This was posted in a different thread but I’m going to cite it here because I think it’s an excellent fit for the discussion:
Consider the concluding sentences, “The best among [Trump supporters] just want what is best for themselves. The worst among them don’t even care about that, and just want other people to suffer”. And then consider that Trump is now planning to use his newly constituted right-wing majority in the Supreme Court to attempt to overrule district courts on at least three different initiatives and probably many more to come:
He’s asked Supreme Court to overturn district court rulings against his military transgender ban, the only apparent purpose here being to stick it to transgender people and make them suffer. Trump has also been tweeting up a storm undermining the entire district court system and thus, in effect, the American judicial system, to the extent that Chief Justice John Roberts took the unprecedented step of issuing a public rebuke. Whereupon Trump then slammed Roberts in what is now a war between the Trump administration and apparently the entire judiciary.
Trump also wants his newly conservative Supreme Court to rule on the proposed new citizenship question on the census, opposed by a coalition of states and the American Civil Liberties Union, who claim that the question was included to reduce the representation of immigrant populations. The only apparent purpose here – as with most of Trump’s immigration related policies – is to stick it to immigrants and make them suffer.
Trump is also soliciting Supreme Court support for his plans to kill Obama’s DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). The only apparent purpose here is to stick it to immigrants’ children and make them suffer, too, which has already been done in abundance with the separation and detention of immigrants and their children.
Unrelated to that, here’s an op-ed on how the destruction and loss of life directly resulting from failure to act on climate change constitutes crimes against humanity. It states that Trump and anti-environment types of his ilk “are the authors and agents of systematic policies that deny basic human rights to their own citizens and people around the world, including the rights to life, health, and property. These politicians have blood on their hands, and the death toll continues to rise.” But it’s all good as long as they can stick it to those wimpy environmentalists and the Democrats who support them and make them suffer. It’s true that California has been hit by unprecedented wildfires with major casualties and property destruction, but most of the victims are liberals, so it’s all good. And – as Trump so nicely told everyone – said California liberals pretty much brought it on themselves. They’re to blame because of bad water management, or bad forest management, or failing to rake the leaves or something – it’s something different every day, and it’s all utter nonsense that he just blurts out with no forethought and certainly no knowledge. This is the new reality, the new political dialog. The point is that the fires are all the California liberals’ fault, and it certainly isn’t drought exacerbated by climate change or anything like that!
HMS Irruncible has already given an eloquent response to that in #58, and I concur. I’ll just add that the three big problems with your position are, one, as already said, that if you have to depend on a dumpster fire to enact your preferred policies, you need to seriously reevaluate the wisdom of those policies and the kinds of people that you appear to align yourself with.
Second, as the above examples only just begin to hint at, the collateral damage being inflicted by this dumpster fire is absolutely immense, even if you favor some of those policies, misguided or not.
Third, “government doing as little as possible” is meaningless, open-ended jingoism, nothing more than a libertarian bumper sticker slogan. It’s like putting forth “lower taxes” as a philosophy of governance. It doesn’t mean anything unless you can qualify it with actual information like lower taxes compared to what, and define what you do and do not like to see public funds being used for. Otherwise, all you’ve got is the radical extremist nonsense that the ideal taxation level is “none”, all taxes are “theft”, and government basically shouldn’t exist. A blanket aversion to government is just one of those uniquely American “distrust of government” things that causes people in democracies around the world to shake their heads in bemused disbelief.