After Trump's first election, I read about a man who responded by taking elaborate measures to make sure he never had to hear another word about Trump. I can understand the feeling behind this. There's pain involved when a person you've despised for decades ends up in the Oval Office. This is what happened to me. I struggled with the fact that the repulsive narcissist who Spy magazine called the “short-fingered vulgarian” was in charge now, meaning I'd have to hear about him every day. This made me a prime candidate for TD. A person's thoughts can put them in a prison.
Shielding myself from Trump's existence was impractical, so I needed to find another way to prevent his presidency from disrupting my life, especially after I saw the damage it was doing to other people. Although unaware of it at the time, I was adopting the tenets of the philosophy of Stoicism, a school of thought founded by a thoughtful man named Zeno in Athens around 300 BC. Many years later, during the Roman Empire era, Seneca, Epictetus, and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (the “philosopher king”) advanced its ideas, exposing them to a wider audience. Zeno, a once-rich merchant who lost all of his wealth in a shipwreck, formulated the pillars of Stoicism to deal with his ensuing trauma. Trump's election was the modern Left’s traumatic shipwreck. If only TDS sufferers would follow Zeno’s sound advice.
The central idea of Stoicism is simple and intuitive: we should focus our thoughts on what’s within our control and learn to accept what isn’t. American theologian Reinhold Neibuhr summed up the philosophy with his well-known Serenity Prayer, that staple of self-help movements: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Most adults are familiar with these sensible words, so why do so few take them to heart? Instead, so many Democrats have let Trump turn them into modern-day Captain Ahabs consumed by fury and obsession over something they have no control over. If these angry people could vent their animosity towards the president with some measure of wit, it’d make them more bearable, but most of them have been scared witless.
Why Stoicism doesn't have as many adherents on the Left as it should is a complex matter, but incorporating its precepts into one's life isn't as difficult as it is in some other philosophies. To lead a life of Utilitarianism, for example, one's preferences must be sacrificed in service of the goal of the maximization of human happiness and the minimization of suffering on the entire planet. Every bite of food one swallows must be looked at through this lens. It's exhausting. And to follow the teachings of Frederick Nietzsche, it's necessary to attain a level of radical individualism and creative courage that most people find nearly impossible to achieve. Stoicism, on the other hand, only asks one to accept reality with equanimity, but that doesn’t come naturally. Ancient Stoics approached this challenge like athletic training requiring daily exercises, but in the age of instant gratification via social media and cell phones, few find the time for such discipline. Moreover, many use social media to reinforce their membership in a group, so consistently referring to Trump as “tRump” or “Cheeto head” is one way of doing this, despite the obvious childishness.
At Trump’s 2017 inauguration, a person named Jessica Starr provided a meme that Trump voters delighted in passing around. There's no better advertisement for Democrats converting to Stoicism than the plaintive wail of “Nooooooo!” emanating from Starr’s pain-wracked face. I'm guessing that Trump has ruined many of her days since that day that caused her so much distress, and she let that happen to her. The same goes for now-invisible comedian, Kathy Griffin, who posted a picture on social media showing her holding up a bloody prop looking like Trump's decapitated head. Robert DeNiro consistently comments on Trump, calling him a “pig,” “punk,” and “Mussolini,” which is undignified (like Trump) and unproductive, especially coming from an 83-year-old Oscar winner. Therapists have described patients who report thinking about Trump constantly, including in their dreams. Some of them have lost their appetites and/or cut off family members. All of the abovementioned TDS victims are accomplishing nothing while doing damage to themselves and their reputations.
Stoicism doesn’t encourage passivity from those with legitimate anger over Trump, but it does call for self-control that has the potential to bring positive change while avoiding the trap of tilting at windmills. Taking to the streets in protest while holding a sign that denounces one of the president's policies is positive action involving one of the cornerstone rights of living in a democracy—the right to protest. Going on Twitter or holding up a sign to call Trump an “angry creamsicle” or a “decomposing Jack o’-lantern” isn’t a positive reaction. It's crucial for people to learn to distinguish between what is and what is not beyond their control. Ancient Roman philosopher Epictetus spelled out how to make this determination with his “dichotomy of control,” which posits that actions, opinions, judgments, political choices, and intentions are within one's personal control. On the other hand, national election outcomes, other people's opinions and political choices, media cycles, global events, and the behavior of political figures aren’t within an individual's control, and shouldn’t be obsessed over.
TDS sufferers allow their minds to be disturbed by how a person they dislike behaves or talks. They've voluntarily surrendered their peace of mind by putting it in the hands of a person they hate. They’ve made themselves into slaves who, as Seneca put it, “suffer more in imagination than reality.”