I certainly understand your pains
Since what I say is counterintuitive, and thus many people have issues with grasping the whole point. But it is not rocket science either, provided you take into account the following. First, you should understand that the miners are interested in profits, and they confirm transactions only as long as that brings them money. That essentially means that their primary objective is earning money. The next step to grasp is to learn that confirming all incoming transactions may not be the optimal strategy to earn maximum amount of profits. In other words, if the miners don't confirm a certain ratio of transactions, their profits may actually rise (and not go down as what many people innocently assume). It is possible due to competition between transactors growing and fees escalating, and this strategy can be working pretty long (at least, as long as Bitcoin price is rising). As you can see, such approach has nothing to do with promoting usability. In fact, it is quite opposite to it, and given the miners' monopoly, it is diametrically opposite to it
I understand this is possible of course. But it is shortsighted also.
We are playing the long game here and Miners have more stake than anyone else in the success of this. I do not see a clear incentive there. Volume outperforms price manipulation
Obviously, that's not all there's to it
And this is not shortsighted by any means. You again miss a few important details here. The policy which miners have been following as of lately is quite rational from an economic point of view and may in fact be the most optimal one at that (in terms of maximizing profits). They were squeezing maximum profits from fees while Bitcoin had been rising (it made perfect sense) since in the future, with the introduction of SegWit and later Lightning Network, their influence will surely subside. No one will be paying such insane fees if they could transact off-chain. Anyway, shortsighted or not, this in no case can be interpreted as miners promoting Bitcoin usability (what your point is)
The fault of these fees doesn't lie only with the Miners. They were presented with a solution they did not like. They presented another one. Now it's up to stakeholders to vote on that. Seems fair to me