The concept of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” may have started as a joke to describe the over-reaction of hatred toward Trump, but after years of people upending good sense and their own principles in order to get at this man, I’m pretty convinced it’s real and that scientists need to study this in the future.

I see it every single day and as we drift closer and closer to the 2024 presidential election, I have a feeling we’re going to see it even more and in big ways.

Right now, the most popular example of it comes from Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who just lost her reelection campaign by 37 points. The congresswoman had seemed to completely forget that she was there to represent the people of Wyoming and, instead, focused on taking down Trump through her January 6 committee. It probably didn’t help that Cheney’s husband’s law firm represents Hunter Biden in the grand jury probe and that Trump’s reelection may result in making her husband’s job all that much harder, but her hatred of Trump seemed even more personal that that.

Speaking of Hunter Biden, here’s a modern-day philosopher and podcast host Sam Harris saying that Biden literally could have had dead children in his basement and he’d dismiss it if it meant Trump would never be in office again. He also admitted fully that he’s completely fine with a conspiracy to stop Trump from being democratically elected.

In which, Sam Harris says that it's ok to conspire against Trump getting elected, because he was the equivalent of an asteroid headed towards earth. Literally literally. Worth watching just for Francis' reaction at the end. Omg. pic.twitter.com/hVH7IPAx1t

— Alexandros Marinos (@alexandrosM) August 18, 2022

I also see it on social media daily. Any disagreement with a leftist figure, no matter who, always results in the same replies about me being a Trump-obsessed drone, MAGA extremist, Trump-humper, etc., etc.

Trump seems to be all they can think about. It’s an obsession they can’t get past. He could literally rescue them, their children, and their pets from a burning building and they’d walk themselves and their family back into the fire to spite him. Like Harris, they would upend our Republic and embrace tyrannical corruption of government in order to stop him from ever getting back into office.

I’m not kidding when I say that if he does win in 2024, I would not at all be surprised to hear about a few suicides.

Does Trump have obsessed fans that believe he can do no wrong? Absolutely, and they’re just as annoying. Trump is not an infallible person and he should never be viewed as such. His faults are many, but he did a good job as President. When you compare his work to that of the current one, the differences in success are night and day. It’s not a question as to who was better.

Yet, there are some who will craft an entire fantasy world around them where Trump was a great evil who never did anything but great evil and will do nothing but great evil in the future. In their minds, he must be stopped at all costs, even if that cost means ditching firmly held principles. I’ve seen this kind of mentality before in personal situations, but never on a mass scale such as this.

Decades from now, when we’ve left this age behind, I truly hope scientists and clinical psychologists study this moment. I truly believe that this is something of a shared madness that has ruined the minds and relationships of many people. It’s caused them to debase themselves and become unreasonable. I hope future generations look back at this and learn from it because I fear if we don’t then this problem will just fester, and I’d hate to see how this could get any worse.