“To restore … harmony … to render us again one people acting as one nation should be the object of every man really a patriot.” —Thomas Jefferson (1801)

Before Donald Trump arrived at the White House in January 2017, we were noting various manifestations of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Given the benefit (or detriment) of holding several advanced degrees, including one in psychology, I defined TDS in detail as a form of hysteric cognitive dissonance: thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes resulting in dissociative behavioral and emotive expressions, which render the afflicted incapable of free thought or critical evaluation, and subject to irrational fear and blind hatred of all people and things associated with Trump, to the extent they will abandon normative logic and reason, sever familial and fraternal relationships, and exhibit increasingly angry emotionally incontinent verbal and physical outbursts.

I would conclude that the escalating frequency and intensity of hysterics associated with TDS are greatly exacerbated by the consumption of the hateful rhetoric spewed 24/7/365 by Leftmedia talkingheads and scribes, and across social media platforms.

Realizing the potential for an endless income stream, therapists adopted a kinder, gentler name for TDS, rebranding it as “Trump Anxiety Disorder,” a designer diagnosis for snowflakes and social justice warriors who fear a sociopolitical climate that does not comport with their safe-space value system. The symptoms generally include a sense of helplessness and lack of control, resulting in anxiety, confusion, and insomnia.

While that may be a nicer diagnostic tag for a revenue annuity, the word “derangement” is a much more accurate description of the behavior of leftists and their Democrat Party socialist influencers.

To be clear, the election of Donald Trump did not create the epidemic of emotional incontinence and resulting hatred — the outbreak of TDS and cognitive dissonance on the Left. Rather, the election revealed it. TDS was particularly evident in leftist women, whom Democrat strategists believe are malleable idiots, easily molded into whatever political shape they desire.

Now, TDS is at the root of a contagion called the “woke mind virus” and its accelerating metastasis.

Everyone has heard the term “woke.” As a working definition for context — Woke: /wōk/ A progressive (read: regressive) mental health disorder characterized by fundamental insecurities resulting in an obsession with socialism, statism, historical revisionism, social/racial justice, and gender disorientation.

But most people were not familiar with the notion of a woke mind virus (WMV) until Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, now Trump’s appointed leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, popularized it two years ago. Musk accurately described it as a threat to “modern civilization” and said that assessment prompted his purchase of Twitter/X in order to restore free speech to the platform. And he did.

On a Joe Rogan podcast, Musk called it “a death cult.”

“The woke mind virus consists of creating very, very divisive identity politics … [which] amplifies racism; amplifies, frankly, sexism; and all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite. It actually divides people and makes them hate each other and hate themselves,” Musk says. “You want to have people succeed based on how hard they work and their talents, not who they are, whether they’re man or woman, what race or gender, that stuff is all … artificial, mental civil war.”

To that end, he believes one manifestation of WMV is the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion orthodoxy, about which he says, “The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.”

More traditional liberal Bill Maher prompted Musk in an interview: “You have talked about this ‘woke mind virus’ in really apocalyptic terms. You should explain why you don’t think it’s hyperbole to say things like, ‘It’s pushing civilization towards suicide.’”

Musk responded: “I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is antimeritocratic and anything that … results in the suppression of free speech — so you know those are two other aspects of the woke mind virus that I think are very dangerous. … You can’t question things. Even the questioning is bad. So, you know, another way … [it’s almost synonymous] with cancel culture. … I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that undermines the First Amendment.”

Notably, Maher has been subject to his own broad condemnation from the Left for having dared to occasionally question the Demo orthodoxy. For example: “I don’t even know what pisses them off. They’re so nuts, these kids. I feel like I’m walking on a roof with a blindfold. I could fall off any time.”

And that is the net effect those infused with the woke mind virus seek.

Musk is particularly concerned about how elementary and middle school children are being indoctrinated with WMV: “Parents are just generally not aware of what their kids are being taught or what they’re not being taught.” He is also concerned about a topic I wrote about years ago — “Entertainment as Indoctrination” — and the garbage-in, garbage-out cycle, saying, “Disney is deeply infected with the woke mind virus.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a strong advocate for cleaning up such indoctrination, declared: “The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism. At the end of the day, it’s an attack on the truth.”

