This is Thom Hartmann's reaction to Bill Mahar and Jon Fetterman being contemptful of people who think Trump's golden ballroom smacks of authoritarianism. There's some really good turns of phrase in it.
--Kim
Bill Maher and Sen. John Fetterman sat around joking about Donald Trump’s new White House ballroom like a couple of wealthy guys at a country club laughing over cocktails while the republic burns outside the window.
Maher dismissed the outrage by calling the cost “couch money.” Fetterman rolled his eyes and reduced the backlash to “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” They practically patted each other on the back for being the last two supposedly reasonable men in American politics.
Calm down, peasants, they were essentially saying. It’s only a $330 million gilded palace add-on for a man who already treats the presidency like his private casino.
This is what elite detachment looks like in America now. Smug. Self-satisfied. Historically illiterate.
No, Bill. People are not angry because Trump likes chandeliers. They’re angry because symbols matter in politics. They always have.
Americans are watching a president who already wrapped himself in gold-plated excess try to build a massive gilded ballroom while millions of working people can’t afford rent, healthcare, childcare, or groceries. And then they’re being told by multimillionaire celebrities that noticing the symbolism somehow makes them irrational.
That’s not “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” it’s something called “civic awareness.”
The founders of this country fought a revolution against aristocracy. Against kings and inherited power wrapped in luxury and spectacle. Thomas Jefferson warned repeatedly about the rise of an “artificial aristocracy” built on wealth instead of merit. Teddy Roosevelt spent years warning Americans about concentrated wealth turning democracy into oligarchy and got us the estate tax (which today’s Republicans have crippled).
But now we have political celebrities and media entertainers sneering at ordinary Americans for recognizing the obvious.
A golden ballroom attached to the White House isn’t just a ballroom: it’s a statement about power.
Authoritarians throughout history have always understood and exploited the power of spectacle. Palaces. Towers. Gold. Giant halls. Arches. Statues of themselves. Grand architecture designed not to serve democracy but to glorify the ruler who built it.
The point is psychological, to elevate the leader above ordinary citizens. To make power feel untouchable, royal, and permanent. And Donald Trump has spent his entire public life desperately trying to achieve exactly that aesthetic.
Gold elevators. Gold furniture. Gold ceilings. Gold logos with his name stamped onto everything he touches, like a monarch branding his kingdom.
So when critics recoil at the idea of a gilded Trump ballroom attached to the People’s House, they’re not reacting to drapes and drywall. They’re reacting to what it represents: the transformation of democratic government into personal branding for a strongman billionaire.
Maher dismisses $330 million as “couch money.” That’s easy thing to say when you’re rich enough to spend more on wine tonight than many Americans spend on groceries each month. But the real issue is even bigger than the raw dollar amount: it’s about moral obscenity.
America has veterans sleeping under bridges. Public schools are begging parents for supplies. Seniors are rationing their insulin and blood pressure meds. Young people are crushed under student debt. Entire towns are being poisoned by corporate greed while on-the-take and in-the-pocket politicians like Fetterman shrug.
And in the middle of all that, the political and media elite want the public to admire a gold-plated ballroom because apparently excess itself has become a form of patriotism.
This is what the post-Reagan Revolution neoliberal rot has done to our society. Morbidly rich people and their lickspittles like Fetterman now tell us that opulence is wisdom, that billionaire aesthetics are inherently admirable, and that criticism of grotesque displays of wealth is “envy by the peasants” instead of concern about the survival of our democracy.
The progressive critique of this sort of ostentation has never been about “hating success.” It’s always been about opposing concentrated power that masquerades as virtue.
A teacher contributes more to civilization than a real estate grifter hustling his name like a luxury perfume brand. A nurse contributes more than a billionaire tax cheat hiding profits offshore. A union worker building roads contributes more than another hedge fund parasite gaming markets from his Manhattan penthouse.
Tragically, America’s media culture increasingly treats wealth itself as proof of greatness. Trump didn’t invent that sickness; he simply weaponized it.
And what makes Maher and Fetterman’s comments especially galling is the contempt buried inside them. The assumption that ordinary people are stupid. Emotional. Hysterical.
If you object to a billionaire president building a gaudy palace extension while inequality explodes, you must have “TDS.”
What an insult to history. Was it “George III Derangement Syndrome” when Americans rejected monarchy? Was it “Robber Baron Derangement Syndrome” when progressives fought the Gilded Age oligarchs? Was it irrational to notice that extreme concentrations of wealth led to the Republican Great Depression and inevitably distorts democracy?
Because that’s the real issue here, not one ballroom or building project.
Trump’s Epstein Golden Ballroom is a symptom of a much deeper crisis in American life. Politics has become theater, governing has become branding, and citizens are being trained by billionaires to think of leaders not as public servants but as celebrity rulers whose excess should inspire awe.
That’s poison to a republic. And people who call themselves conservatives should be disturbed by it, too.
In my Dad’s generation, conservatism claimed to value humility, restraint, civic virtue, and suspicion of concentrated power. Now self-described conservatives cheer for billionaire spectacle like courtiers applauding the king’s newest palace wing… or his invisible clothes.
Meanwhile working-class Americans are told to fight culture wars against their neighbors while the ultra-rich consolidate wealth at levels not seen since the 1920s. That isn’t populism: it’s aristocracy with a flag pin.
The White House was never supposed to be Versailles. The presidency was never supposed to be a throne wrapped in gold leaf and ego. A republic survives only when leaders remain citizens among citizens. The moment political power becomes inseparable from personal grandeur, democracy starts slipping into something darker.
People aren’t angry because Trump likes ballrooms; they’re pissed off because too many powerful people like Bill Maher and John Fetterman no longer remember what America is supposed to be. Americans aren’t “deranged” when they recognize the stench of oligarchy wrapped in gold paint and sold as patriotism.
If you’re so insulated by wealth, celebrity, and proximity to power that you can look at a billionaire turning the White House into a monument to himself and shrug like it’s no big deal, then maybe you’re the ones who’ve lost touch with reality, not the millions of Americans who’re still fighting to keep this country from sliding, like Russia has already done, into a gilded version of rightwing authoritarianism.
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