Column By John Young
As far back as 2016, clinicians determined they had identified Patient Zero, the first carrier of the horrifying illness.
Initially misread by science, now it is known by a feared acronym.
The first carrier was IDed as a former business person turned reality TV star who got himself elected to office, got impeached twice, got sued for mega-millions, and got convicted of multiple felonies while running for office again.
His name: Donald J. Trump.
The disease: IDS.
The longer form: MAGA IDS – MAGA Identity Disfigurement Syndrome.
The disease’s key symptom is a form of babble: the inability to speak the truth or to lucidly explain why the carrier is running for office except to hold power.
If he or she had principles before, the person who contracts IDS sheds them like a snake’s scales – no principles, no foundational motivation, none except personal advancement.
This was the case with Patient Zero.
As people close to him explain: Before he became a Republican candidate, Patient Zero self-identified as pro-choice and was blithely dismissive of religion. Otherwise, Patient Zero lacked any identifiable ideology except as pertained to leap-frogging wives and leveraging Daddy’s money.
Then a political consultant showed up to share something thrilling. With Patient Zero’s glorious Creamsicle comb-over, reality-show gravitas, and just-this-side-of-pretend business empire, if he lip-served the religious right and prostrated himself to the gun and oil lobbies, he could be the Republican presidential nominee. Patient Zero was afflicted.
Those political gestures were all it took to ascend to unimagined political heights. That and a lot of lying.
Now one looks around the political landscape and sees a terrible toll from the disease Patient Zero spread – a whole bunch of Republican politicians just losing their minds and shedding their principles, having contracted what Patient Zero has.
Look at some of the sufferers. J.D. Vance. Lindsey Graham. Ted Cruz. Marco Rubio. Not one of them could identify a single good thing to say about Patient Zero in 2016.
Vance was a “Never Trump guy,” once declaring, “My god, what an idiot,” not understanding the man’s affliction.
Graham called Trump a “xenophobic, race-baiting bigot.” That was before Patient Zero ascended to those unexpected heights.
Vance now follows tongue out, hoping to be Trump’s favorite lap dog and running mate.
Another tragic case is Arizona’s Kari Lake. She’s spent nearly as much time getting infected at Patient Zero’s knee as with the voters she expects to anoint her U.S. senator.
The odd thing about Lake: She hasn’t been elected to anything. She just acts like she has. What she has is MAGA Political Identity Disfigurement Syndrome.
Someone convinced her that a face for TV news and a right-wing spiel of righteous malice toward brown-skinned people would get her nominated for governor.
It did, but when she lost the general election, IDS took over. Like a pageant contestant drowning in eyeliner, she sued frantically. Sorry, ma’am. That crown isn’t yours.
Now she’s running for U.S. Senate. Per the trademark behaviors associated with her illness, no one can keep up with what she says.
Just a few months ago she was advertising her fervent belief that the state should mandate that each Arizona woman who becomes pregnant should gestate until term.
Then Arizona’s Supreme Court ordered exactly that – reverting reproductive rights to those of 1864, which meant none.
Sensing the public’s immense revulsion toward this – and suffering from the identity disfigurement that has beset her – she started flipping and flopping.
Matt Salmon, a former Arizona Republican congressman who ran against Lake for governor, wasn’t joking when he said:
“When you don’t really have a core belief in anything, and you’re willing to take any position you think is politically expedient at the moment, you end up getting caught between a rock and a hard place.”
Like a fish in need of a stream.
Lake hasn’t been doing well in the polls and fund-raising. Recently she sought to play nice to GOP moderates and supporters of John McCain, a group she told to “get the hell out” of the MAGA party.
Poor lady. Flipping and flopping.
Don’t blame Kari Lake. Don’t blame J.D. Vance, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz. They didn’t ask for this disfiguring condition. They just asked for power.
Can’t you please give them more?
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
