By Jared Bridges
The Washington Stand
Many could see it approaching, but veteran political journalist Mark Halperin called it with clarity.
Mere weeks before the 2024 election in the middle of a two-hour interview on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Halperin predicted that if Donald Trump won the vote, America would face a mental health crisis unparalleled in its history:
TUCKER CARLSON: A lot of Democrats, maybe the majority, believe that Trump becoming president again is the worst thing that could ever happen. So how do they respond to that?
MARK HALPERIN: I say this not flippantly, I think it will be the cause of the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country. I think tens of millions of people will question their connection to the nation, their connection to other human beings, their connection to their vision of what their future, and the future for their children, could be like. I think it will require an enormous amount of access to mental health professionals. I think it’ll lead to trauma in the workplace. I think there will be some degree of…
CARLSON: Are you being serious?
HALPERIN: 100% serious. I think there’ll be alcoholism, broken marriages … yeah. They think he’s the worst person possible to be president. Having won by the hand of Jim Comey and a fluke in 2016, and then performed in office for four years, and denied who won the election last time, and January 6th … the fact that under a fair election, America chose by the pre-agreed rules Donald Trump again — I think it will cause the biggest mental health crisis in the history of America.
And I don’t think it will be a passing thing that, by the inauguration, we’ll be fine. I think it will be sustained, unprecedented, and hideous, and I don’t think the country’s ready for it.
This side of Election Day, Halperin’s prediction appears to be spot-on. Almost immediately after Donald Trump’s victory became apparent, countless reactions by his opponents began to circulate on social media. There was no shortage of reactions that fell into the sphere of unhinged. The ritual seemed to involve recording one’s unfavorable reaction to the election and posting it for the world to see without regard for how personally embarrassing or damaging it might be. Much screaming, crying, cursing, and angst are present in almost every video. Sometimes the expressions are accompanied by threats — to leave the country, to withhold actions, or to take retribution in some way.
Reactions in the Extreme
Some dissatisfied women (it’s unclear whether or not they voted themselves) are going on sex strikes with men to protest the election, or even giving up on men altogether. Many women are promoting South Korea’s “4B” movement as a protest against Trump and his followers. As USA Today explained:
“The ‘4B’ movement gets its name from four Korean words that all start with the letter ‘b’: bihon (heterosexual marriage), bichulsan (childbirth), biyeonae (dating) and bisekseu (sex). You join the movement by giving up all four with men.”
Not quite as extreme as 4B, but nevertheless highly visible, is the blue bracelet movement. Here, white women who voted for Kamala Harris commit to wearing a blue bracelet to show that they are a “safe space” for non-white women among a majority who voted for Trump. Whether or not these budding movements persist remains to be seen.
Reactions among the Evangelical Left-of-Center
Sometime in the past four years, the “never Trump” movement among evangelical Christians all but disappeared. Those who previously labeled themselves as such either reconciled their doubts or moved solidly past the center toward leftist ideologies. David French, Russell Moore, and Curtis Chang developed what they called the “After Party” — a collection of resources developed, they claim, to help Christians “reframe our political identity as we take the lead in healing what’s broken.”
For never-Trumpers, the 2024 election means only more brokenness. In a podcast recorded immediately after the election, Chang, French, and Moore all lamented the meaning of Trump’s victory for people like themselves. David French recounted feelings of pain:
FRENCH: It’s going to require courage. Because one thing that we know after dealing with MAGA for nine years is even engagement is painful. It’s not just painful to lose an election — that is painful, of course, but it’s often just painful to engage because you then find yourself subject to an extreme amount of cruelty.
Curtis Chang expressed feelings of anguish:
CHANG: I was just wanting to blame people for this outcome. And then I was like, ‘Oh, I’m actually feeling like anguish. I’m feeling sadness.’ I think [of] especially immigrants, the people of Ukraine. Yes — our planet in terms of our future generations, I was feeling anguish for my daughters, who I know are growing up as young women who have interpreted this election result as a rejection of women at some level and a bequeathing of them of [a] world that feels like despairing to them.
Russell Moore expressed weariness:
MOORE: I fit myself more in the exhausted category. Or maybe you fit me more in the exhausted, and I claim it. But I think that’s kind of still where I am. Especially because I know that we now have a lot of drama that is going to be […] in every American’s life all the time from now on.
Pain, anguish, sadness, despair, and exhaustion — all felt in the wake of Donald Trump’s win. The distress among these never-Trumpers is nowhere near like those who are shaving their heads for a TikTok video or swearing off men for four years, but it’s nevertheless distress.
A Relapse of an Old Disease
Solomon wrote in the book of Ecclesiastes, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” That maxim holds true with hatred toward today’s politicians. During the presidency of George W. Bush, when many of the president’s opponents began acting in increasingly irrational ways toward him, the late conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer coined a new term:
“It has been 25 years since I discovered a psychiatric syndrome (for the record: ‘Secondary Mania,’ Archives of General Psychiatry, November 1978), and in the interim I haven’t been looking for new ones. But it’s time to don the white coat again. A plague is abroad in the land.
“Bush Derangement Syndrome: The acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.”
While Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) may not have made an entry in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM), it did enter the viral public vernacular. Bush was labeled by detractors as the “worst president ever,” and if you believed their rhetoric, the nation could never recover. Thankfully, we can all rest easy that BDS wasn’t a chronic disease, and its symptoms subsided with the end of Bush’s presidency.
Not so fast. Around 2015, the virus mutated, and BDS morphed into a more sinister malady: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). Whereas sufferers of BDS were content simply to make public arguments, TDS patients pushed for full quarantine from anyone who had any exposure to Trump. What first began as a denial (“There’s no way he’ll ever be president!”) quicky turned to angst in November 2016 as Trump’s victory became apparent and spread during the next four years.
But unlike Bush Derangement Syndrome, TDS didn’t go away as Trump left the presidency. The long-COVID of presidential derangements, TDS symptoms didn’t go into remission during the Biden presidency. President Biden was overshadowed by his predecessor during his entire term, as during most of 2024, TDS kicked into full-blown relapse.
The above description is partly in jest, but only in part. Trump Derangement Syndrome is here, and it is sure to stay for a few years more.
Life among the Afflicted
To be clear, most people who oppose Trump are not suffering from TDS — nor will they exhibit adverse mental health symptoms. But the sheer number of vocal opponents who seemingly define their entire well-being around Donald Trump’s position of power is alarming. And it should be alarming to Christians.
It would be easy for conservative Christians to write off TDS sufferers as beyond repair and simply step aside and avoid them. Worse, we could mock these people with real problems with our own counter-memes. But Matthew tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds, “… he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Christ had compassion for the harassed, and we should follow his lead.
After all, Christians have the help that TDS sufferers need. Explaining Trump to them will not help. In fact, it will only enrage them. This doesn’t mean Trump voters need to keep quiet about their politics and tiptoe around those with TDS. Just because burn victims exist doesn’t mean you should never build a fire. But we don’t treat burn victims with more fire. The prophet Isaiah, speaking about the coming messiah, said, “a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.”
Those with TDS may look like the enemy, but they are also captives. However misaligned their worldview, TDS sufferers are ultimately calling for justice. They’re looking in the wrong place. They won’t quench their wrath by bringing about a Trump-free world, nor will they find it by converting to MAGA.
The justice that eludes them can only be found in the wrath of God toward sin being poured out on a man who died in their place. The cure for TDS is to replace the fixation and angst against Trump with fixing their eyes on the one who for our sake God “… made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Only in him is derangement demolished.
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
