IN his novel “Exit Ghost,” Philip Roth’s 71-year-old main character, Nathan Zuckerman, had decided that he would “no longer be overtaken every four years by the emotions of a child — the emotions of a child and the pain of an adult.” He was referring to politics and current events in general, and the quadrennial U.S. presidential election in particular. A lifelong liberal, Nathan believed he needed to stop getting worked up over the daily news. Otherwise, he told himself, “you’ll become the exemplary letter-to-the-editor madman, the village grouch, manifesting the syndrome in all its seething ridiculousness: ranting and raving while you read the paper, and at night, on the phone with friends, roaring indignantly.”
But then he had to meet a young couple who lived in New York City, Billy and Jamie, at their apartment on election night. Despite himself, Nathan agreed to watch the election results with his new friends. Billy, who was confident in a Democrat victory, said the Republicans “would have devastated the country had they won a second term. We’ve had bad presidents and we’ve survived, but this one’s the bottom.”
His wife, Jamie, was no less concerned. “I don’t know what I’d do if [the Republican candidate] gets back in,” she said. “It’ll be the end of the road for a whole way of political life. All their intolerance focuses on a liberal society. It’ll mean that the values of liberalism will continue to be reversed. It’ll be terrible. I don’t think I could live with it.”
Not surprisingly, she had a very low opinion of many of her fellow Americans. “This country is a haven of ignorance,” she said. “I know — I come from [Texas]. [The Republican candidate] talks right to the ignorant core. This is a very backward country, and the people are so easily bamboozled, and he’s exactly like a snake-oil salesman….”
When it appeared that the unthinkable was happening — that the Democratic candidate was losing, Jamie blurted out, “I don’t understand! I can’t believe it! It’s incredible! I’m going to go out and get an abortion. I don’t care if I’m pregnant or not. Get an abortion while you can!” And then the couple’s cell phones started ringing, their “cruelly disappointed friends calling, many of them in tears as well. The first time, as Jamie said, it seemed like a fluke, but this was their idealism’s second staggering electoral shock and the dawning of the hard realization that they could not will this country back into being the Roosevelt stronghold it had been some forty years before they were born.”
Nathan “sat…and listened to the two of them, who’d soon be waking up each day in…a place where, if you liked, you could erase the rage about how much worse it all was than you thought and the sorrow over how far down your country had sunk and, if you were young and hopeful and engaged by your world and still enraptured by your expectations, learn instead to relinquish caring about America… — to live and not be on the rack because of how stupid and corrupt it all is — by looking for fulfillment to your books, your music, your mate, and your garden.”
The year was 2004. Republican President George W. Bush was re-elected.
In those years, Bush Derangement Syndrome was a real thing. Charles Krauthammer, who coined the term, defined it as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people” triggered by the policies, presidency, and very existence of Dubya.
Years later, leading Democrats, some of whom had all but regarded him as the Anti-Christ, would praise Bush’s character and leadership. In 2011, President Obama awarded his predecessor the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and praised his “ability to handle crises and his diplomatic approach.” “I wish he were president now,” Nancy Pelosi said in 2017, the first year of the Trump administration.
It turns out that this derangement syndrome applied to other Republican presidential candidates as well, some of whom were either compared to Nazis or slave owners. Donald Trump, of course, takes the proverbial cake. Whatever he says or does usually triggers emotional and disproportionate responses in his critics and adversaries.
To be sure, some may say the same thing about Republican critics of Democratic politicians. It’s not just about Bush, Trump, or any single politician — it’s a case of Political Derangement Syndrome or PDS.
Many of us assume that we have arrived at our political beliefs through our own intellect and moral character. However, our upbringing, parental influence, unique life experiences, and many other factors have also shaped our views, which explains the immense difficulty of changing another person’s political beliefs — particularly when they are tied to their livelihood.
I’m now talking about professional politicians and their hangers-on.
They remind me of another story, this time as told by Dave Chappelle. He once described witnessing a card game where he realized that the players were all in on a scam. When he attempted to warn another player, he was confronted by a dealer, who told him, “Don’t ever come between a man and his meal.”
There are consequences to interfering with someone’s means of making a living. Not surprisingly, politics in a small community like the CNMI elicits strong emotions, and some of its practitioners tend to take everything personally — especially when it could mean losing their jobs.
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