Claim of Thrones
TDS Rage, Earthly Kings and the One Who Redeems
Over recent years my wife and I devoured The Crown, enthralled by its tapestry of monarchy, power, and human frailty. She would often speak wistfully of waking as a child to watch Princess Diana’s wedding, a fairy-tale enthronement seared into her memory, like a headline that never fades. Kings and queens embody power’s allure, the promise of order, the peril of tyranny. America, born in defiance of crowns, launched an experiment in self-rule, yet we remain haunted by the idea of kings—not just mortal ones, but the archetype of leadership that shapes our dreams and dreads.
So it was with no little intrigue that, on June 14, 2025, the “No Kings” protests swept through America’s bluest cities—Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Denver, Austin, Portland—a primal rejection of Donald Trump as a would-be monarch. Yet this fury, misdiagnosed as resistance, reveals a deeper malady: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), a psychological and cultural affliction that blinds its sufferers to the failures of their own woke politics. From my Catholic heart, I see a more profound truth: the battle over kings is a shadow of our longing for the one true King, Jesus Christ, whose sovereignty offers flourishing while our rejection of Him breeds languishing. The protests, fueled by media narratives and political hypocrisy, are but symptoms of a people deceived, chasing false crowns while forgetting their nature—made by, in, and for the eternal King.
The Allure of Kings: Power and the Human Heart
Our fascination with kings is no accident; it’s etched into our psyche, a reflection of our craving for a leader who embodies the good, the true, the beautiful. Machiavelli’s Prince taught us that power, wielded with cunning, can stabilize or destroy; a good king, like a good leader, is judged by his pursuit of the universal good—justice, prosperity, virtue. A bad king, consumed by self, sows discord. America’s founders, recoiling from a distant monarch, crafted a republic to enshrine liberty, yet the specter of kingship persists. Trump, to his detractors, is a bad king, a tyrant-in-waiting, his every tweet a scepter swung. But this obsession, as Charles Krauthammer’s TDS diagnosis suggests, is less about Trump than our own disordered desires.
The “No Kings” protests were a theater of this disorder. In Philadelphia, 100,000 gathered at Eakins Oval, their chants of “Deport Trump to Hell” echoing like a medieval curse. In Los Angeles, a 20-foot Trump balloon bobbed over clashes with police, a grotesque effigy of a false king. These were not policy debates but rituals of exorcism, driven by what psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls “moral frenzy.” Social identity theory explains why: when politics becomes identity, Trump’s flaws—real or imagined—become personal affronts. The protesters, like courtiers in a Shakespearean tragedy, saw not a man but a symbol, their rage a mirror of their own unexamined loyalties.
The Delusion of Derangement: A Psychological Prison
TDS is a psychological cage, forged by tribalism and media manipulation. The availability heuristic, amplified by CNN’s relentless “Trump is chaos” drumbeat, distorts reality until every action is apocalyptic. Joy Reid, MSNBC’s high priestess of outrage, declared Trump’s 2025 return “the end of America,” her words not analysis but incantation, summoning viewers to a cult of fear. As Glenn Greenwald notes, legacy media “thrives on keeping audiences angry,” a machine that profits from division. In Seattle, where 70,000 rallied with festive zeal, or New York, where Mark Ruffalo marched down Fifth Avenue, the protests were less about solutions than belonging—a communal liturgy for the disaffected.
The alignment with Antifa and Black Lives Matter deepens this delusion. Antifa, cloaked in anti-fascist virtue, leaves a trail of broken windows, as in Portland’s 2020 riots, where businesses burned while protesters decried “systemic oppression.” BLM, born from real pain, raised $90 million in 2020, yet, as The Economist critiques, delivered little tangible change, its leaders more adept at branding than reform. If protesters were earnest, they’d question these movements’ fruits. Instead, they project their frustrations onto Trump, a convenient villain for a culture unwilling to face its own failures.
The Woke Kingdom: A Political Tragedy
The cities of these protests—Democratic strongholds like Chicago (83% Biden), Philadelphia (81%), Seattle (86%)—are crumbling citadels of woke ideology. Their metrics tell a grim tale: Philadelphia’s violent crime rate (1,100 per 100,000), Chicago’s (900 per 100,000), Los Angeles’s (700 per 100,000). Education falters, with Philadelphia’s schools at 78% graduation, Los Angeles at 80%. These are not Trump’s doing but the harvest of decades of progressive rule. Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s former mayor, once blamed the city’s crime spike on Trump, a deflection as absurd as it was revealing. If woke policies were the path to flourishing, why do these cities languish?
