I have a personal theory that a significant part of Americans’ deep, often incoherent anger on all sides directed at all sides currently is tied to the obvious lack of consequences for wrongdoing, especially in the DC Swamp. No matter the party, Washington's bad actors too often escape.

And a key reason for the increasingly bitter resistance to reforms now is the new Trump administration's rigorous attempts to impose consequences and major institutional changes that threaten the go-along-get-along status quo there.

The United States never had royalty. So, the American character became generally imbued with an ill-defined sense of common social fairness. No one can accurately define that fairness, but we know when we see it violated. And we can get hot over it.

Of all people, the billionaire rookie politician Donald Trump was the only candidate who detected that seething Heartland anger in 2015-16. He tapped into it, articulated it, targeted it at the Washington Establishment. And he defeated Hillary Clinton, one of modern times’ most notable escapees from consequences.

The establishment came back in 2020 to defeat him with a human puppet who lies like the Oval Office rug. And then, in a stunning display of arrogance and overkill, Democrats and George Soros’ puppets employed lawfare cases and a sympathetic media in an attempt to suffocate Trump’s political career, his reputation, his company, and his finances.

That, however, was so blatantly unfair, and Trump’s successor so blatantly senile, that for only the second time in U.S. history, voters elected a commander in chief they had previously elected, then rejected, giving Trump a second but non-consecutive term.

You don’t have to like Trump or his behaviors to be impressed with the will, spirit, and grit that carried him through four long years of such ruthless, coordinated attacks. And he emerged tougher, more disciplined, organized, and determined.

You could argue that the 2024 election was a consequence for Joe Biden. The man, who before 2020 called himself a transition, then decided (or the people controlling him decided) that he wanted a second term after all, but mortified himself on national television. Though truth is, he could have been unaware. 

Who believes anything from that crowd anymore? 

The demented president had so very many accomplices in the coverup of his mental and physical decay, people who, for the moment, are skating free when they should be charged with elder abuse, among other offenses.

Jill Biden, nine years younger, the woman who had to fetch her husband when he wandered off mindlessly at events, vouching she was 100 percent behind his second-term decision that would maintain her as First Lady.

And Biden’s White House staff, some of them by his side for decades, remaining silent about the chief executive’s rapidly declining mental condition that they hid, and signing his name on documents by Autopen. And hiding his need for frequent naps.

Where are the consequences for them for perpetrating an incompetent leader on the country they all vowed to serve and protect?

And media that dutifully passed along their false reassurances without skepticism. "Biden is far beyond cogent,” declared MSNBC morning pitchman Joe Scarborough. “He is better than he has EVER been intellectually, analytically. He is the best Biden ever."

And Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the other party bigs who stood in complicit silence or vowed that Biden was “sharp as a tack” when they full well knew he'd become dense as a brick.

According to a new book (Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House), those folks were fully aware that Joe Biden’s debate challenge to Trump last June was destined to be a disaster for Democrats (never mind the country). 

Pelosi and others were so sure of it that they declined invites to the usual debate-watching parties to witness the catastrophe in private. 

Then, they led the party chorus to force Biden off the ticket and replace him with VP Kamala Harris, who also remained quiet because that was her big political break. 

Newt Gingrich has called for a bipartisan congressional probe of who knew what when in that malignant coverup. That got him back into the news flow.

Fortunately, that Democrat political fraud didn’t turn out well for Harris because voters could see for themselves that neither she nor Biden were competent.

Despite "watchdog" media parroting Democrat assertions that the oldest president ever was just fine. 

Byron York, one of the best political columnists there is, suggests the book may be the start of a reckoning for Democrat liars and, one can hope, for DC media that went along with the Biden coverup.

I doubt it. Both parties in Washington are tacitly opposed to consequences except those imposed by voters, which they can't control and occur back home. Since the Watergate investigation that forced Richard Nixon to resign in 1974, you cannot list many DC consequences for wrongdoing.

What about Iran-Contra in 1985? True, 11 convictions for that, except several were voided on appeal and President George H.W. Bush pardoned all the rest.

Who got in trouble for not connecting the dots before the 9/11 conspiracy and mass murder? 

No one. Congress merely created more bureaucracy — the Director of National Intelligence —  as the solution to uncoordinated intelligence bureaucracies.

Consequences for the intelligence assertions that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that he didn’t possess, prompting the Iraq invasion and bloody aftermath? Nope, none.

