This is probably the best examination of TDS, taking it to be as deadly serious as it is, that I've read. Really well-phrased throughout. Sam Harris scares me. This variant scares me.
The evidence is clear - ordinary people, who through the mere act of having purchased a vehicle possibly years ago, are now adjacent enough to become targets of pure hatred and even violence. It's madness and it is spreading.
I live in TDS land. And you are absolutely correct that this mind virus has become more virulent since it first appeared. I can verify this just by the people I live among on a daily basis. Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but so prevalent it is unmistakably real. Just in the past two weeks four more old friends, who have barely talked to me in years, came out of the woodwork on FaceBook to attack me for my views on politics. I do not suffer the Trump can do no wrong form of TDS, either. I’m a wait and see kind of gal. I do like most of what he has done since he was elected to fulfill his promises. But some of what he has done makes me uneasy and somewhat worried. But right now the rational me says there is no where else to go, certainly not back to the Democrats!
As for Sam Harris, he showed his hand on that infamous Triggernometry episode on which he declared that Hunter Biden could have dead children buried under his floor boards (or something to that effect) and he would still be a better person than Trump. Gad Saad calls Sam “the Malibu Meditator” who lives in a tiny bubble of affluence divorced entirely from the real world. It is obvious he live entirely in his own mind. But I have to interact with the enhanced TDS viral hosts you speak of among the quite ordinary, usually overeducated, mostly urban-dwelling die hard Democrats I am unfortunate enough to have to interact with day in, day out.
Interestingly enough, I attended a "mainstream" Science Fiction convention in late March, and found its wokeness muted--not gone certainly, but more said as an aside rather than shouted to the rafters as has been common for the last 15 years.
I’ve been to places where the “woke” is happily nearly nonexistent. What I was talking about was my personal milieu. 73 years of building intimate friendships that were at the level of family and almost all of them are gone. Even ones that managed to sustain themselves during Trump’s first term and into Biden’s years have suddenly been torn asunder with Trump’s second election. I have been cast into the realm of the “unperson”.
Unto your self be true. Want to hit the Like Button? Hit it by God. Trust in yourself for your peace of mind, not to ingratiate yourself to what another may think of you or to get their approval.
At 70, I do unto others so they can enjoy the same grief they caused me. To sweeten the pot, they have to stew in their own pew without validation as I excel at cutting off comms on a scale where they try to to whine by trying to confront. me LOL. Hang out with others who like you and respect your views. Train yourself by posting comments on New York Post articles. Over time you will celebrate your new "family" members.
Believe me, I already do all that. At 73! I am the Queen of long form replies to much of the utter nonsense I encounter from people who used to be friends on both FB and X. I leave plenty of bodies and exploded brains in my wake. And one in a while, truly, I get an apology and acknowledgment! Rare but I do get them sometimes.
I’ve lost a lot of friends to TDS, too. I wander in to leftist notes here on Substack, and I get worried about a hot civil war. I hope I’m delusional.
Take a look at the website of the upcoming Seattle Worldcon, Frank. The woke in SF is not muting. I can’t read new works in my favorite genre anymore, unless it’s from writers that were published in the 50s and 60s or self-published writers today. Last year, I re-read a novel, one I loved, that was published in the 90s by Lisa Mason, and this time, I saw in that novel the climate hysteria and the Marxist-based thinking, and the soft tyranny of my fellow women that was proposed as a solution. I don’t want that future.
Carol, It started in the late 70's. In 1979 I gave up my ambitions to be an SF writer when Ben Bova, an editor that had encouraged me, called one of my stories propaganda. It was clear that the SF establishment had begun to create a dogma, from which no heresy would be allowed. Instead I spent 40 years as a software engineer, only returning to writing after I retired now that I don't need to make a living at writing, and that the infrastructure exists for independent publishing.
I've ignored WorldCon for decades except for a brief glimpse during Sad Puppies that confirmed how bad things were. I'm sad to hear that Seattle WorldCon is carrying on in the woke idiocy. Of course, looking at the program guide for WonderCon, the con I attended, I would have come to the same conclusion, so the woke infrastructure continues, but, as I said, many of those who have prospered under it, seem to no longer think they are winning even though my evidence is anecdotal.
