Much of the nation is experiencing deep existential grief following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, writes Salon.com, with some risking “PTSD, substance abuse and mental health issues.”
Donald Trump is a “committed enemy” of democracy and human rights, writes Chauncey DeVega, a senior politics writer for Salon, and millions of Americans who believe in democracy and the common good “remain collectively stuck in the various stages of grief.”
That grief “is made even more painful by the fact that tens of millions of other Americans are jubilant at Trump’s return to the White House,” DeVega writes, evidently unaware that “horrible things” will happen in America over the next four years.
Meanwhile, mental health professionals are “seeking help for their own heightened anxiety and emotional challenges in the aftermath of the presidential election and the heightened demand for their services,” DeVega reports, and crisis lines “have seen an increase in callers.”
DeVega seems to share the conviction of many on the left, that Trump voters are clueless troglodytes, “deplorables,” or “garbage.”
Most people who voted for Trump did so “under the mistaken belief that he would improve their lives,” DeVega contends, while the enlightened observers who perceive the error of this belief are left to nurse their superior but delicate psyches.
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Journalists and other public voices who have tried to warn the American people during this time of crisis engage in “grinding and emotionally difficult work” that “can lead to PTSD, substance abuse and mental health issues,” he asserts.
“Considered in the aggregate, America’s public mood is negative, anxious and discontented,” he writes, and public opinion polls “consistently show that a majority of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.”
Conspicuous by its absence among the polls consulted by DeVega is the most recent survey by Morning Consult, which shows a sharp spike downward of those who think the country is on the wrong track, accompanied by a similar spike upward among those who see America heading in the right direction.
The survey is subtitled: “Americans’ optimism reaches three-year high in Trump’s first week back in office.”
DeVega goes on to claim that the American people are under a “systematic assault from disinformation, misinformation and propaganda, including conspiracy theories, often spread by malign actors,” while apparently unaware of the irony that his own essay fits the description so perfectly.
The ailing snowflakes who share DeVega’s perspective purportedly experience “widespread fear” of “total household collapse and homelessness,” of the loss of “social safety-net benefits,” as well as “the loss of reproductive rights and the end of the Affordable Care Act.”
“In other words, they are afraid of suffering life-altering harm from the Trump administration’s plans and policies,” DeVega summarizes.
Citing one “public health expert,” DeVega writes that “perhaps half of the nation’s voting population is grieving what they perceive to be the death of their country.”
Like many of his political ilk, DeVega seems to suffer under the illusion that democracy is only working properly when his preferred candidate wins.
When this fails to happen, grief, anxiety, and other “mental health issues” seem to be the only reaction possible.
