Trump Derangement Syndrome is making dating impossible | Opinion

I recently entered the online dating scene and have met nice women for Columbus-area lunches or dinners in the process. After I thanked one, I got a thanks back with an additional note: "I never asked you about your political views. I have no problem with Republicans, but if you are a MAGA Republican, it would be difficult for us to develop a friendship."

Wow. That comment threw me for a loop, but it made me reflect on the bitter divisions within the country. It is literally a civil war.

For half a century, I have been a Goldwater Republican and later became a Reaganite. Peace through strength was the motto. I do want to "Make America Great Again" after its precipitous decline during the Biden presidency. I like much of what President Donald Trump has done as 45 & 47, dislike a few and scratch my head at others. He has brought pride back to America, especially in the heartland, but dismay and disdain among the coastal elite.

I guess I could comment in return.

"I have no problem with Democrats, but would be difficult for me to develop a friendship with one who has blindly been to a 'No Kings' rally, suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome, uses the biased legacy media as their only source of 'truth,' wants Israel to be put in its place, requires unlimited immigration and voting without an ID, desperately aims to completely abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, allows biological males in women's sports, and denigrates all MAGA as fascists or Nazis, without understanding the real meaning of those words."

I used many harsh adverbs, adjectives and verbs in that response – blindly, suffers, biased, only, unlimited, desperately, abolish and denigrates. I know some of these righteous people. One even referred to JD Vance as the "so-called vice president." She was affronted when I disagreed and said, "He IS the vice president." TDS goes that deep.

There are a few rational people on the left, a lot are not

But I know many others who lean left and vote left on principle. I can have rational conversations with them. I visited Israel and Palestine a decade ago. The scars of the 1948 partitioning still remain.

Israel has the right to defend itself, yet a peaceful branch of the Palestinians deserves a home. Iran with a nuclear weapon would destabilize the region, but its great people deserve a government that provides them freedom.

Many MAGA feel that the Democrats did not open the border for humanitarian reasons. Once the Supreme Court said that the Census was to count all people, they felt that many Democrats saw it as a way to lessen the effect of outmigration on a liberal state's congressional appropriation. Who knows if that is true? This line of thought leads to Trump's push for nationwide voter ID laws.

The left hates ICE. Some lawmakers and judges seem to support the idea that the victim is at fault when an illegal alien/undocumented immigrant commits a serious crime. Some on the radical left prevent ICE officers from doing their lawful job and legislate that local law enforcement officers should not help.

This only makes neighborhoods less safe. There should be a middle ground.

My job helps me see through the left's absurdity

As a scientist in the medical field, I saw firsthand the disinformation the Biden administration put out about COVID-19 and the complacency of the mainstream and social media in failing to challenge it. This has resulted in many people rebelling against necessary vaccines, such as the measles vaccine.

However, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might be heading in the wrong direction.

The absurdity of biological males in women's sports is a direct violation of Title IX. It hurts the right's perspective of those with different gender ideologies. Hopefully, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and "wokefulness" have seen their demise.

As a university professor, I saw both the good and the harm they caused. We need a stronger school system to lift up those from disadvantaged backgrounds to a level where they can compete on merit. Maybe we should keep the Department of Education.

This brings me to a final point – the heavily leftward-biased traditional news media (but also those on the right) is at fault for much of this. Objective facts are pushed aside, and spin is put in their place. Trump can do no right (or wrong). There's no question that Trump is bombastic, but I personally believe that the country is in a far better place with him as president than it would have been under a Kamala Harris presidency.

I guess I'm MAGA-light. America must be great again. Trump is trying (and sometimes, to me, very trying). But he has us on the right path. God bless America!

Charles Robinson is a contributor at The Columbus Dispatch, where this column originally appeared.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Trump Derangement Syndrome is making dating impossible | Opinion

Reporting by Charles Robinson, Opinion contributor / The Columbus Dispatch

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This story was originally published July 18, 2026 at 3:02 AM.