidence and dare I say, pride, they’ll keep hoping that the next bet on Trump will beat the odds."
There's the rub. I have a number of friends who voted for Trump. Only one of them is a true MAGA. The rest were voting against the Democrat or the cackling jackass specifically. There is no need for me to list the reasons for that. Perhaps your words that I quoted encapsulate it.