One can only hope that many, like J. K. Rowling, are finally realizing that the ideals of tolerance they thought their fellow leftists held to were just a ruse by evil men to manipulate them.
I think most of the sufferers from either TDS or gain of function TDS have already had their thought processes turned to mush by the communist reeducation camps we call the public schools. Like folks at a rock concert or a Hitler rally, they get their kicks from performative behavior, and like addicts they have to keep upping the dose to get the endorphin hit.
I agree that Trump is a unique politician. My opinion of him is that he's basically not a bombastic villain, but he plays one on television. He has a long association with the WWE and has adopted its style of showy braggadocio. Most people who actually meet him, say he's well-mannered and actually listens to what people, even ordinary people, have to say. Is he a virtuous man? Seems unlikely given his multiple marriages, but then he seems to have somehow done an excellent job of raising his kids to be virtuous somehow, and how often do you see that with a wealthy, entrepreneurial father? He plays a loose cannon on TV, but has gone 78 years with never having smoked (anything) and never having touched alcohol, all with no religious framework to rely on, just his own choice and will power.
If I were to rate all the presidents that we have had in the last 60 years, I consider Jimmy Carter far and away the most personally virtuous man to be president. And his 4 years were an utter disaster, from encouraging the deposing of the Shah of Iran on humanitarian grounds and thereby releasing the demons of the Iranian Revolution and the hundreds of thousands of deaths it has caused, to nearly wrecking our economy.
Your comment, and the second paragraph in particular, is completely consistent with Bill Maher’s account of his recent dinner with the President at the White House. Worth a listen or a read, if you haven’t already seen it.
What a clear description of exactly what we are experiencing right now, nationwide and, often, even worldwide. People are losing their minds, and all for the dopamine hit some get when they think their delusions have been validated. It’s sickness rewarding sickness.
Thanks for the diagnosis. I wish the prognosis weren’t so dire.
My sub to the Weekly Dish is about to auto-renew and much as I’ve liked most of Andrew Sullivan’s writing, his current over-reaction is pushing me towards unsubscribing. (I need to cull my ‘stack collection anyway. So far, you are very much on the “keep” list!)
I used to pay for his Substack a while back, but then stopped when he kept referring to men as "she/her" and it was bugging me (maybe he's changed on that front, but I don't expect him to change his language so I showed myself out). I actually forgot he existed until I saw a clip of his interview with Mike White from White Lotus pop up on X.
Thank you Holly! As the old man (70), two unique, subtle, aspects pushed America from being sociable to the current state of waking up for the sole purpose of TDS. The first culture shock after the JFK assassination was to destroy a shared national tradition that started with our earliest childhood love - Saturday Morning Cartoons. They were erased and we had nothing to fill the void. Each successive cartoon less Saturday nursed a resentment that grew into a Nation becoming more resentful and socially detached.
The second aspect cannot be appreciated unless you work overseas and returned to find graphic ads on TV. When I asked others around me about an offending ad. The reactions ranged from, "Are you joking?" to "what shelter have you been hiding"? I closed out the world until Trump arrived on the scene in 2015.
Sad that he did not bring back Saturday Morning Cartoons, but each day with his Presidency felt great until the oxygen thieves & sad blisters started attacking him. Until their intentional lies and baseless hatred is dismantled we need your essays more than ever Holly!
I am grateful and hopeful that you will continue to share your insightful acumen in politics, even if you did swear off of writing about it short of a year ago. Please, please, please, do not shut down your willingness to share insights about our current culture.
It's not right to remain silent in the face of corruption.
Oh, and the first thing that came to mind when you used, "Non compos mentis" was that in that particular case, it's more like "est compost mentis." (I know, I'm going to hell now.)