Barack Obama maintains he had no scandals during his two terms. LOL.

What about Benghazi? Four loyal Americans died in that attack on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, including the U.S. ambassador. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had reduced security in Libya. Violent attacks occurred that day on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. 

But that night, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had no rescue or backup plans in place. He said you don’t send the military into an unknown situation. Which would have been news to Seal Team 6 successfully hunting Osama bin Laden that same year. So, four Americans died in Benghazi because of DC decisions.

Obama was out of touch that entire night. He reappeared the next morning to vow swift justice, which never came. Then, he jetted off to dual campaign fundraisers in Las Vegas. Never an explanation for the crisis absence of the commander in chief. And no media demand for one.

Benghazi was so serious that an official Accountability Review Board was set up to get to the bottom of the deadly disgrace with retired Adm. Mike Mullen in charge. He spent considerable time at the State Department going over select documents provided to him.

But he never got around to interviewing Hillary Clinton, who’d been in charge that entire deadly night.

Libya had turned into a lawless state of roaming militias after an allied coup joined by Obama that then left U.S. staff unprotected. But Washington denizen Mullen found no one at fault. He merely recommended a few department organizational changes. And media interest had moved on.

GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy held numerous oversight hearings on the deadly incident. They provided good video clips and sound bites, including an exasperated Clinton throwing up her hands defensively, denying responsibility.

Nothing else came out of those hearings either.

In 2013, the Internal Revenue Service admitted that during Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, personnel had intentionally stalled approval of tax-exempt applications for groups with "suspicious" names that all just happened to be conservative.

The FBI investigated, then said, by golly, it simply could not find anyone to charge.

Then there was the Solyndra scandal. Despite evidence of financial weakness within the solar panel maker, Obama’s Energy Department guaranteed a $535 million federal loan. 

The company went bankrupt in 2011. But the players need not worry. The Obama administration covered investors' personal losses with $528 million in taxpayer funds. Coincidentally, the largest Solyndra shareholder made whole just happened to be a major Obama fundraiser. No consequences.

Remember the Steele Dossier, with its salacious collection of personal fictions and rumors designed to cripple Trump’s 2016 campaign? Cooperative media gobbled it up, repeatedly spreading it everywhere. The FBI investigated, did nothing.

A special prosecutor found no Russian collusion with Trump. But the creators of the whole hoax, the Clinton campaign, skated. Its “consequences” were an $8,000 fine, not for dishonesty or malice, but for hiding hoax costs as a campaign expense to a law firm.

Hillary Clinton deleting 33,000 emails that would have been evidence that she illegally used a private illegal server in her basement for official State Department work. FBI Director James Comey excused her.

Joe Biden’s botched Afghan exit resulting in the deaths of 13 service members, among many others. He also left behind thousands of Americans and Afghan allies promised evacuation for 20 years of dangerous duty alongside allied troops. And he failed to destroy their biometric files, enabling the Taliban to subsequently track them down for execution.

Also left behind was an estimated $8 billion in brand-new military gear, allegedly because that was cheaper than removing it. The Taliban is now very well-armed and marketing it to other terrorists.

But why was so much still there? The exit was negotiated a year before by the previous administration. And why did Biden still pay additional millions to the Taliban long after the troop withdrawal? He refused to answer the inspector general’s questions. No consequences.

Talk about collusion: The N.Y. Post aside, mainstream media collectively ignored as “Russian disinformation” the Hunter Biden laptop story for two years, which got his father successfully through the 2020 election. 

The laptop contents were, in fact, Hunter’s careful, self-incriminating documentary of his drug, alcohol, and prostitution addictions tied to his international influence-peddling business and sharing revenues with the not-so-mysterious “Big Guy” in his life. 

The Biden Treasury Department reported millions in “suspicious payments” from China to shell companies controlled by Biden family members. Yet the Biden syndicate, compliments of pardons issued by Biden himself in the last hours of his presidency, gets to keep all that money and its freedom.

Special Prosecutor Robert Hur questioned Biden at length regarding his mishandling of classified documents but found the old man’s memory too weak to prosecute. 

But somehow that shuffling old man with the weak memory and glazed eyes was still deemed OK to remain as commander in chief until last January? This is apparently acceptable in DC's culture.

All of these disheartening details and others would suggest that expecting or even hoping to witness consequences for Swamp misbehavior is like believing the Easter Bunny really is coming in two weeks.