Derangement Syndrome Derangement Syndrome

In late 2003, the late columnist Charles Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” to attack then-Presidential Candidate Howard Dean. It was defined as:

[T]he acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.

To this day, many remain unsure why a Presidential candidate shouldn’t attack the incumbent President of the opposite party. Did Ronald Reagan, for example, suffer from a bad case of “Carter Derangement Syndrome” back in 1980?

Since then, the term has spread and now incumbents many people within politics who are widely disliked, inculding:

• Cheney Derangement Syndrome, coined by Jonah Goldberg
• Clinton Derangement Syndrome, coined by Kevin Drum
• Gore Derangement Syndrome, coined by Paul Krugman
• Fox Derangment Syndrome, coined by Rick Moran (Great name, by the way)
• Palin Derangement Syndrome, coined by Michelle Malkin
• Obama Derangement Syndrome, coined by David Horowitz of all people
• ACORN Derangement Syndrome, coined by Ed Kilgore
• Koch Derangement Syndrome, coined by Jennifer Rubin
• Trump Derangement Syndrome, coined by Adam Gopnik

And I’m sure millions more. At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone has been accused of “Hitler Derangement Syndrome,” “Stalin Derangement Syndrome,” “Mao Derangement Syndrome,” and so on.

In fact, some men have already gone that far. On 7/23/2020, the openly antisemitic Twitter user @cursedsalad mocked a Daily Mirror article titled “Adolf Hitler Had A ‘Micro-Penis, Slept With His Niece And Liked To Be Kicked During Sex,’” by quote tweeting it and simply saying “rent free.”

Replies to his Tweet include:

The Führer still terrifies tf out of them. And probably always will. — @TiernanOwlRyan

It’s like an arian (sic) version of trump haha, but he really was a builder to germany (sic). — @gehen84

He terrified them and that’s why they’re still slandering him after 80 years — @CatholicFren

When you’re an enemy of J*ws (sic), they will slander your name beyond the grave, esp. through useful idiot proxies. — @crow_tommy_

As you can expect, cursedsalad has a very antisemitic following. One of his followers even got mad at him for not labeling Russian President Vladimir Putin a Jew — because, after all, how could someone who’s not a Jew be in power?

Of course, I could accuse all of his followers of having “Jew Derangement Syndrome,” if I truly wanted to. They could therefore respond by saying I have “Antisemitism Derangement Syndrome,” and we could go back and forth all day. But here’s the million dollar question, what exactly would be accomplished by me doing such a thing?

And mind you, I have a number of chances to do such a thing. These are the same people who, anytime any United States politician says a nice thing about Israel, see it as some admission they have dual loyalty. They never do this with any of the other 195 nations on this planet, instead it’s just Israel that gets this treatment.

However, these people would snap back with their threads and articles proving that actually you should be “deranged” at Jews. I recall once seeing a thread that went through every right-wing boogyman throughout the past couple of centuries and found them all to be Jewish in some form — the form in question kept changing (sometimes it was religion, sometimes it was ethnicity, sometimes it was some mystical third thing), but it was some form nonetheless. At this point, the only choice I’d have left is to properly debunk what it is they’re saying — which is what I should have done in the first place.

That’s the thing about “derangement syndrome” arguments, they ignore the fact that, well, sometimes it’s okay to be deranged.

Nobody is going to argue a person has “derangement syndrome,” when they argue in an angry manner that we should throw the book at rapists, murders, and pedophiles. Maybe, the person in question has a good reason to be “deranged,” and you should ask them that before you start accusing them of having a mental illness.

Or be lazy, in fact, accuse me of having “laziness derangement syndrome.”