As an 82 year old who grew up in 'Rock Ribbed Republican New Hampshire in 40s and 50s I can tell you there were plenty of people in those days who believed that things would return to reality and the fantasy world created by FDR and the New deal would disappear like the morning dew. The Manchester Union Guardian assured us daily that Eisenhower was a Communist and that his failure to reinstate reality as it was meant to be was a violation of everything the was good and true. This reaction to major reset is genuinely different because the change agent is a socially unacceptable and crude, in your face, ridiculer of the status quo - not a gentleman aristocrat like FDR. Trump is very much a mocker of all that is right a good from the perspective what Kuhn would call the old paradigm. So this counter reaction is different. Stronger and more inclined to escalate - as you have pointed out with perception and fairness. In my view of how the human collective works we have been stuck in a series of Tweedle dee Tweedle Dum elections and it took a perposerious outsider to blindside the old paradigm. Both Republicans and Democrats. Sam Harris does not surprise me because I listened carefully to his debates with Jordan Peterson some years ago and it became obvious that Harris just can't even begin to let in new ideas. I think he is an extreme case, but I am more surprised by Andrew Sullivan who moved from right to left and is therefore demonstrably capable of letting new ideas in. Clearly there are many who just can't even consider anything Trump is doing as other than completely wrong. The very opposite of the hat that declares Trump was 'right about everything'. But I think this metastasized TDS will go on doubling down with effects hard to project. For now it is just repeating the tactics of the George Floyd riots, but with an administration that is prepared to prosecute them. I don't think it will work out in the same way. At the same time I don't expect them to give up, but their reaction is so over the top I think it may burn out more quickly. The ideological take over of the education system K through PhD will probably prolong the agony, but also may put those institutions out of business. Hard to say because we don't know to what extent Trumps program with succeed or fail any more than people knew how things would go during FDR's first 100 days.
This is probably the best examination of TDS, taking it to be as deadly serious as it is, that I've read. Really well-phrased throughout. Sam Harris scares me. This variant scares me.
🥹 ❤️🥰
This is dividing humanity into the approved and the damned. It is the ideological precursor for the next violent purge of the kulaks.
You should be scared.
The evidence is clear - ordinary people, who through the mere act of having purchased a vehicle possibly years ago, are now adjacent enough to become targets of pure hatred and even violence. It's madness and it is spreading.
Fantastic post, mirroring many of my own thoughts,
your sainthood points go past eleven, but as confirmed episcopalian my thoughts on sainthood are a null set.
very well said, God rest you merry.
Sam's still bitter because his sister lost.
I live in TDS land. And you are absolutely correct that this mind virus has become more virulent since it first appeared. I can verify this just by the people I live among on a daily basis. Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but so prevalent it is unmistakably real. Just in the past two weeks four more old friends, who have barely talked to me in years, came out of the woodwork on FaceBook to attack me for my views on politics. I do not suffer the Trump can do no wrong form of TDS, either. I’m a wait and see kind of gal. I do like most of what he has done since he was elected to fulfill his promises. But some of what he has done makes me uneasy and somewhat worried. But right now the rational me says there is no where else to go, certainly not back to the Democrats!
As for Sam Harris, he showed his hand on that infamous Triggernometry episode on which he declared that Hunter Biden could have dead children buried under his floor boards (or something to that effect) and he would still be a better person than Trump. Gad Saad calls Sam “the Malibu Meditator” who lives in a tiny bubble of affluence divorced entirely from the real world. It is obvious he live entirely in his own mind. But I have to interact with the enhanced TDS viral hosts you speak of among the quite ordinary, usually overeducated, mostly urban-dwelling die hard Democrats I am unfortunate enough to have to interact with day in, day out.
Interestingly enough, I attended a "mainstream" Science Fiction convention in late March, and found its wokeness muted--not gone certainly, but more said as an aside rather than shouted to the rafters as has been common for the last 15 years.
I’ve been to places where the “woke” is happily nearly nonexistent. What I was talking about was my personal milieu. 73 years of building intimate friendships that were at the level of family and almost all of them are gone. Even ones that managed to sustain themselves during Trump’s first term and into Biden’s years have suddenly been torn asunder with Trump’s second election. I have been cast into the realm of the “unperson”.
I would press the like button, but I'm afraid it would send the wrong message. :) Thanks for the information.
Unto your self be true. Want to hit the Like Button? Hit it by God. Trust in yourself for your peace of mind, not to ingratiate yourself to what another may think of you or to get their approval.
