By September 25, 1789, the U.S. House of Representatives had only been operating for about six months under the Constitution. They were meeting in New York, as they would continue to do until the government was moved to Philadelphia the following year, and then to what became Washington, D.C. Everything was new and uncertain.

On that day in September, Elias Boudinot, a representative from New Jersey, introduced a resolution:  

That a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States, to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Constitution of government for their safety and happiness.

Not everyone thought this Thanksgiving business was a good idea. Aedanus Burke of South Carolina “did not like this mimicking of European customs, where they made a mere mockery of thanksgivings.”Thomas Tudor Tucker, also of South Carolina,

thought the House had no business to interfere in a matter which did not concern them. Why should the President direct the people to do what, perhaps, they have no mind to do? They may not be inclined to return thanks for a Constitution until they have experienced that it promotes their safety and happiness.

“We do not yet know,” Tucker said, “but they may have reason to be dissatisfied” with the Constitution. Anyway “it is a religious matter,” and Congress should have nothing to do with it. If there was going to be any thanksgiving, “let it be done by the…States.”  

How wonderfully American to have a congressional debate about whether or not to say thank you.

As if to prove that the Constitution was not quite worthy of gratitude, on that same day, September 25, 1789, Congress proposed to the state legislatures 12 amendments to the Constitution. Two were not ratified, but the ten that eventually were became known as the Bill of Rights. These 12 proposed amendments were largely the product of James Madison’s constitutional statesmanship, whittling down the scores of amendments proposed by several states during the ratification debates. These amendments certainly were expressions of much dissatisfaction with the proposed Constitution before it even got off the ground. So great was the dissatisfaction that only 11 states were represented in Congress on September 25, 1789; North Carolina and Rhode Island had still not ratified the Constitution. Congress’s proposed amendments helped pave the way for its ratification, maybe even giving them reason to be thankful.

In any case, the thanksgivers in the House prevailed, the Senate came along, and a resolution was presented to President Washington, who, at the request of Congress, issued a proclamation on October 3, assigning

Thursday the 26th. day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

It wasn’t until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a day of national Thanksgiving in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that the practice took hold and seems to have been put beyond debate. Every president since has issued a Thanksgiving proclamation every year. The fourth Thursday in November was made a legal Thanksgiving holiday by an act of Congress signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on November 26, 1941, two weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Among the things for which we may be thankful, then, is that the country is still around to give thanks. And it seems fitting that this annual occasion is also traditionally a time of humble prayer that we may be worthy of the blessings of liberty for which we are so grateful.

The post To Give or Not to Give…Thanks appeared first on The American Mind.

As you gather with your loved ones this Thanksgiving, passing the turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, I hope you take time to reflect on the many blessings God has bestowed upon our nation.

And while politics at the dinner table is typically taboo, most of us have at least one relative eager to stir the pot.

Now, I’m certainly not advocating for full-blown debate before the pumpkin pie, but if the conversation happens to shift to politics, and that friend or family member is still reeling from President Trump’s overwhelming win, don’t worry. Here are a few reasons to be thankful for the upcoming Trump Administration.

At the heart of President Trump’s MAGA movement has always been the American people. The bright thread throughout his historic 2024 campaign was promoting policies that will reverse the damage of the Biden Administration and restore America and her citizens to greatness. President Trump’s authentic rock-and-roll campaign resonated with voters weary of stale DNC talking points, and his enthusiastic message resounded far beyond what pollsters anticipated. In fact, the majority of Americans demanded his vision of change.

The transition to this new era of leadership is already off to a promising start with President Trump’s key appointments. From Susie Wiles and Russ Vought to RFK Jr., Pam Bondi, and Elise Stefanik—these individuals will bring fresh perspectives to the White House and will combine their experience and Trump-required work ethic to deliver for the American people.

