Newspaper coverage of our president often quotes his various postings to social media, and that means that the text I read in the newspaper frequently duplicates our president's penchant for BIG TYPE. I use capitals for emphasis myself, sometimes, but I think it's fair to say that I don't come anywhere close to Mr. Trump in my utilization of this technique. Here is a sample of how the newspapers often report Mr. Trump's remarks, taken from an article in the February 20, 2025, edition of The New York Times:
Mr. Trump followed up his comments Tuesday night with a post on social media Wednesday endorsing the House framework. “House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!” he wrote.
On that very same day (Thursday, February 20, 2025), an article in the San Franciso Chronicle also featured our president's BIG TYPE preferences. The article was titled, in the hardcopy version, "Trump to Ukraine: 'Better move fast.'" Online, which is where that picture at the top came from, the article was titled differently: "."Trump warns Zelensky to quickly negotiate war's end with Russia or risk not having a nation to lead."
The headline just reproduced occasioned two immediate reactions from me. First (and consider this to be unsolicited advice to all who may read my comment): Can't you, PLEASE, stop splitting your infinitives? Second, and more substantively, isn't our president acting kind of arrogant, like a "bully" - and isn't that an extremely poor reflection on the United States? Isn't that, really, a "bad look" for our nation?
Because of that second reaction, I read the article in its entirety, and here are a couple of excerpts:
FIRST EXCERPT: Trump, who is trying to bring the fighting to a close on terms that Kyiv says are too favorable to Moscow, used an extended social media post on his Truth Social platform to lash out at Zelenskyy and call the Ukrainian a “dictator without elections." “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle,” Trump said of Zelenskyy, who was a popular television star in Ukraine before running for office (emphasis added).
SECOND EXCERPT: Trump said Zelenskyy should have worked out a deal earlier. “Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Trump said. "In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going,” Trump wrote. The rhetoric from Trump went even further than the false charges he made Tuesday against the Ukrainians when he suggested Kyiv was responsible for starting the war. Russia invaded its smaller neighbor (emphasis added).
I am, as an American, sincerely concerned that our president is suffering from a malady that has been talked about quite a bit in the last several years. I am talking about "Trump Derangement Syndrome," which is often abbreviated as "TDS."
Wikipedia points out that this term, as usually employed, points to critical commentaries about our president that define him by every possible thing he has done wrong, or threatens to do wrong. "TDS" is supposed to be a condition in which a commentator presents a uniformly negative view of our president, unfairly claiming that he is, essentially, "deranged." Those who apply the label to critics of the president think that the commentaries denominated "TDS" are both unfair and a distortion. In other words, a claim that someone is suffering from "TDS" is shorthand for a claim that the criticisms of our president made by that person are often both excessive and inaccurate. To be honest, that reaction to certain criticisms made about our president may be appropriate, in some cases.
On the other hand, I think that we must also acknowledge that the opposite behavior should also be recognized as a kind of "TDS." Unfortunately, our president is badly infected with this version of the disease. Most of us remember his claim, as a candidate, that "I, alone, can fix it." The newspaper excerpts quoted above show that the malady continues to be persistent. That the only possible solution to the War in Ukraine is TRUMP is, I humbly assert, "deranged." In this context, the word "deranged" means "out of bounds," out of "range," and "inaccurate."
Our president often manifests as a "bully," and as someone who is "arrogant," as when he asserts that he is the ONLY person who can achieve important public policy goals. When we see such behavior (and the excessive use of BIG TYPE is a tipoff) we the people had better pay attention. That is true because our collective judgment is almost always better than any one person's individual judgment about what kind of action will produce a good result.
Someone who really believes that "I ALONE CAN FIX IT" is setting us up for a massive, and very consequential, failure, and it appears that what was reported today, about the president's treatment of the President of Ukraine, makes clear that our nation is going to suffer, and suffer badly, from Trump's shameful and virulent case of TDS.
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