By Selwyn Duke December 18, 2020 New American
Putting “Why do people hate Trump so much?” into a search engine yields a trove of results relating to Americans pondering, proposing, and picking brains (and prevaricating?) regarding the matter. For as much as the president is admired and heroicized by supporters, his staunchest opponents’ feelings run just as deep: They hate him with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
It could be unprecedented in American history. Ronald Reagan and G.W. Bush were hated, with the former dubbed “Ronald Ray-gun” and the latter caricatured as a monkey. But nothing quite compares to what’s been informally labeled a psychological problem: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).
The site “Thought Catalog” made an attempt last year to define TDS’s etiology, reviewing a multitude of online comments and then listing “The 20 Top Reasons” people hate Trump. But these range from the silly and childish — “He’s a former reality-TV star” and “He’s rude and mean” — to the banal: “He is pro-gun” (like most every Republican). So the discerning could suspect that those thus opining may present these reasons, but that their real reasons remain hidden, perhaps even from themselves.
The latest to tackle the TDS question was American Thinker yesterday. The site quotes material from one E.P. Unim, who writes, “I’m still trying to understand what 80 million voters disliked about President Trump so much that they decided to cast their votes for a man who served forty-seven years in government and has done absolutely nothing for the American people.”
Actually, it’s more accurate to ask how tens of millions could vote for Joe Biden and how other people, so overcome with TDS, could steal perhaps millions more votes for him.
Regardless, American Thinker then rhetorically asks about these voters, citing examples from Unim, “Did they hate that he [Trump] made cruelty to animals a felony, or that he put money into stopping the opioid crisis, or that he killed terrorists without risking American lives, or that he didn’t start a war with North Korea, or that he slashed drug prices?”
The Thinker then quotes from Unim’s Trump accomplishment list directly:
Perhaps you dislike that he signed a law ending the gag-order on pharmacists that prevented them from sharing money-saving options on prescriptions?
Is your dislike for President Trump based on the fact that he signed the Save Our Seas Act, which funds $10 million per year to clean tons of plastic and garbage from the ocean?
Did you dislike that he signed a bill for airports to provide breastfeeding stations for nursing moms?
How about the fact that he signed the biggest wilderness protection and conservation bill in a decade, designating 375,000 acres as protected land, was that why you dislike him? Did you dislike that he loves America and puts Americans first?
Did you dislike that he made a gay man the ambassador to Germany and then asked him to clean up national security and un-classify as much of it as possible for transparency?
Did you dislike that he’s kept almost every campaign promise (with zero support from Congress who [sic] work against him daily!) plus 100 more promises because Washington was much more broken than he or any of us thought?
Do you dislike that he works for free, donating his entire $400,000 salary to different charities?
Did you feel that he did this for four years because he was “showboating?”
Do you dislike that he’s done more for the black community than every other President?
Do you dislike that he listened to senator [sic] Scott and passed Invest In Opportunity Zones to help minorities?
There’s far more to the list, which can be found here. But the point is that while I would take issue with some listed accomplishments — either because they’re contrary to virtue or because they’re unconstitutional — Trump’s policies are, when viewed within our culture’s context, very “middle of the road.”
This underlines how I’ve long said that millions hate what they think Trump is.
Very few hate what he actually is.