To the Editor:
Persons who are loyal to Donald Trump without question, and who characterize those who may vote for Biden as “imbeciles,” got me to thinking about a segment of our population’s susceptibility to Trump’s messaging in terms of their mental health: That there’s a strong possibly they are suffering from Associative Paranoiac Delusion or APD.
The symptoms of ADP are often difficult to distinguish from those found in the larger population that psychiatrists categorize as “Fringe Paranoids”: Those who hold fearful beliefs based on false or incomplete information, delusion or other effects of apperception attracting them to xenophobic and jingoistic noise emanating from an opportunist pretending to understand their needs by regurgitating the vile things they imagine.
Apperception is, of course, a general term used to describe all mental processes, which are brought into connection with an already existent and systematized mental preconception as exampled in the belief that government doesn’t work as repeatedly regurgitated by those charged with making it work, but who make it not work. Like the sycophants Trump imbedded in his administration and those already holding place cards in Congress.
Although the majority of Fringe Paranoids are passive by nature, they are easily influenced by disinformation and conspiracies regurgitated by opportunists that, with repetition, coagulate in their brains resulting in a condition that constitutes a greater danger to themselves and others with the onset of cognitive dysfunction causing the rapid regression of their mental acuity as if it were an airborne contagion.
Trump, aided and abetted by his enablers, helps spread this contagion amongst the Fringe Paranoids, with lots of hot air and gas light, using their contempt for others with his tonic of false empathy laced with his superlative vocabulary that leave them feeling superior and free to deride those whom they consider inferior: We imbeciles, who may embrace civility, education, science and progress and who have a healthy skepticism about Trump’s draining the swamp and instead filling it with snakes.
Unfortunately, under the influence of Trump’s Elmer Gantry style showmanship, the Fringe Paranoids rapidly descend through the various stages of ADP and thence become Feral Paranoids: Suffering from what’s known as Dementia Praecox and search of a non-existent past as seen through their bleached lens of certitude. They’ll then march lock-step and fully armed to advance Trump’s personal agenda, which is to ferment chaos to retain power and thereby enrich himself, his family, his cohorts and other non-humans.
Fortunately, this COVID-TRUMP pandemic is easily identified for the purpose of social distancing. Trump’s bare-faced lies and bare-faced constituents all wear red ball caps that have a similar effect upon them as the cookies eaten in a Tim Burton adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland wherein Trump stars alternately as Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter attended by his hairdresser, make-up artist and camp followers.
J. P. Curtis
Sparta