I was wondering why Trump supporters seem so afraid of a Kamala Harris presidency in the US, so I figured I’d ask them.
“Trump Derangement Syndrome”, is how supporters of Donald Trump dismissively describe my principled objection to the campaign by a dishonest, immoral, authoritarian, rambling, criminal, petty, chauvinist, protectionist, xenophobic, hypocritical, theocratic, intolerant, illiberal, neo-fascist, anti-democratic, geriatric demagogue to become leader of the free world.
To quote his running mate, J.D. Vance, “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.”
On another occasion, the same Vance wondered whether Trump is just a cynical asshole like Nixon, or “America’s Hitler”. Trump’s recent claim that immigrants are genetically predisposed to crime gave me occasion to wonder the same.
(Funny how the prospect of high office can radically change someone’s mind. Maybe Vance is the cynical asshole like Nixon.)
Derangement Syndrome
The Trump Derangement Syndrome taunt is hardly original, of course.
The phrase was coined in 2003 by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, in reference to then-president George W. Bush. Krauthammer, an actual psychiatrist by training, applied it to popular Democratic Party primary contender Howard Dean, who had without evidence speculated that Bush had been warned in advance of the attacks in New York on 11 September 2001.
“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,” Krauthammer wrote.
In 2017, a year before his death, Krauthammer was able to weigh in on Trump Derangement Syndrome, describing it thus: “What distinguishes Trump Derangement Syndrome is not just general hysteria about the subject, but additionally the inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences on the one hand and signs of psychic pathology on the other.”
His discussion was revealing, however. Krauthammer criticised those who responded hysterically to Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, even though that agreement was (and continues to be) a huge failure. Withdrawing was “a perfectly plausible policy choice”, he argued, and hyperbolic reactions to it were symptomatic of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Nuance
Having said that, he added that “the president’s other behaviour over the last several weeks provided ample opportunity for shock and dismay.”
In a few short paragraphs, he called Trump’s utterances and policies “appalling”, “misbegotten”, “mischief”, “gratuitous”, “vainglorious”, “self-injurious”, and “crazy”.
That’s the point: derangement syndrome does not describe any and all opposition to its object. It describes only irrational opposition. It describes knee-jerk hysteria, not principled differences of opinion.
Admittedly, the average Trump supporter, willing to overlook such a litany of flaws, prejudices, lies, and felonies in their dear leader, are not likely to appreciate this nuance.
As it happens, Trump Derangement Syndrome has been the subject of academic study. In Seeking Evidence of The MAGA Cult and Trump Derangement Syndrome: An Examination of (A)symmetric Political Bias, Andrew Franks and Frahang Hesami examined three studies, and found that all were consistent with the hypothesis of asymmetric bias regarding Donald Trump.
There was a sting in the tail, though: “Trump supporters consistently showed bias in favor of the interests and ostensible positions of Trump, whereas Trump’s detractors did not show an opposing bias.”
Oh dear.
“Unmitigated disaster”
A symptom of my derangement has been to occasionally post some outrageous claim by Trump or one of his minions, as a demonstration of why I cannot be induced to support his candidacy.
(Not that my support means a great deal, of course. Neither I, nor most of my readers, can vote in the US elections. However, when the US sneezes, the rest of the world gets a cold, so we do have an interest in the outcome of the elections. It also offers ample opportunity for instructive discursion on the principles of classical liberalism and their application in practice.)
In response to my thoughts on social media, I’ve often heard some variant of the claim that Trump would be better than the alternative, the Democratic Party candidate and incumbent vice president, Kamala Harris. Her victory would be “too ghastly to contemplate”, or “an unmitigated disaster,” they said.
Social democrat
Having assessed some of her policies (on price gouging, housing, and taxation), such hyperbole surprised me. Sure, she’s a leftie, but she has moved significantly to the centre since stepping into the limelight of the presidential candidacy. She can best be described as a social democrat.
