[AnthonyMouse]

The current President is a big fat liar and everybody knows it. But where's your counter for the argument? Government spending is now at a higher percentage of GDP than it was during the height of WWII, which had been the all-time high for 200+ years. That is inherently inconsistent with the incumbent "just doesn’t believe that government should do anything" -- the current government is doing a lot of something.

[nullocator]

Why would you write it like it's a mystery. Government spending is for the most part public. Most of it going to two massive buckets military and social support programs (medicare, snap, et al). Now you can argue about how much we should be spending on each, but don't act like it's a big secret where the money is going. The elected representatives (all parties) of this country have voted to increase military spending year over year and most of the population is fine with this.

Separately but equally damaging in terms of spending is one party is consistently doing everything in their power to fuck over the most vulnerable, provide tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, and generally make life miserable for anyone who isn't a wealthy (soon white) dude.

This means the other party being the only sane choice for people with morals, but also being subject to various types of capture corporate or otherwise, gets to spend their time in power bumbling around trying to undo the damage and make sure the wheels don't completely fall off, so the "welfare" state expands by necessity since the only thing the two parties can agree on at this point is that all problems should be solved by throwing absurd amount of money at them and nothing else.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Most of it going to two massive buckets military and social support programs (medicare, snap, et al).

SNAP is peanuts. About a trillion dollars out of the seven trillion goes to the military and by far the largest amount goes to retirees.

> The elected representatives (all parties) of this country have voted to increase military spending year over year and most of the population is fine with this.

How can you tell if they're fine with it if all of their alternatives lead to the same result?

> Separately but equally damaging in terms of spending is one party is consistently doing everything in their power to fuck over the most vulnerable, provide tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, and generally make life miserable for anyone who isn't a wealthy (soon white) dude.

The party that set up Social Security so that it has an income cap on the tax, makes larger payouts to people who had higher incomes up to the cap and max payouts to people who hit the income cap, and pays out more to white people in aggregate even proportional to their income because they live longer, was the party of FDR. The party that has been obstructing housing construction in San Francisco and other major cities for decades to the detriment of renters, young prospective home buyers and the homeless is the party with the majority in those cities, and you can't even pin that one on the filibuster.

You don't get to blame the other party for the things they screwed up and the things you screwed up.

[ben_w]

While I would not describe Trump's regime as one which "just doesn’t believe that government should do anything"*, I would point out that they did attempt DOGE and kept finding out they were firing load-bearing parts of the system.

IMO even the stuff that they boast about was load bearing stuff that they simply didn't understand, not as they claimed "waste", but perception is key here: they did what they themselves would describe in this way.

* I think "elected king" is a better description of Trump's goals; he seems to want the justice department to be his personal legal team, the armed forces (all armed forces, including police) to be his personal forces, etc.