LOL!
At 70, I do unto others so they can enjoy the same grief they caused me. To sweeten the pot, they have to stew in their own pew without validation as I excel at cutting off comms on a scale where they try to to whine by trying to confront. me LOL. Hang out with others who like you and respect your views. Train yourself by posting comments on New York Post articles. Over time you will celebrate your new "family" members.
Believe me, I already do all that. At 73! I am the Queen of long form replies to much of the utter nonsense I encounter from people who used to be friends on both FB and X. I leave plenty of bodies and exploded brains in my wake. And one in a while, truly, I get an apology and acknowledgment! Rare but I do get them sometimes.
I’ve lost a lot of friends to TDS, too. I wander in to leftist notes here on Substack, and I get worried about a hot civil war. I hope I’m delusional.
Take a look at the website of the upcoming Seattle Worldcon, Frank. The woke in SF is not muting. I can’t read new works in my favorite genre anymore, unless it’s from writers that were published in the 50s and 60s or self-published writers today. Last year, I re-read a novel, one I loved, that was published in the 90s by Lisa Mason, and this time, I saw in that novel the climate hysteria and the Marxist-based thinking, and the soft tyranny of my fellow women that was proposed as a solution. I don’t want that future.
Carol, It started in the late 70's. In 1979 I gave up my ambitions to be an SF writer when Ben Bova, an editor that had encouraged me, called one of my stories propaganda. It was clear that the SF establishment had begun to create a dogma, from which no heresy would be allowed. Instead I spent 40 years as a software engineer, only returning to writing after I retired now that I don't need to make a living at writing, and that the infrastructure exists for independent publishing.
I've ignored WorldCon for decades except for a brief glimpse during Sad Puppies that confirmed how bad things were. I'm sad to hear that Seattle WorldCon is carrying on in the woke idiocy. Of course, looking at the program guide for WonderCon, the con I attended, I would have come to the same conclusion, so the woke infrastructure continues, but, as I said, many of those who have prospered under it, seem to no longer think they are winning even though my evidence is anecdotal.
One can only hope that many, like J. K. Rowling, are finally realizing that the ideals of tolerance they thought their fellow leftists held to were just a ruse by evil men to manipulate them.
I think we are already deep into a “cold” civil war. I was pondering this just last night. It is very scary.
I think most of the sufferers from either TDS or gain of function TDS have already had their thought processes turned to mush by the communist reeducation camps we call the public schools. Like folks at a rock concert or a Hitler rally, they get their kicks from performative behavior, and like addicts they have to keep upping the dose to get the endorphin hit.
I agree that Trump is a unique politician. My opinion of him is that he's basically not a bombastic villain, but he plays one on television. He has a long association with the WWE and has adopted its style of showy braggadocio. Most people who actually meet him, say he's well-mannered and actually listens to what people, even ordinary people, have to say. Is he a virtuous man? Seems unlikely given his multiple marriages, but then he seems to have somehow done an excellent job of raising his kids to be virtuous somehow, and how often do you see that with a wealthy, entrepreneurial father? He plays a loose cannon on TV, but has gone 78 years with never having smoked (anything) and never having touched alcohol, all with no religious framework to rely on, just his own choice and will power.
If I were to rate all the presidents that we have had in the last 60 years, I consider Jimmy Carter far and away the most personally virtuous man to be president. And his 4 years were an utter disaster, from encouraging the deposing of the Shah of Iran on humanitarian grounds and thereby releasing the demons of the Iranian Revolution and the hundreds of thousands of deaths it has caused, to nearly wrecking our economy.
Your comment, and the second paragraph in particular, is completely consistent with Bill Maher’s account of his recent dinner with the President at the White House. Worth a listen or a read, if you haven’t already seen it.
What a clear description of exactly what we are experiencing right now, nationwide and, often, even worldwide. People are losing their minds, and all for the dopamine hit some get when they think their delusions have been validated. It’s sickness rewarding sickness.
I'm glad that your confidence has returned and you feel it is safe enough to talk about politics again.
