The mental health profession doesn’t recognize Trump Derangement Syndrome as a true mental illness. The President’s supporters have nevertheless enjoyed some success in discrediting his opponents with that label. They probably don’t, however, appreciate its larger meaning.

We all – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike –have allowed our feelings about the President to impair our judgment. We all suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Sometimes I think of the President as the nation’s identified patient. Family therapist Virginia Satir popularized that concept back in the 1960s in her book, “Conjoint Family Therapy.” It refers to the family member whose troublesome behavior is the focus of attention.

The therapist discovers that it serves a purpose for the family, that of a distraction from other problems that it’s afraid to deal with openly. The family appears to struggle against the identified patient’s misbehavior, but it secretly and unconsciously cooperates to maintain it.

The President, like an identified patient, distracts our national family from problems that we find to be even more difficult to confront than the ones he presents. We encourage him openly or unconsciously – and whether we’re supporting or opposing him – to continue in that role.

This paradox has special meaning for President Trump’s opponents. Fighting him at every turn can, as in family relationships, strengthen the cycle of misbehavior instead of weaken it. It nevertheless can seem less intimidating than attacking the underlying problems that produced him in the first place.

The President emerged from social changes that have divided the nation and have empowered hard-core and extremist members in both parties. Their power also abides in deeply rooted institutions, including parts of the Constitution, that throw up formidable barriers to reforms that would weaken their hold on the country.

I offered a list of remedies for some of those impediments four years ago, in the Dec. 6, 2021 issue of the Ogle County Life (See fb.me/lowellharp). I called them my Five-Point Plan to Revive Democracy. They were, and still are:

• Outlaw gerrymandering, which allows politicians to create safe districts where there’s no need for them to compromise with the other party.
• Reform primary elections. Open primaries and ranked choice voting would discourage extremism and polarization in each party.
• Replace the current state-based system of representation in the Senate with one that gives an equal voice to each citizen, and more accurately embodies the broad political core of the country.
• Abolish the Presidential Electoral College, which grants extra voting power to some citizens at the expense of the rest, so that the President can justifiably claim to truly represent the whole country.
• Abolish the filibuster, which allows Senators to veto popular laws instead of compromising on them.

These and other reforms won’t be easy to enact and won’t automatically produce a new age of civility and good government. They could, however, help revive the influence of moderates in a political system that too often empowers extremists. Reformers are working beneath the noise of everyday politics to enact some of them.

The Fair Representation Act, for example, is stalled in committee in the House of Representatives. It would require independent redistricting commissions, multimember districts, and ranked choice voting in congressional contests.

The bill would reduce the influence of hardcore extremists in both parties, end gerrymandering, and give more representation to the minority party in solid red and blue states. The nonprofit organization FairVote, at fairvote.org, supports the bill and provides detailed information about its provisions and benefits.

These and other reforms struggle for public attention amidst opposition from both parties, but they’re as important as any of the issues that dominate the headlines. Taxes, global warming, tariffs, ICE raids, the Epstein files, the latest government shutdown – none are more critical. We can’t effectively deal with any of them if we don’t have a political system that discourages extremism and polarization and that instead represents the broad core of the American people.

I and my liberal fellow-travelers who want to save democracy must acknowledge that it will take more than just defeating Donald Trump. He’s the symptom, not the illness. The cure is in the system – and in the wisdom of the American people.

Lowell Harp is a retired school psychologist who served school districts in Ogle County. For previous columns, follow him on Facebook.