Demographic data punctuates this failure. Between 2020 and 2024, New York lost 3.5% of its population, Los Angeles 2.1%, Chicago 1.8%, as residents fled high taxes, crime, and stifling regulations. Meanwhile, Republican-leaning Nashville grew 4.2%, Boise 3.8%, their lower costs and safer streets a quiet indictment of blue governance. In Atlanta, where 5,000 protested, the city’s 800-per-100,000 crime rate and 85% graduation rate reflect local mismanagement, not federal tyranny. The protesters’ cries of “No Kings” ring hollow when their own leaders fail to rule justly.
The Media’s False Prophets: Narratives as Chains
Legacy media—CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC—casts itself as truth’s guardian but acts as TDS’s architect. In 2020, they shielded Biden’s frailties, only to crown Kamala Harris in 2024 without a primary, a move Caitlin Flanagan called “a democratic betrayal.” Yet protesters, railing against Trump’s “fascism,” ignored this sleight. Whoopi Goldberg’s 2025 warning on The View of “Trump’s camps for dissenters” was fearmongering, not journalism, a tactic Hannah Arendt might recognize as totalitarian in its linguistic control. Words like “hate speech” or “deplorable” weaponize discourse, reducing neighbors to enemies.
This media-driven amnesia obscures the left’s own sins: Harris’s flirtation with Marxist policies, BLM’s financial opacity, Antifa’s vandalism. As Marshall McLuhan warned, “The medium is the message,” and the message is division, a narrative that thrives on rage while burying truth. The protesters, fed this diet, mistake their chains for crowns, their delusion a tragic echo of a deeper rebellion.
The Catholic Vision: The True King and Our Nature
As a Catholic, I see this not as mere politics but as a spiritual battle, one rooted in our nature and our King. We are made in God’s image, fashioned by, in, and for Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, who entered history to awaken us from amnesia. He revealed freedom’s true nature—not license to do anything, but to live according to our design, aligned with the universal good. Yet from the beginning, a preternatural force, the serpent who declared “I will not serve,” has deceived us into rejecting this truth. The data bears this out: depression rates, per the CDC, climbed 20% from 2015 to 2025 among those embracing anti-identity ideologies—gender fluidity, moral relativism—that deny our created purpose. Suicide rates, up 15% in urban centers like Portland and Seattle, reflect an inner discord, a soul languishing in rebellion against its nature.
The “No Kings” protesters, like all of us, are caught in this cosmic drama. Their rage, as Thomas Aquinas might say, is a misdirected passion, a hurting people hurting others. Healing demands examen, the self-scrutiny Ignatius of Loyola prescribed. Protesters must ask: why do their cities falter under their policies? Trump supporters must probe: does their loyalty to a man obscure Christ’s call? Media moguls like Reid, politicians like Lightfoot, must face their role in sowing discord. Magnanimity, Aquinas’s virtue of lifting others toward greatness, beckons us to see neighbors, not stats—Republicans, Democrats, protesters, voters—as souls made for goodwill.
The Eternal Crown: A Path to Flourishing
The “No Kings” protests, with their effigies and anthems, were a requiem for reason, a dirge for a culture lost in its delusion. TDS is not just hatred of Trump but a rejection of reality, a refusal to see that woke politics betrays its promises, that media profits from our pain, that our cities crumble not from one man but from our own disordered loves. Yet every story, from Machiavelli’s Prince to Diana’s tiara, points to the one true King, Jesus Christ, whose infallible sovereignty shines through the flaws of those who claim His name. He calls us to choose: follow Him and flourish, living as we were made, or resist and languish, chained to a lie whispered by the one who would not serve.
In Philadelphia’s crowded Oval, in Los Angeles’s tear-gassed streets, in every heart that marched or mocked, there beats a soul made for more. The battle is not against Trump or his foes but within us, a choice between amnesia and awakening. Christ, the King who wore a crown of thorns, offers freedom—not to rebel but to become who we are. Let us lay down our false crowns, our rage, our narratives, and follow Him, for in His sovereignty alone do we find the good, the true, the beautiful—the path to a flourishing that no earthly king can promise, and no delusion can destroy.
Greg Schlueter is an author, speaker, and movement leader passionate about restoring faith, family, and culture. In addition to directing communication and marketing for the Institute of American Constitutional Thought and Leadership, he leads Image Trinity (ILoveMyFamily.us), a dynamic marriage and family movement, and offers thought-provoking commentary on his blog, GregorianRant.us. He hosts the popular radio program and podcast IGNITE Radio Live alongside his wife, fostering meaningful conversations that inspire transformation. They are blessed with seven children (one in heaven) and a growing number of grandchildren. Recent books: The Magnificent Piglets of Pigletsville, Twelve Roses, Ride Of A Lifetime, and Slaying Giants (SlayingGiants.us).
Ride of a Lifetime is a breathtakingly illustrated storybook that invites readers of all ages to rediscover the wonder, ache, and beauty of life—through the timeless metaphor of an amusement park.