Being surrounded by what passes for “conservatives” in the fading light of the dream that once was the United States of America, I have thought a lot about who these people are and what motivates them. Donald Trump is the posterchild (special emphasis on “child”) for a life without consequences. From his childhood days of being a spoiled bully to his “business” career filled with fraud, bankruptcies, mobsters and Russians, to his hyper-corrupt presidency that ended with 34 felony convictions, multiple criminal cases and civil lawsuits for everything from rape to defamation to election subversion to a variety of business and personal lawsuits (a total of 4,095, so far) and Trump has yet to experience a single consequence. No wonder he is a hero to millions of low-skill, morally corrupt, lazy Americans, he is who they want to be.
For almost 20 years, I pounded against one tiny aspect of this quality of American life in my motorcycle magazine monthly column, “Geezer with A Grudge”: loud exhaust systems and the people who swear by them and the poor excuses for “law enforcement” that ignore it. I started trying to count the number of times I’ve written about just motorcycle exhaust noise and quit at 40 columns. My point was usually that loud exhaust systems aren’t about performance, they aren’t about safety, they aren’t about anything but putting a giant, noisy “fuck you” finger in the air to the world.
Today, November 5, 2024, the dumbest citizens of the fading remains of the United States of America have elected the posterchild for “no consequences” to the highest (and, now, lowest) office in the country and his cult is cheering because they imagine that their own lives will be equally consequence-free. Like fundamentalist Christians, they have deluded themselves into believing that the simple act of following DonOld as if he were some kind of savior will be enough for them to avoid the consequences of their own lives.
The people I’m talking about are as predictable as bad weather: fundamentalist Christians, bikers and other right wing gangbangers, greedy and spectacularly lucky rich people, white people in general including low achieving white women, farmers who have been on economic welfare since the 1930s, the worst of law enforcement, and the rest of the generally lawless US public.
Christians have made consequence-free living a core principle since the earliest Americans. From witch-burning to gay-bashing and racist murders, Christians have pretended that heaven is as easy to enter as their favorite bowling alley. The ridiculous idea that you can do practically anything you want in life, as long as you “believe in Jebus,” and you’ll end up in Never-Never Land sitting by the side of Jesus watching the non-believers burn in hell is the ultimate consequence-free delusion. You really have to cherry-pick and distort the Bible to find any evidence that fairytale life-after-death is promised, but that’s what fundamentalists have always done.
Likewise, the idle rich have never found it difficult to justify their disgusting wealth and unearned good fortune as “deserved and well-earned.” American farmers—who have always depended on urban taxpayers for their crop insurance, roads and infrastructure, and US and world markets—have come to imagine their benefits are a well-deserved entitlement. Cops at all levels from small town bunglers to the FBI—who have long flourished in an environment of secrecy, violence, corruption, erratic and lax law enforcement, and lavish union benefits and job protection—were some of the first groups to line up behind mein Führer Trump. And bikers, well that’s obvious. No other group in the US is more disdainful of laws and decency. My disgust for them is practically limitless. Dictators all over the world, from Russia to Turkey and every other at-risk democracy, use biker gangs as lawless enforcers. And Trump, especially, has celebrated their ability to create chaos and destruction in his interests.
Of course consequences are inevitable. You have to be incredibly shallow to envy Trump’s disgusting, friendless life, his corrupt and useless family, his parade of divorces, bankruptcies, and personal failures, and what passes for “friends” who are clearly hanging on for personal gain with zero regard for this country’s national interests. Even the current world’s richest man, Elon “Space Nazi” Musk, suffers consequences he pretends to ignore. Nobody has ever seemed more desperate for attention and admiration and nobody has ever spent more money to “earn” it. Like their minions, neither of these two are smart enough to know the difference between respect and fear. And neither are smart enough to care about that distinction. But that doesn’t eliminate the consequences of ignorance.
Back in 2012, then-candidate Rick Santorum admitted that conservatives “will never have the elite, smart people on our side." Only appealing to people who nobody respects is a consequence. You can certainly get rich counting on the “sucker born every minute” (probably every fraction of a second today), but you’re also going to be stuck associating with equally awful people and spending your life pretending to care about people you despise to the point that you have to sterilize yourself after being in their presence. At least to me, that seems like a pretty awful consequence.
Will Trump’s voters face consequences for their distain for education and expertise, for their lack of respect for democratic institutions and traditions, and for their Dunning-Kruger arrogance? History indicates that we’ll all suffer consequences for the foolishness of 76M low-information voters. And “low-information” is giving them the gross benefit of the doubt because most of those voters get what little they “know” from certifiably “fake news” sources like Fox and much worse. These voters are not just uninformed, they are literally being made dumber by their information sources. Democracies depend on educated, informed citizens who make rational choices based on the best available information and options. A majority of US voters are actively choosing to dumb-themselves-down and are arrogantly proud of those choices. Of course there will be consequences for this kind of suicidal behavior, but it won’t just land on the fools, frauds, and con artists. We’ve been here before, recently in fact.
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