(A lot of respondents said that she had no discernible policies, but her campaign website contains 82 pages worth of them.)
While my free-market beliefs differ markedly from her soft-left interventionism, her positions don’t terrify me. The US economy has performed perfectly fine under Joe Biden, the incumbent president. Inflation sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic has been brought under control, and its GDP recovery has been at least twice as robust as any of its peers.
More generally, ever since Ronald Reagan, the US economy has – counterintuitively, perhaps – performed better under Democratic presidencies than under Republican presidencies. I’d have a lot to say about the limited control presidents actually have over economic performance, and delayed impacts of policy changes, but even so, a Democratic presidency doesn’t scare the pants off me.
What do you fear?
So I asked Trump supporters: “Those of you who think a Kamala Harris presidency would be ‘too ghastly to contemplate’, or ‘an unmitigated disaster’, I’m interested to hear your specific reasons why. What do you fear? It doesn’t have to be relevant to South Africa, but bonus points if it is.”
The responses were, on the whole, disappointing.
“It will be a 4 year black like me (although she is half indian) pr show,” wrote one respondent.
This repeats a racist claim by Donald Trump that Harris isn’t black enough to call herself black. Her father is a black man from Jamaica, and her late mother is Indian. Of course, the real problem for Trump and his supporters is not that she’s not black enough, but that she’s too black. Too female, also.
“Communism isn’t a good thing,” said another respondent.
Well, good thing Harris isn’t a communist, then. Her “Opportunity Economy” policies are perhaps a bit interventionist, but they are based on free enterprise, and not state control over, or ownership of, the means of production.
Wokeness
“DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] is on the retreat. If Kamala wins, massive resurgence.”
The US has struggled with race-based preferential policies in hiring and academic admissions, it is true, but diversity, equity, and inclusion are not in themselves objectionable. On the contrary, equal opportunities are a good thing, in my book. And if the more militant “critical race theory” brigade is on the retreat, it is on the retreat under a Democratic president, with Harris as vice president. A “massive resurgence” hardly seems likely.
“Wokeness” is indeed on the retreat, but the irony is that woke activists will be supercharged if Trump wins the presidency and gives his supporters carte blanche to discriminate, while anti-woke activists will be motivated to spring into action should Harris win. Wokeness, which peaked during Trump’s first presidency, will get a second wind if Trump wins.
In the long run, good-faith efforts to address the legacy of historic racism will survive, and that’s a good thing. Meanwhile, “wokeness” will be co-opted just as the pacifist and socialist radicalism of the 1960s hippie movement was watered down, mainstreamed and distilled into uncontroversial feel-good pablum.
Change agent
One response said that Harris is “not a change agent”, but “the status quo”.
Whenever someone touts “change”, one’s first question should be “to what?”
Overthrowing the status quo in favour of Christian nationalism, or white supremacy, or insular protectionism, or civil conflict, doesn’t strike me as the change Americans ought to seek.
The status quo is not all that bad, in fact. While I would like to see greater economic freedom and more individual liberty, the status quo in the US is certainly not “too ghastly to contemplate”.
Quite a few responses were a variant of the claim that Harris is a “puppet”. Some said she was a puppet of Barack Obama (because a woman can’t have a mind of her own), and others waxed far more conspiracist, invoking images of the “deep state” or the “New World Order”.
While I recognise the valid concerns people have with ideas such as the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset (which is not a conspiracy theory), I don’t share the terror of shadowy power-mongers playing world leaders like marionettes.
World powers are hardly capable of mounting a coordinated response to financial crises, or to climate change, or to pandemics. Believing that they’re capable of a sinister totalitarian conspiracy seems to me irrationally paranoid. And if such a conspiracy did exist, the easier option would be manipulating a bigoted narcissist like Donald Trump. Vladimir Putin has been playing him like a flute for years, after all.