Guard up, girl. I have a feeling the trolls and haters wil be knocking on the message boards soon.
Thanks for the diagnosis. I wish the prognosis weren’t so dire.
My sub to the Weekly Dish is about to auto-renew and much as I’ve liked most of Andrew Sullivan’s writing, his current over-reaction is pushing me towards unsubscribing. (I need to cull my ‘stack collection anyway. So far, you are very much on the “keep” list!)
I used to pay for his Substack a while back, but then stopped when he kept referring to men as "she/her" and it was bugging me (maybe he's changed on that front, but I don't expect him to change his language so I showed myself out). I actually forgot he existed until I saw a clip of his interview with Mike White from White Lotus pop up on X.
You have diagnosed the contagion brilliantly and incisively.
This is an excellent piece describing the spiritual illness afflicting so-called rational people.
The possessed can't see that they're possessed.
Harris is a gurupreneur of the rational grifter archetype.
Your pattern recognition skill is phenomenal!
Thank you Holly! As the old man (70), two unique, subtle, aspects pushed America from being sociable to the current state of waking up for the sole purpose of TDS. The first culture shock after the JFK assassination was to destroy a shared national tradition that started with our earliest childhood love - Saturday Morning Cartoons. They were erased and we had nothing to fill the void. Each successive cartoon less Saturday nursed a resentment that grew into a Nation becoming more resentful and socially detached.
The second aspect cannot be appreciated unless you work overseas and returned to find graphic ads on TV. When I asked others around me about an offending ad. The reactions ranged from, "Are you joking?" to "what shelter have you been hiding"? I closed out the world until Trump arrived on the scene in 2015.
Sad that he did not bring back Saturday Morning Cartoons, but each day with his Presidency felt great until the oxygen thieves & sad blisters started attacking him. Until their intentional lies and baseless hatred is dismantled we need your essays more than ever Holly!
I am grateful and hopeful that you will continue to share your insightful acumen in politics, even if you did swear off of writing about it short of a year ago. Please, please, please, do not shut down your willingness to share insights about our current culture.
It's not right to remain silent in the face of corruption.
Oh, and the first thing that came to mind when you used, "Non compos mentis" was that in that particular case, it's more like "est compost mentis." (I know, I'm going to hell now.)
Not watching the news is the N95 of our times.
As an 82 year old who grew up in 'Rock Ribbed Republican New Hampshire in 40s and 50s I can tell you there were plenty of people in those days who believed that things would return to reality and the fantasy world created by FDR and the New deal would disappear like the morning dew. The Manchester Union Guardian assured us daily that Eisenhower was a Communist and that his failure to reinstate reality as it was meant to be was a violation of everything the was good and true. This reaction to major reset is genuinely different because the change agent is a socially unacceptable and crude, in your face, ridiculer of the status quo - not a gentleman aristocrat like FDR. Trump is very much a mocker of all that is right a good from the perspective what Kuhn would call the old paradigm. So this counter reaction is different. Stronger and more inclined to escalate - as you have pointed out with perception and fairness. In my view of how the human collective works we have been stuck in a series of Tweedle dee Tweedle Dum elections and it took a perposerious outsider to blindside the old paradigm. Both Republicans and Democrats. Sam Harris does not surprise me because I listened carefully to his debates with Jordan Peterson some years ago and it became obvious that Harris just can't even begin to let in new ideas. I think he is an extreme case, but I am more surprised by Andrew Sullivan who moved from right to left and is therefore demonstrably capable of letting new ideas in. Clearly there are many who just can't even consider anything Trump is doing as other than completely wrong. The very opposite of the hat that declares Trump was 'right about everything'. But I think this metastasized TDS will go on doubling down with effects hard to project. For now it is just repeating the tactics of the George Floyd riots, but with an administration that is prepared to prosecute them. I don't think it will work out in the same way. At the same time I don't expect them to give up, but their reaction is so over the top I think it may burn out more quickly. The ideological take over of the education system K through PhD will probably prolong the agony, but also may put those institutions out of business. Hard to say because we don't know to what extent Trumps program with succeed or fail any more than people knew how things would go during FDR's first 100 days.