Donald Trump has been called by many Americans “worse than Hitler,” an “evil dictator,” or “The White Devil.” Often derisively labeled Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), this tendency appears to have expanded during his second term to include Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Trump voters in general. The breadth of targets has accompanied an intensification of political histrionics, criminality, and even violence – but why? A recent study blames this partly on the brain.
Left vs Right
Liberty Nation News recently explained how social media platforms and algorithms that amplify traffic of toxic or emotionally infused content aggravate this psychological scourge. But these technologies can’t account for the phenomenon alone. Yes, they spread and amplify negative content – but the negativity had to already exist for that to happen. As well, it doesn’t seem to affect everyone the same. Conservatives are exposed to these technologies but are not easily stimulated to vandalism, hateful rhetoric, and the dehumanization of political adversaries. While Biden was president, the mainstream media became increasingly vitriolic as the November election approached – yet conservatives mostly kept their cool.
The left and right sides of the human brain serve different functions but do not define political affiliation. Conservatives are capable of extremist behavior, but their opposition to electric vehicles never stimulated a “movement” to vandalize EVs en masse. Conservatives report higher levels of happiness and lower rates of anxiety and depression than those on the left, a gap that grew significantly beginning in 2012 – long before Donald Trump took center political stage.
A March 2023 commentary by sociologist Musa al-Gharbi concluded that “it’s a scientific fact that conservatives tend to be happier and more well-adjusted than liberals, and ideological gaps in well-being have expanded since 2011.” It may be that there are physiological differences that contribute to this disparity. According to the author, “It’s possible that genetics and biology could explain much of the observed relationship between liberal identification and mental illness.” Conservatives also believe in personal responsibility and agency.
Thus, the root causes of TDS might not be political at all, but rather a side effect of the core worldview and mental state that leads to a leftist alignment. A symptom, rather than the underlying illness itself, so to speak.
TDS and the Human Brain
Admitted Trump opponent Dr. Robert Lustig in 2020 attributed TDS to dopamine and cortisol flowing to the prefrontal cortex, which serves as a filter and “the thinking part of the brain.” Dr. Lustig explained that persistent stress alters a person’s mental state and that “Prefrontal cortical dysfunction is the hallmark of basically all of the societal behavioral problems that we have experienced in the last 50 years.”
A new study in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience supports this biological assessment. The political pattern on the far left of demonizing Trump, Musk, Kennedy, et.al., embraces an all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil dichotomy that skews factual perceptions and simplistically dehumanizes political opponents and their positions. The study’s authors found:
“Participants with lower ability to distinguish between correct and incorrect judgments—those with poor metacognitive insight—showed stronger brain activity in response to moral conviction. This was particularly evident in the lateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex.
“In practical terms, people who lack insight into the accuracy of their own beliefs may be more likely to treat political issues as moral imperatives and less willing to consider alternative viewpoints. This could help explain why low metacognitive ability has been linked to greater dogmatism and political extremism in previous research.”
“Deeply moralized” political beliefs such as hating “Orange Man Bad” or “Nazi Musk” translate into less reflective cognitive processings and knee-jerk responses that explain otherwise inscrutable behaviors like keying cars bearing the Tesla logo – even if they belong to fellow Democrats, who bought them out of fear of the “existential” climate change crisis. Musa al-Gharbi points out that woke ideology exacerbates this physiological tendency by embracing “a form of reverse cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)”:
“Cognitive behavioral therapy encourages people to avoid global labeling and black-and-white or zero-sum thinking. It pushes people to abstain from hyperbole and catastrophizing or filtering out the good while highlighting the bad. CBT encourages people to resist emotional reasoning, jumping to conclusions, mind-reading, and uncharitable motive attribution.”
Political Responsibility
World-renowned psychiatrist and philosopher Viktor E. Frankl observed that people possess the freedom of will to choose how they respond to external stimuli such as political news using personal responsibility that determines outcomes. This idea of human agency determines how people react in the decision-making space between a stimulus and their response. In a 2024 article in Psychology Today, Alex Pattakos, Ph.D, observed:
“Against this backdrop, one antidote to the debilitating effects of TDS requires the reclaiming of the space between stimulus and response, both as a way to change ourselves and as a proactive strategy for influencing situations or events that are yet to come, such as the 2024 election. Once again, this recommendation depends upon both freedom of will—'to choose one’s way’—and personal responsibility—to commit to meaningful values and goals that only you can actualize and fulfill.”
Aldous Huxley ominously predicted a future in which “People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” Social media and establishment media propaganda prey on this very weakness, offering those with short fuses and poor self-awareness a moral right-think similarly foretold by Huxley:
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
The dehumanization of German Jews under Nazi propaganda was enabled by this abuse of the brain space between stimulus and response. The Salem witch trials offer a similar fearful episode in colonial New England. Destroying artwork to “end oil,” burning cities to “end racism,” and assaulting MAGA voters with red hats offer moral treats to unwell minds. As crazed, blue-haired criminals scratch swastikas into Teslas (while on camera), it may be both dangerous dogma and poorly wired frontal lobes that lead them by their nose rings.
As Fyodor Dostoevsky observed in his novel, The Possessed:
“One must be a great man indeed to be able to hold out even against common sense."
"Or else a fool.”
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