Let me begin by saying that this piece has traumatized me.  I find myself quivering in anxious trepidation that my words will be misunderstood and I will be blamed for hurting someone in some way I could not have intended.  None of that is true.  It’s sarcasm.  Because the whole idea of being traumatized by an article is the worst kind of mental masturbation anyone can possibly engage in.

There are no words, no punctuation marks available to me in the English language to express fully the contempt I have for such idiocy.  You’ll have to help me out by reading this with as much seething resentment as you can muster, if only to give the words a sense of the voice with which they were written.

Let’s just start with the recent Washington Post article making its way around social media detailing a study that found fully one quarter (that is 25%, or one in every four people for those raised on common core math) of college students could develop PTSD as a result of the 2016 election.  I’ve developed an aggressive strain of diarrhea just typing that.  It must be my body’s defense mechanism against this new concentrated form of lunacy.  For you, the readers, however, I shall soldier on.  I will spare you (and myself) the details of the study.  They aren’t really necessary, because it’s exactly what it sounds like.  College kids today are the sort of slack-jawed, entitled, self-important cowards they are so often parodied and caricatured to be.  Or, at least 25% of them are.  PTSD, again for the folks raised in the modern public school system, is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition) is the standard diagnostic manual for the treatment of psychological disorders.  It defines PTSD as an anxiety disorder that can develop after extraordinarily terrifying events in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened.  Typically, we hear about PTSD in association with real traumas, such as rape or war or surviving a genocide.  We do not generally think of it as a consequence associated with a vote not going your way.  And there’s a reason we don’t!  Because if the results of a regular, Constitutional election can send your tiny little under-developed mind into a crisis, then you do not have the right to be considered a fully functioning adult and you should be sequestered from polite society.

Accepting the notion that we should respect things like PTSD because of the 2016 election of president Trump is repugnant.  It’s not an idea that warrants serious consideration by serious people.  Giving ideas like Election PTSD and Microaggressions and “Safe Spaces” any credence at all is only feeding the problem.  These quivering gelatinous masses that make up the 25% are as weak and pathetic as they are because we as a society have taught them there’s power in it.  We’ve allowed them to manipulate and disarm strong, capable people with their sense of victim-hood.  We’ve given them pity and understanding when we should have told them to rub some dirt on it and walk it off.  We haven’t just allowed them to be weak, we’ve taught them that their weakness is a means to power.  We really ought to quit it.  The good news is that we can.  They are, after all, weak and pathetic.  We don’t have to do anything they say.  We can just stop acknowledging this moronic attempt by the sheep to rule the lions.  I’m not saying we should all become bullies.  Far from it.  We should all become big brothers and sisters, who want our fellow human beings to be strong minded and independently self-sufficient.  We should use the tried and tested tools of the Big Brother and Big Sister to toughen up our peers and better prepare them for the Rigid Rod of Reality so that when it hits them, they don’t turn into mushy little crybabies.  We owe it to them, and to ourselves.

If we don’t stop giving this nonsense the kind of power we seem to want to give it, it will eventually ruin us all.  Then who do we blame?

–HR