One particularly exciting initiative is the newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. For American taxpayers, this signals a massive blow to the establishment, as DOGE will play a crucial role in dismantling the Deep State. Early reports suggest it will prioritize eliminating the most wasteful of the 438 federal agencies and sub-agencies while slashing the bloated federal workforce. Musk, the SpaceX titan, indicated that DOGE could slash the federal budget by “at least $2 trillion.” The opportunities to cut government waste and save taxpayers money is endless.

“Drill baby drill.” Energy dominance is another area where America is poised to lead again. The Trump Administration will unleash American energy and will terminate socialist Green New Deal policies, lifting their radical restrictions on our oil and gas producers. Unshackling our energy sector will immediately bring down inflation, ensuring that Americans can power their homes, cars, and factories with reliable and affordable energy. Leading this movement is incoming Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, whom The New York Times smeared as a “TV-ready evangelist for fossil fuels who lacks government experience”—a great endorsement in my book.

Families who have suffered record inflation and sky-high energy prices under the Biden-Harris Administration will soon find relief.

If your relative still isn’t feeling the Thanksgiving spirit, this final point might change his mind: the restoration of law and order. For the past four years, the Biden-Harris Administration enacted disastrous open border and soft-on-crime policies that made American men, women, and children easy targets for the most depraved. This era, marked by daily robberies, assaults, rapes, brutalization, and murders by violent criminal illegal aliens, will soon end.

“Border Czar” Tom Homan has stated that his efforts to end the migrant crisis will begin on day one in office. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team, stated that President Trump will utilize every resource “to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers and human traffickers in American history while simultaneously lowering costs for families.”

Americans in every city and state can look forward to an administration that enforces the law and protects its citizens.

So as you enjoy your Thanksgiving feast remember to give a little grace to those around you who are still grappling with President Trump’s massive win. Let them know that real changes are coming that everyone can be thankful for, including peace through strength, abundant energy, economic prosperity, and safety and security.

The post Reasons to Be Thankful for America’s Future appeared first on The American Mind.

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Biden’s Parting Gifts | The Roundtable Ep. 245

As Biden’s lame duck administration winds down, he—or whoever’s in charge—is leaving a few fun parting gifts for the incoming Trump Administration. From escalation in Ukraine, to a re-opened border surprise, to the intractable financial situation, Trump’s team will have their work cut out for them. Democrat strategists, however, seem determined not to learn anything from their electoral failure, which bodes well for the future. So the editors remain optimistic—and thankful. Ryan gives a spirited reading of Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving proclamation, and the guys swap notes on holiday plans.

Suggested readings:

Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation 

Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation 

The post The American Mind Podcast: The Roundtable Episode #245 appeared first on The American Mind.

The approach of Thanksgiving invites us to turn our minds to the relationship between religion and the American regime. We now encounter controversy where we once found consensus. With the rise of modern secularism, many Americans now believe that religion should play no role in the nation’s public life, while many other Americans continue to hold to the traditional view that it should.

These divisions were illustrated strikingly in the homestretch of the presidential campaign. Speaking in Wisconsin, Kamala Harris was interrupted by hecklers who called out, “Jesus is Lord.” Harris responded by saying, “You guys are at the wrong rally.” A few days later, in the same state, and apparently in response to this exchange, someone cried out, “Jesus is king!” during a speech by J.D. Vance—and Vance replied, “That’s right. Jesus is king.”

Many in the Harris camp, and maybe even many independents and certain kinds of Republicans, found Vance’s public affirmation of Jesus’ kingship as weird, creepy, or even illiberal. They saw it as further evidence of the rise of Christian nationalism, the dangers of which have been the theme of many articles and books in recent years. For modern American secularists, public Christianity must be rejected as a source of intolerance and irrationality in public life, and even as incompatible with America’s fundamental identity as a free society.

In truth, such opinions have a long and distinguished pedigree. For the last several hundred years, many thinkers of the radical wing of the Enlightenment have condemned public religion as hostile to the modern world. Such thinkers have not been shy in expressing their hope that religion would fade away as modernity progresses, and that the public realm would come to be ruled not by traditional religious beliefs but by the authority of secular reason and science alone.   

