by Steve Feinstein, American Thinker:

One thing everyone can agree on is that Donald Trump winning the presidency has thrown the left into a tizzy the likes of which hasn’t been seen before in American politics. In past elections, no matter how contentious and divisive the campaign, once the winner was declared, things seemed to calm down and everyone accepted the result. The opposition continued to criticize and be unhappy, but they accepted the result.

Obviously, things seem different this time. President Trump’s actual electoral legitimacy has never been accepted by the left. And the left includes not only Democratic politicians, but also the liberal mainstream media and popular culture figures in the entertainment and sports realms. We are in uncharted waters today, where entire cable news stations such as CNN and MSNBC devote virtually 100% of their programming to their mission of delegitimizing Trump’s presidency and his actual right to govern. The left is demonstrating total Trump Derangement Syndrome. They are so consumed with hatred and nonacceptance of his presidency that their entire reason for being is simply to be against anything they perceive Trump is for.

Sane, legal, orderly immigration, a strong military, respect for our law enforcement personnel, not being taken unfair advantage of in foreign trade agreements, support for the American energy and manufacturing sectors in preference to overseas competition, reduced tax and regulatory burdens on both individuals and corporations with the intent of improving the jobs/wages/hiring climate (all things with which most people would agree, if only in the privacy of their own thoughts), these are the cornerstones of President Trump’s intentions. This is what he promised to concentrate on during the 2015-2016 campaign. He has delivered on all of them, in a tangible, unarguable and quantifiable way. Trump’s indisputable success — and by so doing, his damning exposure of the feckless, incompetent approach to these issues employed by the Obama administration — has only served to further enrage the Left into ever-greater heights of hyperbole, vindictiveness, and denial. The more colloquial — but just as accurate — term for the Left’s behavior is “unhinged.”

However, as bad as President Trump’s opponents’ behavior and actions have been, they are not new, current popular opinion notwithstanding.

Certainly, no president was more lightly-regarded by his political opponents in terms of his questionable qualifications for office and his embarrassingly lightweight intellectual acumen than George W. Bush. How such an unaccomplished, insignificant man like him — the quintessential ‘silver spoon’ child of privilege and fortuitous happenstance — could somehow dupe enough people into electing him president over the eminently-qualified, calm, measured Al Gore remains one of the great mysteries of American history. And of course, Bush didn’t actually win the presidency in either 2000 or in 2004. The first time, he lost the popular vote and was unfairly “awarded” the election by the Supreme Court’s decision to halt the Florida recount. In 2004, well-known Ohio voting irregularities and Republican fraud cheated the highly capable, experienced John Kerry out of his well-deserved ascendance to the presidency. The country, they say, would have been far better off if either Gore or Kerry had not been unfairly denied their election wins and we’ve suffered quite badly as a result of having to endure two terms of President George “Dubya” Bush.

In fact, the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome” was popular during that timeframe, and liberal media attacks on both his legitimacy and fitness for office were unrelenting. The liberal media harped on everything he did or said, from his Southern drawl to his mispronunciation of “nu-cu-lar” as proof of his deficient mental capabilities and lack of higher-order analytical abilities. To use a well-worn cliché, the left was apoplectic over the very notion that Bush was somehow the president.

Before President Bush, President Reagan was vilified by the press and popular culture to an alarming degree. Although the nonstop Democratic criticism of his “militaristic, anti-environmental, favor the rich” policies can be written off as nothing more than the usual out-of-power party clichés, Reagan was also savaged by the news media and entertainment world as well. (With some excpetions — one particular “Saturday Night Live” sketch portrayed him as a kind, bumbling grandfatherly type in public, showing a young girl around the White House, and then abruptly changing into a hard-driving, detail-obsessed commander behind closed doors with his staff, as he directed a complicated operation with ruthless, short-tempered precision.) The liberal media was totally obsessed with the notion of Reagan’s age, his mental competence and his conservatism, and never attributed any credit to him for anything good that happened on his watch. Although the term Reagan Derangement Syndrome wasn’t in widespread use at the time, it was evinced quite clearly by his opponents, just as plainly as with Bush II or Trump.

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