Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity

“A man who took a pickax to Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame early Wednesday has turned himself into police, authorities said.” reads a story in the Los Angeles Times. The Times continued, “The man strode up to Trump’s star off Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue about 3:30 a.m. and proceeded to destroy the majority of it, including bashing through Trump’s nameplate, police said.”

Under the Model Penal Code rule, a criminal defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity “if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.”

Trump Derangement Syndrome strikes again with supposedly rational, normal people pushed to the breaking point by the presidency of Donald Trump. The man who defaced the President’s star turned himself in and will likely be charged with a felony, but will TDS be his defense?

Whoopie Goldberg went nuts on the set of The View when a guest suggested she was a TDS sufferer. Goldberg then went on to prove the guest’s point by chasing the guest out with a much-reported, profanity-laced tirade.

Liberal politicians are loathe to criticize these TDS incidents in order to give the sentiment legitimacy. “Poor Whoopie couldn’t help herself, this President is so terrible and threatening to democracy, how could she stand by while the guest supported him?”

This is the impetus that causes TDS to gain momentum as acceptable. I see it every single day. Not only online, but in the so-called mainstream media with the premise that the end (getting rid of President Trump) justifies the means. The means is whatever route necessary.

The hatred is actually palpable when dealing with people who have immersed themselves in this culture of “Trump is a monster.” They surround themselves with like-minded people, marginalize people in their lives who disagree, and then assume a vast majority agree with them.

At this point, a TDS sufferer becomes what we call unhinged. Opinion becomes fact. Their life begins to resemble dark black-and-white Twilight Zone episodes in which the villain Trump is an amalgam of all the worst tyrants in history, past and present, while imagining themselves and their Trump-hating compatriots as the heroes. The Resist Trump movement is in their minds, akin to the Nazi resistance fighters of World War II.

Since the real Hitler died a long time ago and that comparison has been so overused by the left for the last 30 years (I remember Reagan critics using it), they feel the need for a more modern bogeyman, a tyrant with more currency. And they’ve found one in Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom they insist conspired with President Trump on a hacking scheme to help the Trump Campaign win the election. Despite zero evidence that the Trump Campaign colluded and the Deputy Attorney General saying no Americans were involved, the movement persists.

The problem is that TDS is not losing steam, it is getting worse. When they fail to flip the House to Democratic control in November, what will be next? I hate to say this, but I think more violence will occur. This is the final stage of the TDS epidemic—actual violence against a democratically elected president and his supporters.

I believe it would be entirely possible for this affliction to drive an assassin’s “taking one for the team” mentality and then try the John Hinckley defense, not guilty by reason of insanity. It should scare us all to think of that degree of delusion, even if you dislike the President.

I don’t know who can ratchet down the rhetoric from the left. I don’t think a Clinton or Elizabeth Warren or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would even try. They need that passion to achieve their socialist dreams. Unless a cure for TDS is found, I fear that horrific violence is where we are headed.