In 2011 I wrote a little novel called “Liberal in Nature” about a liberal – Adam – who flees into the wilderness following the election of a conservative President of the United States. The characters were amorphous, meaning that the President was never named, other than to say it was a Republican whom Adam cannot bear to accept as President. He had threatened to move to Canada if this unnamed President were elected, but instead he moved to the wilderness. While there he identifies numberless injustices in nature and seeks to apply his liberal ideology to fix nature.
I thought I was predicting the 2012 election cycle but was four years ahead of my time. After letting this satirical novel sit around for eight years, I decided to bring it to life by inserting Donald Trump and applying the scenario to the 2016 election. Adam still flees to the wilderness and still tries to bring his ideology – socialism now instead of liberalism – to make nature great again. Driven by his hatred for Trump, he sets himself up as the anti-Trump and leads his wilderness valley toward socialist utopia.
As sound and witty as I considered the book to be, I was always troubled by the question: would someone – even the most devoted socialist – really flee civilization to avoid living in a society lead by a President he loathed? The 2016 election answered that question and introduced the trigger: Trump Derangement Syndrome.
There have been plenty of great non-fiction books dealing with the subjects of socialism, Donald Trump, Triggered Leftists (Donald Trump Jr. did a masterful job in Triggered), and even Trump Derangement Syndrome itself. However, this is the first satirical Trump Derangement Syndrome novel in the history of the world, and it is bigly enlightening and entertaining.