But whatever intellectual prestige secularism may possess, it is not an accurate account of America’s traditional political identity. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously observed that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. Similarly, the enemies of public Christianity are entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own history.

Public Christianity was bound up with the founding of the American nation. Accordingly, public Christianity should be viewed as an expression of America’s traditional identity rather than an alarming departure from it.

In his celebrated Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Justice Joseph Story admirably explained the Founding generation’s understanding of the relationship between Christianity and politics. Public Christianity, Story suggested, was part of the formative American political experience leading up to independence. Almost “every American colony,” he observed, “from its foundation down to the revolution…did openly, by the whole course of its laws and institutions, support and sustain, in some form, the Christian religion.” Indeed, we are still reminded of this history by the celebration of Thanksgiving, which inevitably calls to mind the Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth who came to America to establish a more faithful Christian society.

Nevertheless, the proponents of a secular America might respond that the First Amendment’s prohibition of “any law respecting an establishment of religion” put an end to all that. Not really, according to Story.

In his view, when the First Amendment was adopted it was “probably…the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America” that “Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship.” Story contended that the aim of the amendment was not “to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference.” It was rather “to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give” to one denomination “the exclusive patronage of the national government.”

Story’s Commentary is useful also as a window into the thinking that affirmed a public role for Christianity. On his account, Americans of the Founding generation supported the public encouragement of Christianity not just as a matter of tradition—of holding on to the ways of their ancestors—but as necessary to the health and vitality of the free and self-governing society they were striving to establish.

As Story observed, the importance of publicly supporting Christianity “will hardly be contested by any persons, who believe that piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well-being of the state, and indispensable to the administration of civil justice.” He held that the “great doctrines of religion”—such as the existence of “Almighty God,” our “responsibility to him for all our actions,” the “future state of rewards and punishments,” and “the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues”—could “never be a matter of indifference in any well ordered community.”

In sum, for Story religion is a necessary support to popular morality, which is in turn essential to a decent and orderly society. This view was certainly not idiosyncratic. It is essentially the same view expressed in George Washington’s “Farewell Address.” In that famous speech the Father of our Country admonished his fellow citizens that “the mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish” both “religion and morality” as the “indispensable supports” to “all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity.” No doubt such thinking informed Washington’s decision to issue the first presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation, calling on Americans to dedicate a day of prayer to “acknowledge the many signal favors of Almighty God.”  

Story’s account reminds us not only of the purposes and value of public religion but also of its proper limits. The “duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion,” Story noted, “is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men, or to punish them for worshipping God in the manner which, they believe, their accountability to him requires.” It is quite possible, Story teaches us, for our politics to both encourage a particular religion—Christianity in this case—while at the same time leaving dissenters alone. Indeed, the Founders held that this was not only possible but also a duty, since they viewed religious liberty as one of the rights that governments are established to protect. Thus Story equally emphasizes—and praises—the Constitution’s “prohibiting the free exercise of” religion and forbidding any religious tests to hold public office.

On the Founding view, and contrary to the fears of contemporary secularists, we can encourage religion while also respecting individual freedom, because the government’s authority to support belief is not the same thing as an authority to require it.

These reflections are timely not only in relation to Thanksgiving but also in light of the recent election. Restoring public respect for religion while at the same time scrupulously respecting individual freedom of conscience is a key element of any movement that seeks to make America great again.

The post America Was Founded as a Christian Nation appeared first on The American Mind.

It did not take long for the Left to demand a consolation prize for their failed leader Kamala Harris. The opening bid was replacing Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor with “Justice” Harris. What joy that would be. But it’s also mercifully implausible. Not only would the Wise Latinx Justice need to retire to make way for a proud black Brahmin, but Chuck Schumer would have to wrangle a one-vote majority that includes departing former Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. In his lame duck era, Schumer doesn’t really have the ability to rally this captious crowd behind any nominee. But for Harris? Please.

