I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. First, consumerism is a technology of demand, a way of assuring that the maximum number of people have access to goods and services by paying them wages to make things we don't need. Like all morality, we make a virtue of necessity.

More important,. Trump's appeal is to the declining dominance of white males. Well-educated people (as a demographic group) cannot grasp what life on the bubble is about, what it means to fear that a whole new demographic - blacks, women, immigrants - will compete here for your job. These people have the kinds of jobs that new entrants take. White athletes were so opposed to black ones their leagues. To paraphrase an old line, the fans were cheering 42 for fun, but the players were being replaced in earnest.

It is this appeal to the Nazistic - not consumerist (industrialists like the Koch brothers are against Trump.) - base that is so frightening. Those people have a co-dependent relationship with their narcissistic leader. They want a champion, and he wants to be seen as one.

Yesterday I listened to the Bulwark podcast. Tim Miller was interviewing Dean Phillips. Phillips said that Trump's advantage was that he listened to the people. Miller pushed back, saying that Trump cared only about himself. But Miller missed the point. He thought Phillips was speaking metaphorically, that "listens to" means "cares about." But that wasn't what Phillips meant. Phillips meant only that Trump could read the room, that he listened so that he would know what to say, not because he has any core of his own. In this sense Trump is not a leader, but he is an avatar.