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Trump Derangement Syndrome is really less about losing the body, and more about the wrong person being allowed to rule, and thus the body-politic if you like. The thought is that the ego of these people cannot accept that other people who win elections have the right to implement their agenda. They can’t accept Cthulhu swimming straight instead of hard left. And seeing that they aren’t getting their way causes distress, especially for those who have made politics their religion. It would be for them like what would happen to a Southern Baptist who wakes up one morning to find that America is now ruled by Sharia law. If you see that not only your religion under the thumb of those who disagree and who are suddenly allowed to rule over the country and them.
I've said before that I think the internet and culture are dealing with a lot of people who really only became aware of politics near the end of GWB (who they thought was clearly evil) followed by 8 glorious years of Obama and Hope and Change, and thought that would be the future forever (but that next election it would instead be a woman's turn, but still on the Left).
I think we honestly have far far too many people who have made politics into both their identity and their religion. The public is far too “engaged” and it leads them the believe that politics is the only thing that matters. Add in an unhealthy amount of Last Psychiatrist style narcissistic tendencies and you end up with a toxic stew that can only lead to mental health disorders and the destruction of the country through polarization.
Watch some World Series baseball. Carve a pumpkin. Get a hobby.
It appears that Bush demoralized moderate rightists whereas Obama did the same to moderate leftists.
I don’t see it as demoralized to keep politics to one of several things you keep track of. That’s honestly a good thing, in my view. Because politics cannot fill the voids that it’s asked to do by the radical left and right. It cannot make up for a lack of personality, nor can it make up for a lack of hobbies or social interaction. It cannot work as a religion either. And when politics is turned into all of that it ends up being a cause for verbal if not physical “jihad” where the others who merely disagree with you are to be subjugated and punished for being politically incorrect from your perspective. At that point, you set the table for killing people. It’s a dangerous game and I’m not sure where the lines will be drawn.
What I was referring to is that moderate Red Tribers used to support a normie-friendly tendency of 'compassionate conservatism' coupled with a sort of watered-down neoconservatism that allows average Joes to strut around as militaristic tough guys and is based on the notion that Middle Eastern wars can actually be cakewalks. When this nonsense fell apart, moderate Blue Tribers seemingly got the idea to promote a sort of more or less fake civic nationalism intended to 'heal the scars of a racist past' and improve relations between white and black citizens etc. This also fell through so everyone was disappointed in the end, which is fertile ground for political polarization.
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