We must go back to the beginning of our quest: how to console the hapless Harris? She’ll have to do what she always does: fail upward. And there’s only one logical next step on that path: the governorship of California.

The ghastly Gavin Newsom is termed out in two years. Unless California Rs get their stuff together in a big way, he will inevitably be followed by another progressive D. And there is no bigger progressive D in Cali Town than Kamala D. Harris, D-San Francisco.

Harris recently won three statewide races in California, twice for attorney general and once for the United States Senate. She then appeared twice on presidential tickets that handily won California in 2020 and 2024. She will easily win a race for governor. Yes, she is a disaster in national politics, but for the exact same reasons she is the bespoke lefty for today’s Golden State coasties.

She would certainly get a primary boost from Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, and other California machine politicians. With their backing, Harris could easily advance in the California jungle primary and then almost certainly be elected governor.

Nothing would be more on the nose for California either. Kamala’s ignorant, entitled, and dismissive persona channels the mindset of the state’s progressive elite, both the faculty lounge and the government union types. The liberal tears are flowing freely in the gutters here. Electing Harris as governor would dry those tears. It would be the ultimate “California gives Donald the Finger” act of performative and feckless defiance.

So there you have it, friends and relations: Kamala Harris, your next governor of California.

Must We Go Gentle Into That Good Night?

But what if, like me and my family, you (still) live in California? Surely we can prevent this, no? We just rode the Red Wave back to Making America Great Again! Surely even here California, a new red sun rises!

To an extent, yes. There is a real post-election right-shift vibe in California, which just voted overwhelmingly to make shoplifting illegal again and rejected both a minimum wage increase and statewide rent control. Even in San Francisco, tech bros and affluent normies have joined forces to cut the political throats of the City by the Bay’s worst woke offenders. The SF normie-techie coalition has recalled America’s worst Soros DA, recalled three school board members who banned algebra, defeated three very progressive incumbent county supervisors, and now elected a tech-oriented mayor to replace career civil servant London Breed. Across the Bay Bridge, Oakland voters just recalled their lunatic mayor and their own Soros DA. Voters in Los Angeles County, meanwhile, dispatched the OG Soros District Apologist, George Gascon, in favor of liberal former Republican Nathan Hochman (no, not that Nate Hochman). Good times.

But a Republican governor is a white pill too far. Forget it guys. No Republican is going to beat Harris for the governorship in four years. The shift we are seeing in California is real, but it is not a red shift. A majority of California voters, even in coastal redoubts, have had it with progressive psychopathy and are willing to vote for something and someone else. But the Republican brand is not the something else yet in California. San Francisco and Los Angeles provide two good case studies to demonstrate this.

San Francisco has been able to gather itself on its hind legs and eject its worst wokies with a winning coalition of plain old normal liberal Democrats. All of the energy in the city is coming from a dissident faction of Democrats, who first organized around getting more influence in The City’s Democratic Party Central Committee, and then worked in house-to-house district election campaigns to narrowly defeat entrenched progs on the Board of Supervisors. They want basic civilizational goods: clean and safe streets, nice schools where kids can learn math, humane treatment for drug addicts instead of monetizing their misery, and an end to the NGO Industrial Complex.

These are ’90s Dems, not GOPers. Disgraced fake SF DA Chesa Boudin’s fatal error (aside from being, you know, Chesa Boudin) was to cast the recall against him two years ago as a Right-Wing Republican Power GrabTM. But everybody in San Francisco knows that there are no Republicans in San Francisco. Nobody in the Bay Area is frightened that the normie-techie political incubator is a Republican front.

It is precisely the sparsity of Republicans in the Bay Area that got the progs so far out over their skis. As they moved further and further Left, they left behind a majority that is, well, “only kind of left.” None of the winning local candidates are conservative or right-wing; most if not all were Harris supporters. This is not the Silicon Valley tech bro squad that just plunked for Trump, despite some of those guys living in The City.

