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Notes -
Well, my theory is less about explaining people's motives than their reactions. Democracy already assumes that people we dislike will sometimes govern us, and history has no shortage of intense reactions to lost elections. But just as there are different genres of horror, I think there are also different genres of political distress.
So what is the particular horror of modern politics, of Trump and wokeness? What is so peculiar about it that people reach for the word "syndrome"?
I think it's the horror of the impossible becoming real. It's not merely horrific news, but news you never believed possible in the first place. For many people, Trump couldn't possibly become president. It was just common sense. Only the despicable could have voted for him. Wokeness is somewhat similar. These people are crazy, surely nobody takes them seriously. Yet half the country voted for Trump, and wokeness is the state religion.
This isn't the horror of encountering a monster. It's the horror of discovering that your mother has already been devoured and replaced by one. Your sanctuary has been overturned. What you depended on has turned against you. Where can you even escape? Politics consumes everything. There is no safe place.
That's why I connect it to body dysmorphia. Your body is your first sanctuary, the most sacred place, the thing you trust without even thinking about it. Its usurpation is the highest despair, the plot twist modern cinema is so obsessed with. The overturn of everything. It also explains the feeling of revulsion, which is commonly associated with disease. It's not just that people you dislike have won. They're spreading, and they can contaminate others, turning everything you thought was safe into something alien.
And finally, there's the feeling of impotence.
As I explained in my original comment, when you want to pick up an apple, you move your arm. When you want to build a rocket, you move other people. Society is very much like your body in the sense that you act through it to accomplish things. When animals encounter a problem, they move their bodies to solve it. But humans can do more. They can mobilize the entire society.
The consequences are terrifying. Mountains can be torn apart, rivers diverted, islands created or destroyed, all through the collective will of human beings. Politics is the body of modern humanity, an instrument of power that feels almost omnipotent. It's intoxicating. And awakening from that feeling is almost as brutal.
If your mother turns into a monster, you can still run. Your sanctuary is ruined, but your body remains reliable. You can punch, you can flee. But when the entire society seems to turn against you, what can you even do?
The institutions have been taken over. The common, decent people you thought were just like you, your family, your reliable limbs, turn out to be monsters in disguise. Your body has been infected. It no longer moves according to your will, and the infection is coming for you.
That's why I use the metaphor of body dysmorphia. It captures three distinct terrors: impotence, despair, and revulsion.
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