Living with Consequences
When Everything Goes and Nothing Matters

ELIZABETH GEORGE
May 9, 2026

I think most adults understand that part of what they undertake when they choose to become parents is the responsibility of guiding their children into a greater understanding of the world around them, of themselves as individuals, and of the consequences of their decisions and their actions. None of this is simple. Nor is it easy. But the importance of this guidance from parent to child is crucial to that child’s growth and maturation.

As a high school teacher for more than a decade, I was witness to the different ways in which parents guide their kids as well as the lessons in life that are passed on from parents to child through this guidance. But like any teacher, I was also a witness to the myriad ways in which parents tried to run interference for their children, attempting to alleviate any reckoning the child might have to face as a result of his or her personal failure or unfortunate decision. Every time a parent did this, I found myself wondering what these children would be like as they finally came into adulthood. For consequences are the inevitable outcome of our behaviors. They can be postponed, certainly. But they cannot be eliminated entirely.

When I was a teacher, I began each semester by making sure my students knew what was expected of them and what the consequences would be should they fall short of or ignore altogether my expectations. These expectations, by the way, were not unreasonable: students were required to be on time for class; they were required to do their own homework and not copy someone else’s; they were required not to cheat on tests or plagiarize another student’s work by turning it in as their own. Their failure to abide by the rules had consequences, and the students knew in advance what those consequences were.

Some parents, I discovered, could not deal with the fact that I had consequences. The consequences I myself faced for having consequences in my classroom came in the form of telephone calls, in-person meetings, meetings with parents-teacher-and principal, and in one case meeting with the parents and the entire school board. Only in one case was the student also present, and in that situation his parent was also a teacher at my school. The student had engineered a sophisticated cheating scandal. Because he had done this more than once before I discovered it, the results of every test he had taken were in question. The fact that he had involved other students in another class (same subject) in the cheating scandal made things worse. The consequences, interestingly, were suggested by his father, my colleague: his son would be dropped from the class with a failing grade.

I was always mystified when parents demanded that their child be treated differently from other students who followed or failed to follow the guidelines I had set for them. I was always baffled by the parents’ apparent belief that I would do exactly what they wished me to do. And I was astonished that they didn’t realize that eliminating the requirement that their child face consequences in a situation the child had actually caused diminished his capacity to deal with future outcomes that were not to his liking.

In our country right now, we can see the long-term result of parental failure to usher an individual from childhood into responsible adulthood. We can see what happens when a growing child is never asked to face the consequences of his actions. That child becomes a Donald Trump, someone completely unequipped to be an adult who is capable of taking responsibility for his behavior. If that same child ultimately attains a position of power—as Trump has done—we have an individual who cannot bear to own up to mistakes he has made, wrongdoings that have hurt other people, or failures that have come as a result of his misguided belief in his own superiority, which bears no relationship at all to the truth of who he actually is. When all of this is combined with an untreated personality disorder, the result is a man who shrugs off his own moral depravity, who sees his ongoing corruption as another way to establish himself as a titanic figure in control of the destiny of millions of people, who believes insults and accusations and the mockery of others is a just another way to project personal strength, who callously disregards the suffering of which he himself is the indifferent author.

Yet, Donald Trump could not be where he is today without millions of people apparently believing that a savage miscreant can actually be two people at once: someone who will save them and herald in the resurgence of a greatness that he cannot, has not, and will not define as well as someone who violates the Constitution, lies about everything from the price of eggs to the amount spent on a war he began, cheats on his taxes, manipulates the stock market, accepts bribes, and relieves unsophisticated people of their hard-earned money as they buy his bibles, his tennis shoes, his bitcoin, his digital trading cards, his watches, his perfume and cologne, his commemorative medallions, and his mug-shot themed t-shirts, mugs, posters, and stickers as well as everything from cork-screws to dog leashes. Millions of people put him back in the Presidency despite everything he did to show his unworthiness and his farcical incompetence.

Yet, he could not be where he is today without the collusion of men and women in powerful positions who see him, not as a great leader standing astride the world, but rather as a means to an end: their own enrichment, their political positions, their control of resources, their future as oligarchs in control of the world. Because of these enablers, Trump has led us into becoming the worst sort of society. He has demonstrated the gold-drenched, counterfeit, hollow wisdom of becoming a country where everything goes—from child abuse to war crimes—and nothing matters.
And it only gets worse from here.

© 2026 Elizabeth George
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104