One of the factors that pushed Musk to right-thinking was his descent into the leftist gender-confusion cult sick-think, which led to, by his account, ruining his son’s life. In 2020, Musk and his then-wife Justine approved so-called “transgender therapy” when their son was a 16-year-old minor.

In a Jordan Peterson interview six months ago, Musk, who now calls himself a “cultural Christian,” protested: “I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys, Xavier. This was really before I had any understanding of what was going on, and … there was a lot of confusion. And I was told Xavier might commit suicide.”

Musk declared that what the Left calls “gender-affirming care” is a “terrible euphemism,” instead labeling it as we regularly do, “child mutilation and sterilization.” Musk added: “It’s evil. You’re taking kids who are far below the age of consent. It’s very possible for adults to manipulate children who are having an actual identity crisis into believing that they are the wrong gender.”

Thus, Musk concluded, “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that, and we’re making some progress.”

That is a remarkable insight into the awakening of a very complicated man with a distressed personal family history who resides somewhere on the spectrum.

Notably, his now-20-year-old son Xavier, who calls himself “Vivian,” is apparently mortified that his gender dysphoria led to his father’s condemnation of “gender-affirming care.”

He gave a “coming out” interview with Teen Vogue (no narcissistic irony there) this week, in which the publication identified him as “Elon Musk’s Estranged Daughter.” And his remarks are a case study in gender-confusion pathology: “There was one night, it was 11:00 p.m., and I was like, I know for a fact I am trans. … I was like, I cannot f***ing do this anymore. That was the point where puberty was really picking up and everything in my life was completely falling apart. I was constantly having mental breakdowns in the middle of class. I could not get through days. I didn’t want to wake up, I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to rot, pretty much. It was like, I cannot do this anymore. If I stay in the closet anymore, this is going to take me down a very destructive path.”

Apparently, the entire MSM conglomerate has also been infected with the woke mind virus, as they all misgendered him by insisting he is now she. There is no such thing as “transgender,” but The New York Times, CNN, People, Vanity Fair, and the rest of the Leftmedia outlets all identified him as “Musk’s estranged daughter.” Oh, and so did the New York Post, which, along with Fox News, is also propagating misgendering.

University of Tennessee professor Glenn Reynolds, widely recognized as manager of the blog Instapundit, wrote in “Our Ruling-Class Monoculture”: “When Elon Musk referred to the dangers of the ‘woke mind virus,’ he knew exactly what he was talking about. Ideas can be contagious, and can be viewed as analogous to viruses, entities that reproduce by infecting individuals and coopting those individuals into spreading them to others.”

He continued: “Our ruling class is particularly vulnerable to mind viruses for several reasons. First, it is a monoculture, so that what is persuasive to one member is likely to be persuasive to many. Second, it suffers from deep and widespread status anxiety — not least because most of its members have status, but few real accomplishments to rely on — and thus requires constant reassurance in the form of peer acceptance, reassurance that is generally achieved by repeating whatever the popular people are saying already. And third, it has few real deeply held values, which might otherwise provide guard rails of a sort against believing crazy things.”

Fast-forward to March of this year, and the woke mind virus has metastasized. Musk is now being assailed by those inflicted with this latest variant of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Musk, now the head of DOGE, has become the arch-nemesis of those chronically inflicted with WMV. They have launched the early stages of their “American Kristallnacht,” attacks on all things Tesla, as characterized by our Douglas Andrews as “Musk Derangement Syndrome.” And the terrorist attacks are accelerating.

The question is, can we stop the virus?

Musk, for one, is boldly doing his part!

P.S. Patriots, the most cost-effective investment you can make to stop WMV and ensure the future of Liberty is to support The Patriot Post. We are the Web’s most influential grassroots journal promoting freedom and challenging the Leftmedia narrative. We rely 100% on the voluntary financial support of Patriots — people like you. Please support the 2025 Patriots’ Day Campaign today. Thank you.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.

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