@SpukiKitty #45207
I think it's threefold. First, Trump & Co. really don't give a shit whether their own followers live or die - they're just gambling enough of them will live long enough to reinstate Trump in November. It's not a good plan, but at this point it's the best they've got.
Second, for at least 40 years there has been an ever-growing strain of right-libertarianism which really does want the government to fail. It has been funded by big corporations which want monopolies and zero environmental/labor/public safety regulation, but now it's co-opted by racists who yearn for a societal collapse so they can create a white ethnostate - "accelerationism" is the buzzword.
Third, among the followers themselves there are plenty of Fox-fed conspiracy kooks who really believe it's all a hoax by "socialist libtards," "the liberal media," Da Jooz or Illumunati globalists or whatever; and so want to "prove" it by showing defiance.