The crudest Grandstander-in-chief takes “conspicuous consumption” to uncharted reaches of swagger and gloating he can bust all rules and laws, then escape, because “I can do anything”
Politicians need not be removed, dumped or buried to propel a legacy that broadcasts career feats of daring-do for centuries to come. Not yet exiled, MAGA Trump already competes with the most seditious betrayers of positive values driving the American experiment. Let alone for multitudes undermining life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Measured by respecting the rule of law and Constitutional democracy, only the rebellious Confederacy outstrips MAGA Trumpism as disruptors of civility, threats to the union, and potential directional lurches. No malefactors, mischief makers or change agents match inciting a literal insurrection against a certified election (then scandalizing it further by praise, pardoning and payoffs).
Historians will hardly praise this anti-president for no permanent structural advances for civil rights, freedoms, economic fairness, or social mobility—let alone compassion, tolerance and diversity. Au contraire, volumes will blast a destroyer of the American dream for ordinary families. Despite pinheads-at-large circus, much Trump corruption can eventually be repaired, over decades, testing our backbones, but may well not remove the worst tarnishes to reputation and credibility (or fears what happened once could repeat).
What fair-minded historian will ignore all major crises unaddressed, certainly unsolved, worsened by oligarchic fixations? Items: less healthcare, less affordability (beyond the Iran mayhem), ICE/immigration lawlessness, recklessness towards climate/ energy dilemmas, intolerable inequality, endless assaults on democracy and legal rights—serial barrages against what makes America the immigrant-friendly nation work.
Veblen on capitalist self-indulgence
Frame of reference: in 1899, the legendary (non-Marxist) capitalist critic, agnostic, progressive Minnesota-born sociologist, philosopher and economist Thorstein Veblen published his most influential book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. The corrosive problem Veblen speared wasn’t new, except in degree, thus his redefinition as “conspicuous consumption.” That’s the wasteful ostentation by the rich to show off their wealth to celebrate supremacy, success, fame, brilliance, and status, even divine anointment. Showoff consumption wanted to justify the ways of boorish 19th C capitalism to man, to echo Milton, not as productive gains but to dramatize what oligarchs decided makes the world go-round. That engine was denigrated later by D. H. Lawrence as the “Bitch-Goddess of Success.” Related ideas, like “conspicuous leisure” and “conspicuous waste” depicted the wealthiest as a predatory, self-ordained aristocracy, superior for never worrying about food, clothes, housing or living costs.
Above all, conspicuous consumption elevated this new super-rich, post Civil War elite above all manual labor, “naturally” suited for illiterate, immigrant newcomers and/or the poorest of the poor. We’re talking the Age of Robber Barons awash in money and power, vast monopolies, horrid worker exploitation, and violent put downs of union-building. In other words, the substitution of outlawed slavery with desperate, manipulated labor forces held virtually in bondage to low-paying, benefit-free, no strike factory systems.
The newest chapter, worse than the first
What especially Trump, but fellow oligarchs, too, have pulled off is a further descent in depravity which I label “conspicuous corruption.” This notion extends flashy over consumption into tawdry capitalistic showboating aimed at oversized, imperial, global self-aggrandizement. Nothing less than inventing monuments (real, personal and industrial powerhouses) to celebrate the badly-regulated marriage of audacity, avarice and arrogance. Because the current oligarchic gall is inexhaustible, outdoing smug robber barons, these titans of overcompensation (for who knows what) have turned old-time hustling into convention-bursting, militant takeovers. And not just that.
Whereas past con artists strictly entrapped victims with subterfuge (to avoid arrest or punishment), Trumpism has turned anonymity on its head. This untouchable “genius” boldly telegraphs to the world, even looming, vulnerable marks, what outrages he’s planning and how he’ll do them. Behold the unbelievable overconfidence that presumes victims are so backward—or so admiring of “heroic,” even messianic boldness—they won’t dare block the “great man’s” blundering tractor. That defines indiscriminate abusers positing obstacles as mere tests of will, thus they threaten, shake-down, blackmail, insult, intimidate, then pocket the winnings (perceived or real) all the way to the bank. Anonymity is out as blatant ego delights in violating norms, demolishing restraints and still escaping punishment. The greater the depraved success, the keener to crash the next significant boundaries, whatever they deem “impairs their elitist freedom.” The skies, literally, are the limit as excessive “consumption” morphs into out-and-out conspicuous corruption, loaded with gall.
This is no modest feat—taunting victims and suckers to “catch us if you can,” thus pushing the rule-busters into novelty escape squeeze plays, to show more superiority, of course. After all, what stopped Trump from repeating racial housing outlawry, or absurd Birtherism that lifted him into office, or screwing vendors and countless others far and wide? What real-world restraints have stopped him from non-stop assaults on normality—not double impeachments, litigation, felony convictions, or violations of Emolument clause? Not outraged judges, MAGA figures turning on him, not devastating polling—not failures, racist slanders, more scandals and senility-driven humiliations? Not Congress, not courts, and not voters, as Trump “magically” sprang back into contention, returned to full blowhard drone, and walked off with the 2024 elections.
What stands out is that voters didn’t only refuse to penalize the world’s most corrupt politician, but protected a criminal from liability thanks to the SC and WH shields—so he can “top off” his reign of corruption, packed with conflict of interests, theft and parlaying millions, and basking in his untouchability. America is hardly the pre-fall Roman Empire, but Trump styles himself a Roman emperor, no mean trick when trashing a marginal democracy. The chaos that plagued the Roman Empire started way earlier, and that is again the signature of MAGA chaos, the dramatic warning shot across the bow—until a corrective force emerges.
When voters kept Trump out of jail, they not only triggered more corruption but removed systemic checks on his anything goes governance. Thus even more incompetence and arrogance without accountability, at least until 2027. In harsh, real-world terms, the Trump Demolition-Domination Pogrom still runs on PR outrages that continue to grant Trump serial corruption licenses beyond his own vile delusions of grandeur.
Goodness hard to measure, evil much less so
As Antony in Julius Caesar said, “The evil that men do lives after them;/ The good is oft interred with their bones.” Historians, deluged by in-your-face chutzpah by the ultimate malignant narcissist, will search hard for any “good” interred after MAGA Trump ends. Even suckered know-nothings are fed up with soul-sucking stunts that obscure this fixated message: “I will do whatever I want, whenever I want. Try and stop me, suckers,” then scoffing at failed correctives. Trump proved to the world that nothing initially stops a committed-enough hustler who delights not just in breaking but standing above the law (defending Jan. 6 horrors), then boasting of his special status. That’s the worst bludgeon in the MAGA arsenal.
That’s also cosmic chutzpah that extends even extreme American reputations for audacity and insolence. The next would-be king may be smarter and more ruthless. Know thy enemy. Because MAGA Trump is the elephantine menace, my consistent focus: the best reforms depend on knowing how racism, oligarchy and criminality coalesce, how selfishness keys success, then the resurrection itself. It’s as if America was feeling so bad about itself that it had to replay the politics of self-mutilation, as if loaded with masochists.
Solutions depend wholly on understanding the threat and depth. That’s how we resuscitate badly battered spirits, even enough confidence to escape aping Rome 400 AD. Realizing how badly all our faces have been slammed into the mud of the dirtiest swamp yet is the painful, first recognition. He “alone who can fix everything” turns out to be “Trump and enablers break whatever they damn well please,” then smirking, “up yours, suckers. Stop us if you can.” Absorbed by Trumpian osmosis, not reading, on full display is Ayn Rand’s merciless radical individualism of “objectivism” at play. More’s the infinite pity.
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