ROGER KIMBALL: Varieties of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

There are two things to register about TDS. The first is how virulent it is. The second is how it tends to worsen, not attenuate, with the passage of time. Farr’s Law does not seem to be operative in the career of this virus. During Trump’s first term, we saw things we had never seen in this country before. The parade of women in pink “pussy hats” was just a local variation on the sort of thing that might have plagued George W. Bush. But as Trump’s first term unfolded, the insanity increased. There was the whole “Russia Collusion Hoax,” for example, a caper hatched in the White House in the final days of Barack Obama’s second term. It was meant to delegitimize and ultimately end the Trump administration, and it very nearly did.

Then there came the systematic censorship and deplatforming of the president of the United States. He was booted off various social media platforms—what were then Twitter, Facebook, etc.—and essentially denied an effective means of communicating with his supporters. Pause for a moment to consider how bizarre it was that the president of the United States was censored and denied a place in the national conversation.

It gets worse. “Grok: Is it true that Trump was debanked?” “Yes—in 2021, after January 6, several large banks closed accounts tied to Donald Trump and Trump businesses.”

Beginning in 2028, the rehabilitation of Trump’s reputation will begin in the legacy media, softening him as a wise elder statesman, when a new Hitler emerges — a man far worse than the current Hitler — and campaigns to succeed him.