By Pem Schaeffer
Not long ago, any sort of identification of criminal suspects to help track them down was called “racial profiling” — unless the suspects were white. Today, use of the term “illegal immigrant” is offensive. Describing organized fraud rings as Somali is similarly derided, though objectively valid.
We’re now facing an unrivaled threat to the American political structure. For most of our history, we’ve conducted debates over governance and elections via two formally established parties. All centered their inclinations on the founding American documents — the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — from which we derived the concept of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Tragically, this great unrest is leading to a national midterm election influenced by advocates of socialist and communist dictatorships elsewhere in the world (not to mention Islamist influences). They’ve overtaken public discourse and seek to overthrow the American founding of 250 years ago. They plan to replace this democratically elected Republic with a totalitarian system run by a self-anointed centralized committee structure.
They call to mind the French Revolution, the Jacobins, and the guillotine. Seeking to understand how we got here, I called on three prominent factors I’ve learned about in my studies. What follows is a theory of how the insurgents in our midst evolved to the point of overthrowing our incredibly successful American experiment.
The Premise
I’ve postulated three specific factors that shaped the extremists in our midst. They plan to replace our established American experiment with systems that have failed everywhere they’ve ever been tried; all have been imposed on populations by force rather than willing agreement of the people. Millions have been sacrificed to their purposes.
These factors are primary influences on those promoting this overthrow: cognitive, emotional, and behavioral.
1.) The Cognitive Component: Trump Derangement Syndrome
The concept of Trump Derangement Syndrome has been well established since Donald J. Trump first came on the political scene. It’s the tendency to hate Trump and oppose anything he proposes no matter how beneficial, and support the alternative no matter how detrimental. The syndrome is typically expressed in unhinged, immature, and undignified behaviors.
I became a lifelong member of the National Association of Scholars 13 years ago. They publish a quarterly Journal named Academic Questions. The Spring 2025 edition included an entry titled “Trump’s Win Sends Therapists Into Crisis” by psychology clinician Brooke Laufer, who asserts:
The mental health field is in a collective complex — or state of fixation — focused on sociopolitical despair. This complex relies on the premise that the political structure represented best by Trump is persecuting mental health professionals, but these providers also see themselves as rescuers for the oppressed. This spell has taken such a hold on professionals that their glazed focus on the mirage of a national catastrophe blinds them to any real-life issues that affect people’s lives. Therapy providers have lost sight of neutrality in their victim/savior identification at great detriment to the healing profession.
The key takeaway is that the syndrome has been formalized where practitioners consider themselves “saviors” of the oppressed, and the result renders them less effective in their practice. This astonished me given the “professionals” involved.
2.) The Emotional Component: Empathy Derangement Syndrome
You’ve likely heard of Gad Saad, a professor of marketing. He’s a compelling intellectual in the battle against political correctness and a sharp-witted analyst of the decline of common sense in our age, with books like The Parasitic Mind and Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind. The latter includes this note: “Suicidal empathy is a tragic manifestation, at the civilizational level, of the well-known proverb ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’”
A piercing observation from Saad: “I posit that in the current zeitgeist, the collective suicide of the west is occurring via the orgiastic misfiring of one of our most noble virtues, empathy, which of course is deeply anchored within the ethos of progressive liberals [emphasis mine].”
The book is a compelling must read, loaded with insights that’ll have you shouting, Yes! You’ll realize how we’re played by progressives to ignore our reasoning faculties in favor of empathy. I.e., we’re to prioritize the plights of criminals over their victims and to desire open borders.
3.) The Behavioral Component: Prolonged Adolescence — The Inability to Govern Yourself
Some years back, I heard of a book called Born Liberal, Raised Right by Reb Bradley. I bought it and loved its premises and attendant discourse. Some nuggets: “Politicians, for the most part, are children who’ve grown up and attempt to govern using the same principles under which their parents raised them.” Lacking the ability to control their urges or passions makes them unfit for personal “self-government.” “Schools have lost control of their classrooms since students lack self-restraint.” “There are two kinds of liberals – those in the child role and those in the parent role.”
And this quote attributed to Ed Shipman from Bradley’s book Raising Good Citizens: “Most adolescents from affluent families have all the useful accessories — smart phones, credit cards, computers and cars — but they have few of the responsibilities that build character. ... Indulged children become susceptible to self-absorption, depression, anxiety, and lack of self control.”
Indulgent parents commonly want to keep all things equal between children. They dread the words “It’s not fair” — the earliest socialist thinking!
Pem Schaeffer is a retired Digital Systems Engineer/Business Development Executive in the defense industry. He can be reached at pemster4062@yahoo.com.
