U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), flanked by Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), holds his weekly press conference following the Republican caucus policy luncheon at Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 6, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Let’s suppose someone decides it would be a good idea to drive 80 miles per hour through a school zone while the amber lights are flashing. If something bad happens, as it would be likely to, and he kills one or more children, how would the law treat it?
He could tell the court that he sincerely didn’t “mean” to kill anyone, but that wouldn’t exonerate him. The court would consider the case at minimum as vehicular homicide, and more likely, given the aggravating circumstance of lethal speed in a school zone, it might well result in conviction for aggravated murder.
Absent a miraculous development of telepathic powers, we can’t read people’s minds and determine their “real” mental state; we can only infer intent from their behavior. If someone commits a reckless act whose adverse consequences are clearly foreseeable, then for all practical purposes, that person willed the consequences. This principle—who wills the means wills the ends—is applicable in law, but should also be valid in everyday life. It should particularly apply to the behavior of public officials who wield power over the rest of us.
With that in mind, let’s look at President Donald Trump’s first-term record. His handling of the COVID-19 pandemic plainly indicated an unconcern for the consequences of his ignoring the outbreak in its early stages during the winter and spring of 2020. As he told Bob Woodward, he wanted to downplay the disease so as not to spook the stock market, evidence of his preference for Wall Street over human life. His refusal to recommend masking and social distancing, and encouragement of crackpot Covid deniers, took a heavy toll.
Trump’s behavior during the pandemic alone should have disqualified him from ever holding elective office again.
According to Scientific American, “In the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency, more than 450,000 Americans died from COVID-19, and life expectancy fell by 1.13 years, the biggest decrease since World War II. Many of the deaths were avoidable; COVID-19 mortality in the U.S. was 40 percent higher than the average of the other wealthy nations in the Group of Seven (G7).” That equates to 140,000 excess deaths from his contempt for human life in a crisis whose outcome was predictable.
Trump’s behavior during the pandemic alone should have disqualified him from ever holding elective office again. Alas, the American people’s memory, knowledge, and judgment being what they are, we are now being forced, like hostages at gunpoint, to endure another four years of criminal behavior, carried out with our tax money.
We have already seen enough to expect the Trump regime’s second term to be like the first on steroids. Thus, gutting the Department of Health and Human Services’ infectious disease research and forcing out the FDA’s chief vaccine expert is exactly what it looks like: an effort to see that more Americans die prematurely. This same result will certainly come as well from cutting $12 billion from state health service grants.
The secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., wants to implement placebo testing of vaccines, even though this methodology had been eliminated long ago because of ethical concerns: subjects administered a placebo could be placed at considerable health risk when the overall efficacy of vaccines has been demonstrated worldwide for the many decades. So why is Kennedy doing this?
The most benign explanation is that he is a paranoid crackpot who believes in his quack medical theories (in which case, why did the Republican Senate confirm him in the face of abundant evidence of his lack of qualification and risk to public well-being?). A harsher explanation might be that Kennedy, in line with his various crank theories, sees too many human beings as pestilential, and wouldn’t mind if there were fewer of them. In either case, every senator who voted to confirm him will be just as responsible for any excess deaths occurring as he would.
The same applies to veterans’ health programs. The VA under Trump has slashed personnel, cut programs, and halted clinical trials. In recent testimony, the department’s secretary, Doug Collins, succeeded in matching his own bumbling incompetence with arrogance and nastiness. Yet the Republican senators who pretended to be critical of him in the hearing for the benefit of their veteran constituents had voted to confirm him, so if any veterans die from lack of health care, it will be their responsibility as well as that of Collins.
Why did the Trump cabal eliminate the terrorist data base at the Department of Homeland Security? Given that most domestic terrorism cases have a right-wing motivation, they must want to see more terrorism: it is useful in cowing the rest of the population. As for terrorist incidents in general, they can serve as an excuse for martial law. We can similarly conclude that wiped-out towns and lives ruined by natural disasters is the intended result of slashing FEMA.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that approximately 420 Americans die from Salmonella each year. The CDC also estimates that about 1.35 million people get sick from salmonellosis, and 26,500 are hospitalized. So why did Trump’s Agriculture Department withdraw a proposed rule that would have limited salmonella content in raw poultry and required producers to test their products before sale?
You might say it was lobbying by the poultry interests. In that case, it reflects the same attitude of willful contempt for human life on the part of Trump and his minions: that the profits of corporate contributors are more important than the safety of the American people.
Where does this contempt for human life come from? Any rational person who observed Trump over the past decade would conclude that he is a pathological narcissist who is indifferent to others. But that only leads to another question: why do so many Americans not only support him, but treat him as a near-deity?
At the core of Trump’s base are tens of millions of religious fundamentalists who believe in the Apocalypse. If the end is at hand, if in fact it could come at any moment, why worry too scrupulously over a life or two, or, for that matter, over the functioning of society at a level above that of the bronze age? The behavior of Trump’s supporters, particularly their “Covid parties” and “measles parties,” suggests an actual courting of disease and death. Their relation to Trump is like that of the ancient Carthaginians, sacrificing their children to the destroyer-god Baal.
Where does this contempt for human life come from? Any rational person who observed Trump over the past decade would conclude that he is a pathological narcissist who is indifferent to others.
There is another, more secular, source of this willingness to let people die: survivalists whose rabid fear of economic collapse, social breakdown, and anarchic violence ironically leads them to hope for the very chaos they supposedly abhor, because it would prove them to have been right all along.
Right-wing media have long egged on the paranoid with ads prophesying imminent economic or social collapse. Since the 1970s oil shock, an abiding feature on the American scene has been the right-wing survivalist, hoping for the national Götterdämmerung that will vindicate his having stockpiled 10,000 rounds of ammunition and a horde of Krugerrands.
Religious lunatics and bunkered-in survivalists have been a feature of society for decades, but what gives their vision the potential for fulfilment is a newer, third element: the neo-reactionary tech bros. What the apocalyptics and survivalists supply in numbers, the Silicon Valley billionaires provide in money: they are already a mainstay of funding for Trump’s political operations.
According to Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, tech bros like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen believe they have the money and means to carry out what the two authors call End Times Fascism. Musk’s effort through DOGE to destroy the government’s health and safety infrastructure is precisely what will bring a societal collapse nearer—and that’s a good thing in the eyes of these neo-reactionaries, because it makes survivalist prepping all the more critical while culling the unwanted.
Their goal is like something foretold in Neal Stephenson’s novel "Snow Crash" over three decades ago: the destruction of the traditional nation-state and the creation of city-states ruled by tech moguls and serviced by AI robots and whatever number of the lower orders of humanity are deemed necessary.
This nightmarish vision is now the de facto program of the Republican Party, regardless of what its official platform contains. The deaths that will occur from the cutting or elimination of the programs I have mentioned are not an accident or unforeseen consequence.
No, on the contrary: Republicans want you to die.