Defining the Second Wave of TDS

There is a distinct pattern found in right-wingers against Trump.

The idea of the silent majority was that the majority of Americans were secretly supporters of President Trump and his policies. This never exactly panned out in the popular vote, but the cultural dynamic that led to this line of thought has shifted over the years. In 2016 and especially 2020, the tv told you that you were the literal incarnation of the Devil if you supported Trump, and there was a huge grassroots movement of young people to run this lie through your head.

I do not believe that movement was successful at changing the tides of the election, but rather it kept people quiet when it was in fact blatantly stolen. In the early years of the Trump revolution, the term TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome, was mainly used to describe liberals that could not acknowledge the objectively good strides the Trump admin was making for everybody. Today however, I see an additional subsect of people with TDS who are of the right. I have taken these sentiments and boiled them down to essentially just be people who are concerned with their own self-images.

To be clear, this is meant to describe those attacking Trump from the left- not the right. Of course there are areas he must improve on to be successful again, but the irrational hatred found with TDS always stems from supporters of Ron DeSantis, the establishment pick. These policy wonks are the most understandable detractors, as there would be merit in their arguments if it wasn’t built on the false pretense of DeSantis being a better legislator. As governor of Florida, a swing state, he was dealt a much better hand. Their state GOP would naturally have less establishment sway than the national party overall, and there was no incentive to challenge DeSantis on every policy issue because he was not a threat to their system.

Trump had to overcome the uniparty fighting his efforts from the lens of someone who wasn’t a career politician, something DeSantis cannot say. We know that policies are heavily decided by advisors, and we know that DeSantis is more open to taking them from his establishment backers. In terms of both rhetoric and policy, it would be near impossible for him to exceed Trump at wounding the bipartisan system that attacks us all.

The first stolen election is what set most of them off. The idea he could be the next Grover Cleveland is repulsive to them. What’s rather interesting about the election is that it brings out their complete and total appeal to authority. I’ve heard them deny it was stolen and then proclaim seconds later that it doesn’t matter if it was, because legally he was installed. It appears it would take real intellect to determine the law is not always correct. There was no precedent or step-by-step guide to decertifying the count. You would think the people who supposedly care about “the good of the party” would take more of an interest in stopping illegal ballot harvesting from going on across the country, but alas they blame modern myths like candidate quality for underperformances.

The truth of the matter plain and simple is that these are weak, selfish people. I can’t entirely blame them, as that is the state of the West, and there aren’t many strategies for a quick fix. I think it is more than fair to say a large percentile of young DeSantis supporters are cowards, people who are willing to compromise on their values in exchange for clemency from the left.

We have all lost friendships or know people who have because of politics in the last several years, and it is almost always the leftist making those decisions. Liberalism is their religion, and they view insulting it as we would our own. They’re purely emotional beings, seemingly incapable of rationalizing their positions. A repeat of that level of meltdown terrifies many on the right, and they believe they can avoid being blacklisted by society for a year or two if they rally behind DeSantis.

I personally find this fear to be unfounded. We have seen with the Biden disaster that the grass is not greener, and people are over politics for now. Of course the media will try to ramp the racial climate up ahead of the election, but there isn’t the same level of grassroots disdain for Trump that there was before Biden. If anything, DeSantis will receive the same treatment by the mainstream and we will see where the pieces fall. Some people will never get it, true, but living your life in fear of them is cancerous.

I could not imagine being a grown adult and caring that much about how other people will think of you. Being quiet is one thing, but countersignaling the America First movement makes you no different than the left. Their language is the same, and their solutions are equally bankrupt. They claim to be tired of the controversy and election talk as if there is a gun to their head forcing them to spend their days worrying about it. Our country is in this state because of the spinelessness, and creating excuses to justify throwing away another four years of progress is antithetical to the energy that gave us the first four.