Letters

Yes, Virginia, there is a “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” You need only peruse the episodic incidents in print of Ed Surgan to verify and isolate its local outbreak [“Worthy of Debate,” Letters, December 4].

To be clear, Virginia, you need not be afraid. The general public is immune to the disease, and likely to remain so. Luckily, as it turns out, as no vaccine will be made available for the next three years, when it is anticipated it will die out. A healthy diet of facts, memory, logic, skepticism, civility, and the ability to reason and think for yourself, along with two helpings a week of kale and an apple a day, will keep you and Santa fit.

TDS is a self-afflicted, scrupulously fed, systemic disease. Etiology identifies its preponderance in organisms with underlying genetic predispositions to stupidity, egotism and perceptions of insignificance, coated with arrogance. It is emergent full-blown when these organisms insist on refashioning themselves as Donald J. Trump. It becomes acute when the organism’s impaired cognitive functions metastasize into a rigid belief that it is Donald J. Trump, and see his orange-y visage reflected back, blending with their own, in the mirror.

As TDS is absorbed into the psyche, it first attacks the frontal lobe, obliterating distinctions and reasoning functions, conflating the afflicted’s former insignificant thoughts with Trump’s. To support this psychotic identity, the afflicted attack, condescend, prance and preen, and replicate and augment the contradictions and ranting of its replacement superego.

During this process, the heads of the afflicted are observed to balloon disproportionately, becoming paper-thin and bobbing incessantly, causing the brain to loosen and become vestigial. Simultaneously, the cartilage of the knees thickens to facilitate increasing obeisance, while the tongue grows longer, protruding from the lips and dangling to the collarbone. These results are presently under study.

As calcification of the deformations of supplication harden, they are compulsively accompanied by the publications of self-aggrandizing lies (cf. Surgan, et al.) the insistent justifications of blatant criminal, corrupt, inhumane, cruel acts and policies, and a nascent political idiocy. Evidence of DJT’s derangement (dementia?) is ignored by sufferers of TDS, and any opposing views are used to reiterate their debased political catechism.

That, Virginia, is Trump Derangement Syndrome.

But please, Virginia, do not be scared by Mr. Surgan’s reference to “long knives” out to get him. He is made of hot air. It only takes a tiny pin prick to deflate him — if that. The only danger is from the release of stinky moral gas from his gassing — it is an acquired distaste.

Knives this time of year, Virginia, are best used to chop up real nuts, like pecans, to make cookies for Santa.

Merry Christmas, and to all a good fight!

Frances Genovese

Southampton