Around The Bend - How Politics Dements, The Feral Antics Of Ladies Teas

Vicki Barton held political tea parties - events at her suburban Washington home meant to share feelings about Donald Trump and in so doing, relieve some of the building, often insupportable anger that everyone felt.

These women were all mature, older, retired professionals who should be enjoying sundowners on the decks of their homes in Tampa or Tucson, but who simply couldn't find it in themselves after decades of political engagement to just take off and leave their younger colleagues in the lurch.

 

The tea parties which always started with genteel chatter about grandchildren and the last snowstorm, quickly, with Vicki's practiced orchestral leadership, became voluble and heated.  The very mention of the President touched off an inchoate anger, a choking, gasping but futile grasp for words to describe their hatred for the man. 

All the ladies spoke at once, some stood up and waved their arms, others clucked and flapped until the whole parlor was like a frenzied henhouse.

This was the first time in their decades-long affiliation with the Democratic Party that they had felt such animus, such untoward, bilious hatred for the occupant of the Oval Office.  

The Bushes were bad enough, Tricky Dick was a crook, and Ronald Reagan a goofy actor; but Trump was of a different ilk - a dangerously unhinged despot not unlike Hitler.  Who could watch federal agents rounding up asylees and herding them off into cattle cars and not see shades of the Waffen SS, the Gestapo, and torchlight parades?

Bettina Phelps stood up, banged the coffee table and sent teacups flying.  'I have the floor!', she shouted, spinning this way and that, flailing her arms, her face, neck, and bodice turning a nasty, splotchy red and white color.  

It was a full minute before she could regain her composure and say what she had to say, something about the climate and transgenderism, but conflated all in an incomprehensible mélange. 

The ladies around the table nodded knowingly.  Bettina did not have to make sense to get her point across.  The clock was ticking, Donald Trump was still wreaking havoc and next presidential election was still years off. 

Bettina's infection went viral and one by one the ladies stood up and howled, energized, frustrated, bilious with anger and hatred, all fighting with themselves to get the words out, to shout their warnings, their fear, and their call to arms. 

Bill Barton, Vicki's husband promised his wife that he would stay put in his upstairs office and keep to himself.  Her tea parties were her affair; but this time he couldn't help himself, and leaning over the railing watched the goings on below.  

Hortie Adams was blowing her stack about racism - a large woman who defied the upper-middle class svelte, Pilates, image of the well-to-do suburban matron and whose rolls of fat flopped this way and that as she threw her arms around, giving her a frenetic, crazed Michelin Man look.

Bill smothered a laugh.  These ladies were wacko, no other word for it, but then again, nothing surprising there.  The Jack Nicholson character in the movie As Good As It Gets asked by an admiring student how he writes about women so well, replies 'I think of a man and take away reason and accountability'. 

Now, despite what he was thinking, Bill was no misogynist. As a matter of fact, to his wife's everlasting suspicion, he loved women.  This caterwauling and screechy catfighting was part of the deal.  As long as they were complaisant lovers, women could howl their heads off about Donald Trump till the cows came home. 

Looked at more dispassionately and more objectively Bill's view of women was not of the most charitable kind but one had to ask what got into these ordinarily sedate, mature, and reasonable ladies? How could they be transformed so easily from good homemakers and mothers into screaming banshees?

The conservative press joked about TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome - and indeed the wild, unhinged, feral hatred of the man went beyond normal political differences. 

Needless to say, there was much academic consideration of the subject.  Political observers who were quite familiar with the protests against Nixon and the 'Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?' shouts, were at a loss to explain the level of feverish, demented cries against Donald Trump. 

'A coincidence of historic proportions', wrote Prof. Emeritus Arthur Barth of Duke. 'The perfect storm of hysterical idealism, an Armageddon mentality, a viral, inchoate, frenzy of deep-seated hatred,  and a President who loves nothing more than to fuel the flames of febrile political insanity'. 

His words were uncharacteristically harsh, unbefitting for an academic, but in answer to his critics, he only said, 'If it walks like a duck...', enraging his liberal colleagues on the faculty, but given his Emeritus and tenured stature, he could be in a very fuck-all mood. The conservative press picked up on the exchange. Barth was 'telling it like it is'. 

Now, the surprising thing of it all was that this so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome had a very salubrious effect on those affected.  It felt good to release these heretofore closeted and unleashed passions.  'I have never felt better', said Bettina Phelps, flushed, excited, and happy as she left Vicki's tea party.  There was something euphoric about hate, as ironic as that might sound, the ladies all agreed, Ecstasy without a Baltimore rave, a camaraderie, womanhood and feminism at their most powerful. 

Vicki's husband, Bill, shook his head and wandered back to his office as the last of the ladies left. 'Loonies', he said out loud, 'couldn't make them up'.  

'How did it go?', he asked his wife when he finally came downstairs. 

She was flushed, wide-eyed, buoyant with enthusiasm and as happy as a lark. 'Wonderful', she said, 'absolutely wonderful'. 

Another academic, Prof. Alden Wright, Chairman of the Department of Clinical Psychology at Hopkins, wrote:

The nature of true belief is born of political dementia.  While there can be a coming together of the like-minded, united around a particular cause or issue, it rarely goes past angry commitment; but when a political commonality goes viral, such as the animus against Donald Trump, and mutates, grows, and transforms into a feral epidemic, the gloves are off. There can be no stopping the rapid spread of the disease nor its mutation into something wildly uncontrollable - a mass schizophrenia.

Out and about - to Starbucks and Whole Foods - no one would suspect Vicki Barton of dementia or least of all schizophrenia.  The virus, again according to Prof. Dr. Wright, 'lies dormant and undetected until it is triggered - a gay man, an ICE officer, an offending street sign - and then it becomes full-blown, and only retreats when the sufferer is back in his or her den...' 

'Completely nuts', said another complicit husband, chatting with Bill Barton after another of Vicki's teas. 'I know women have their loose hinges - menopause is a killer - but Vicki, whoa! and so it was among the husbands who would rather put up with a bit of crazy female camaraderie than ditch it in divorce.