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 When political commentator and trained psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer proclaimed for the first time that someone suffered from ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome,’ he was not entirely wrong. Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean had suggested, without coming right out and saying it, that President George W. Bush had, due to his connections with the Saudi royal family, advance knowledge of the terrible 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3000 people and hurtled this nation to war in the Middle East. As with any major event in the media (the Moon Landing, the Kennedy assassination, Bruce Lee’s untimely death, and so on), there invariably follow flocks of conspiracy theories seeking to give secret but understandable reasons for the events, and 9/11 was no different. G.W. Bush, who had come to the office while losing the popular vote, through methods and decisions that were, for many, very easy to question, was a ripe target for such thinking, but suggesting such things without evidence for political gain is, at the very least, distasteful. As such, calling Dean ‘deranged’ for this level of antipathy towards Bush is not entirely without some justification; however, it did not stop there, with that one column, that one instance, but became for the conservatives of America the rallying cry and universal shield against all criticisms of the Bush presidency as, over the years, support for the man plummeted. By the end of his second term in office, scarcely a third of the nation supported the man and yet the right continued its assertion that attacks against him and his policies were evidence of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Of course, the vitriol hurled at his successor, questioning his birth, the endless coded and not-so-coded racial attacks, controversies over such insignificant issues as wearing a tan suit, ‘terrorist’ fist bumps, and the like were never considered a symptom of derangement. The phrase was not retired but merely put away for safekeeping, like an assault rifle in a safe, ready to be wielded when the times changed.

And times they did change.

In 2016, the Republicans nominated and elected a man who embodied every insult that they had hurled at Democratic presidents: the lying, the sexual degeneracy, and the financial corruption they saw in Bill Clinton, Trump exceeded by every measure; the ‘cult of personality,’ the political inexperience, the irreverence for the institutions, the domineering, authoritarian, free-speech-quashing behavior that they accused Obama of, Trump trumpeted at every turn. Even with Trump’s successor, Biden, whom they accused of mental incompetency, Trump, with his limited intelligence and willful ignorance, is the living example of those insults, but to say such things, to point out what is obvious to the most casual observer, is only heralded by the right as proof of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.’

Well, if acknowledging reality makes me ‘deranged,’ then I have no need to be cured.