Lying
“If Kamala can lie about Joe – what else is she capable of lying about?” asked one respondent. Well, gee. If the worst she’s lied about is someone else’s state of health, she sounds remarkably trustworthy, especially by comparison with Trump, who lied 20 times a day, every day during his presidency and did so intentionally.
He hasn’t slowed down, either. A recent fact check pinned 40 separate lies on him during just two speeches.
Others claim Harris want to permanently remove opposition, ban X, and imprison rivals. That would be Harris Derangement Syndrome, and playing into the canard that Trump’s convictions and indictments are motivated by political persecution, instead of his own wrongdoing.
The birther conspiracy also made an appearance. “Kenyan raised by white mother in Hawaii urges Chicago’s black men to vote for Indian woman raised in Canada,” claimed someone who said, per the US constitution, “she may not run”.
Barack Obama’s birth and citizenship status is both well-established and moot, but Harris was born a US citizen in California, and lived in the US until she was 12. She went to high school in Montreal, Canada, where her mother had accepted a university teaching position, but returned to study in the US at the age of 18. She is perfectly entitled to run for the presidency. If she hadn’t been, she couldn’t have become vice president, either.
Several respondents fear “the end of free speech”. Jacob Sullum at Reason magazine helpfully points out that neither Harris nor Trump is a friend of free speech.
Immigration
Many cited “the continuation of mass illegal immigration, which exacerbates crime, housing [and] unemployment issues”.
Immigration is a major issue in the minds of voters, but its severity has been wildly exaggerated by the Trump campaign. The numbers they throw around are highly misleading, the accusations they level at immigrants are both false and deeply racist, and their claim that Harris was at any time “border czar” is also mostly false.
The claim that immigrants, legal or otherwise, are responsible for a crime wave in the US are false, and US unemployment is near all-time lows.
Some of the loudest Trump supporters who decry immigration, like Elon Musk, are themselves immigrants. Almost half of all Fortune 500 companies in the US were founded by immigrants or their children. Immigrants create jobs.
Some Trump fans raised foreign policy issues. Notably, they repeated Trump’s frequent talking point that neither the Gaza war nor the Russia-Ukraine war would have happened had he been president. This is far-fetched.
It is perhaps true that Trump could bring the Russia-Ukraine war to a quick end, but only by denying Ukraine the means to defend itself, and forcing it to cede territory and population to Russia, the aggressor that has Trump in its pocket. This does not strike me as a desirable foreign policy outcome.
South Africa
As concerns South Africa, I would expect far harsher treatment from a Trump administration for this country’s dalliances with communists, autocrats, and terrorists, and Trump’s anti-trade instincts will also be harmful to South African exporters.
Many respondents cited economic concerns; notably, inflation and deficit spending. However, a majority of actual economists think inflation, interest rates and deficits would be higher under the policies Donald Trump would pursue in a second administration than under those proposed by Kamala Harris, according to a quarterly survey by The Wall Street Journal. More economists said so this time around than in July, when Biden was still the Democratic nominee.
Ghastly
On balance, the responses did not support the view that a Harris presidency would be “too ghastly to contemplate” or “an unmitigated disaster”.
The most lasting legacy of any US president is their Supreme Court justice appointments. Trump’s three appointments to date have driven the court’s balance strongly into religious right territory.
Since then, it has taken great strides to deny women reproductive freedom and roll back many of the individual liberties and protections against discrimination that liberals have won over the decades. Perhaps those freedoms and protections, exercised by people who are not heterosexual white men are what Trump supporters truly fear.
Trump not only panders to Christian nationalists, but despite his obvious moral bankruptcy, he is seen as a sort of messiah figure, anointed by God to tear down the separation of church and state.
The prospect of a Trump-led United States turning into a sort of patriarchal, theonomic, totalitarian Gilead, as sketched in Margaret Atwood’s book, The Handmaid’s Tale, is all too real.
That really would be “too ghastly to contemplate”.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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Image: Kamala Harris addresses a campaign event on the right to reproductive freedom for women, supplied.