Los Angeles shows that a previously known Republican like Hochman can win a county-wide race against a weak opponent if he ditches the Republican label. And DA races in California are non-partisan, so nobody who didn’t already know that Hochman used to be an R was troubled with that knowledge when pulling the lever for him this time.

So a Republican cannot win a statewide election in California. But Republicans are a large enough minority that their support will be necessary to elect a non-woke alternative to Harris. California has a jungle primary, meaning the two highest vote getters in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party. Republicans routinely field candidates for statewide office who draw just enough support to come in second on the primary ballot, advance to November, and get slaughtered on the General Election ballot.

Golden State Republicans and conservative independents could take a look at the Trump coalition and campaign messaging, ask ourselves what part of it looks most like our home state electorate (all of it, not just the part we most identify with), and look around for candidates and platforms and saleable brands that could draw a winning coalition. And we could quickly come up with a plan to get all the Cali Rs to vote for the best candidate, even if (gasp) his name doesn’t end in “R” on the ballot. Because someone with an R will lose. But someone with the RFK Jr. vibe might just work. A former Dem, OG liberal who’s fed up with the stupidity of the hard Left and credible enough to attract the beginnings of a coalition but lacks the party backing that would put him over the top. Someone with a platform who’s willing to partner with those of good will and like mind.

In other words, San Fransicko author Michael Shellenberger.

Imagine Winning

The Silicon Valley tech bro junta should be happy to help Shellenberger for a lot of the same reasons they were willing to help Trump. And a Shellenberger-type candidate, if he made it past Republican voters in the primary, could set up the kind of dynamics, especially against Harris, that just round-filed a decade of progressive hegemony in San Francisco and Los Angeles. That just voted 70-30 for “Can we just go back to sending thieves to prison for stealing stuff?” That just narrowly said, “Yeah enough rent control and minimum wage boundary pushing.”

Will the prospect of a Harris governorship be bad enough that we summon both the wisdom and the discipline to vote as a block for the “only kind of Left” Michael Shellenberger in the primary and advance him to a head-to-head contest against Harris, where he might extend the Golden State’s new dawn vibe for four years with an upset victory against the stupidest politician in history?

That would require the state GOP to admit that it is just digging itself into a deeper hole every cycle, and to stop digging. Stranger things have happened. Donald Trump is the president-elect for the second time. It’s Morning in America. Maybe we can act in our own best interest and elect a governor who will Make California Great Again too.

The post Protect California From Kamala appeared first on The American Mind.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s crushing victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, social media has been flooded with videos of apartment- or vehicle-bound neurotics screaming, banging pots and pans in sheer disbelief, packing their belongings, or generally convulsing as if Kristallnacht were upon us. The American public has been introduced to the 4B movement, in which liberal women appropriate a South Korean sex strike because justice.

To be sure, social media is at best a caricature of real life. Only the most dramatic individuals will shave their heads for “reproductive rights” (read: for likes), but most people do not express themselves in quite such a hyperbolic register. That said, in this case the memes are imitating real life. Not every ex-Kamala voter is experiencing a full-scale breakdown. But judging based on my own clinical observations as a practicing therapist, I think it may well be true that a significant number of young American leftists are going through a collective mental health crisis.

I speak from some experience, having spent multiple hours per day over the past few weeks hearing from clients about the damage inflicted upon their psyches “by the Trump win.” This is their account of things. My own opinion, however, is that someone has subjected these kids to psychic trauma. But it wasn’t Donald Trump.

First Things

I usually begin each appointment by reminding clients of our previous appointment, whereupon the client usually picks up where he or she left off, telling me about personal struggles, generational dynamics, or relationship problems. But since Trump’s victory, a startling number of clients have simply pivoted to another subject entirely. Usually I hear some variation of “I just can’t. I just can’t,” before I am told, with some incredulity that it needs saying, that it is impossible to focus on anything other than THE ELECTION.

