This prof needs to find his safe place in a padded cell at the nearest nut hut. He’s clearly suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).
Ronald Pelias, an adjunct instructor of theatre at the University of Louisiana Lafayette, recently published a scholarly article that details nearly a dozen different reasons why he feels miserable to the point of self-described sleepless nights under Trump, and why he holds contempt for Trump voters — even for his students who support the Republican president.
“I can’t stop wondering if each person I encounter is [a] Trump supporter. If I identify someone who I believe fits that category, I assume he or she is deeply uninformed and/or unethical,” writes Pelias in Qualitative Inquiry, which provides an interdisciplinary forum on human sciences.
“I am not proud of … the contempt I hold for Trump supporters,” Pelias continued in the article, titled “On Not Being Able to Sleep.”
“I’ve been told I need to reach out to these voters and try to understand where they are coming from. I believe I do understand them and I do not want to be around them,” he writes. “I do not want to live in the presence of their hate, of their unethical practices, of their ignorance. I know this is a problematic way of being, but I am unwilling to bend to what I see as their fascist ideology.”
In his Jan. 2017 article, using only his own psyche as a reference point, Pelias states that he believes he “offers evidence that the moral core of the United States has been deeply damaged by the election of Donald Trump.”
Pelias presents snippets of his post-election thoughts, writing “I cannot assuage my apprehension in anything I hear or read … I wake up, shaking. I keep checking the news. I want to sleep, but see nothing that gives me solace.”
“I keep thinking of the millions of people, including those who voted for him, who will suffer if Trump’s inchoate and preposterous policies are enacted. I keep thinking of the millions of people who have been thrown into a state of fear because they are not White, straight, Christians,” Pelias continues. “I keep thinking of the millions of women, including those who did not and those who did vote for Trump, who will lose their hard fought reproductive rights and who are now at greater risk of sexual assault and violence. I keep thinking such thoughts and I cannot sleep. I keep checking the news, each time feeling my anxiety and sorrow grow.”