Government is not an abstract concept, and you cannot simply "shut it down" without hurting a great many people in a great many real, consequential ways. The closer you are to the metal of the federal government, the place where the wheels turn, the more severe the impact will be. For tourists, the closure of national parks and monuments may be only an irritant. For those who do regular or irregular business with the government, closed offices mean business grinding to a halt. For those who rely on federal paychecks, the situation is more dire. And for those who rely on day-to-day services?
Navajo Nation president Russell Begaye told the New York Times that the government closure has already begun to threaten public safety in the region. The reason? No snowplows.
A blanket of snow has covered the region, but roads are unplowed because federal maintenance has stopped. Many people are now trapped in their homes, unable to make the 20- or 50-mile journey to buy water, groceries and medicine, said Mr. Begaye.
Native tribes are particularly vulnerable to this sort of federal mischief because, by treaty, the federal government is expected and obliged to perform these sorts of functions. But they are also the victims of the same cuts that are affecting other rural Americans, such as Department of Agricultural food distribution programs, shut-down medical programs and a heavy reliance on federal jobs with federal paychecks.
Again, then: Trump is unfit for office. This is just the latest manifestation, a tantrum that is putting millions of Americans in dire straits and putting others in physical danger and which exists solely because Trump, reeling from a month of bad publicity and from midterm elections that saw his party get well and truly pasted, decided as publicity stunt to suddenly demand fealty to his Racism Wall that he could not get from even an all-Republican government for two years.
And there's no obvious end in sight because nobody thinks Donald Trump cares, at all, whether the nation's government remains functional. It doesn't enter his head. He cares about whether he looks good or looks bad; everything else is a fog.