When, after listening to a client’s political fears, I gently suggest that we should now get back to discussing his husband’s death, cocaine use, crushing panic while driving, infidelity, or what have you, I am waved off as if we needed a full clinical hour to talk about Trump, WW3, reproductive rights, or a future daughter’s reproductive rights. Maybe the most jarring comment I heard was from a client who expressed relief that a close relative had already died and thus escaped “this sh*t that’s about to go down.” 

One truism I’ve observed in my practice is: “you love what you pay attention to.” I am not saying that my clients spend $180 to talk about the election because they don’t care about their addiction, spouses, etc. But I am saying that they are choosing to prioritize, and therefore nourish, their hatred for Trump. This of course increases their distress, which increases their hatred. This is not a vicious cycle they all just stumbled into by unfortunate happenstance. They were taught incessantly—by friends, by online forums, by figures they trust in the media—that Trump trumps all.

Spiraling Out

Practitioners of what’s called positive psychology will often talk in terms of clients’ tendency to fixate on either an external or an internal locus of control. Different individuals will either instinctually take responsibility for problems that arise, or defer responsibility to another person, system, or institution. A teenage boy who gets caught with weed, if his natural locus of control is internal, will admit fault and responsibility even if everyone else on the soccer team tried it at the party. A boy whose natural inclination is external will cite peer pressure, or insist that his friends’ parents said it was fine. Although one type of locus isn’t necessarily better than the other, the external locus of control does tend to foster victimhood. Often it needs to be counterbalanced by inward focus in order to facilitate agency and improvement. Taking radical responsibility for one’s issues is a key engine of change.

I have been working with some of my clients for quite some time now, and many have gradually learned to shift their locus of control inward. This has aided them in their mental health pursuits. But one common trait I have noticed amongst my Trump-focused clients is that, when the Orange Man comes up, they dart instantly back to an external locus of control. After the election, many of them have taken notable steps backward in our work together. One client even reverted to a cocaine habit after three months of sobriety because “What’s the point now?”

Another client who struggles with depression reported just sitting in bed to “rot” for two days straight. Others have threatened to cut off their parents because they don’t know how they can possibly have another conversation with family members who voted for Trump. These clients are spiraling back out to an external locus of control.

The tragic element in all these cases is that these fragile individuals have been violently interrupted in their healing progress by a completely imaginary evil, projected in Hitler-moustachioed IMAX across the pages of The New Republic, blared from the anchor’s desk on CNN, and generally beaten into the heads of everyone in their immediate circle of trust. And though I personally make a principle of never sharing my political beliefs, some therapists actually encourage their clients’ persecution complexes by adopting an overtly ideological approach, attributing trauma to “systems” of racism, sexism, or homophobia. The effects of this are as you would expect. It is the opposite of helpful.

The Stanford- and Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Paul Conti has qualified what exactly, good mental health means. According to Dr. Conti, someone who exemplifies good mental health, and therefore someone who can be considered “well-adjusted,” cultivates an attitude of gratitude and a feeling of personal autonomy. Keeping this definition in mind, one does not need to be a trained psychotherapist to understand how mental health has deteriorated so grievously in the past 20 or so years, especially among those who lean Left.

When parents, teachers, university professors, and statesmen espouse a rhetoric of ingratitude and dependence, it is no wonder why much of the public suffer from anxiety, depression, and compulsion. Of course, we will laugh at the libs of TikTok shaving their heads and screaming in their cars. But we have to realize this is not the worst of it. If anything, those who engage in such spectacles may have more promise, given that they are more than likely to be opportunistic actors who abandon their political ideas as lightly as they take them up. But we should not laugh at those who break their sobriety, or plunge into isolation because of the Trump victory. They are truly sick, and ideological bad actors have preyed off their desperation for personal clout, terrorizing them with confected fears and then discarding them to suffer the psychological consequences.

There’s a mental health crisis in this country—on this we can all agree. But the peddlers of Trump Derangement Syndrome don’t seem to care that their cynical, apocalyptic politics bear no small part of the blame.

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