And still some people think it will be fine in 3.5 years.
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Or another way to look at it- cutting nearly 75% of scientists. Can't have climate change if there's no one working! Watch them find some money to give to ExxonMobile to 'study' the impacts of fossil fuels. Wonder what that report will say! /s
That's only the half of it. Look at the rest of the policies, look how they want to cut Medicare and food stamps and other safety net programs.
Make no mistake, this administration wants to see people die.
This is the end game the technocrats have been working towards, this is how they're enacting their eugenics. They want poor people, disabled people, disadvantaged people, to die. They believe they are culling the weak members of the herd for the sake of the betterment of "their" kind (rich, white, "healthy", etc).
These policies aren't stupid or ineffective, they are cruel and insidious by design
A healthy, broadly educated population, which feels safe and secure, are incompatible with, and toxic to, conservative and authoritarian ideologies.
They need you to be sick, stupid, and scared.
Turning the US into Russia 2.0
As an outsider, I honestly and sincerely invite anyone to explain how any of what’s going on in the US today isn’t as American as apple pie and school shootings?
America is still slightly ahead of Russia there, due to the legacy of the USSR. Not that Russia's billionaires aren't doing their best to privatize education and keep it out of reach of the peasantry since the fall of communism.
the oligarchs of russia sends thier children to elite or standard western colleges, russian is a shithole even for them for education.
Russia is actually significantly better to live in than America, and it is a total shithole.
As non-american I'm becoming increasingly convinced republicans are actually lead by traitors wanting to destroy the US.
I dont think that's it.
It's an overwhelming case of "got mine".
Like sanders said, being a GOP member just means staying in line.
Since Trump is Putin's puppet, that makes sense.
putin have pouring into the gop for a long time, and almost all the right wing governments elsewhere, why do you think the sudden rise of right wing govt all at once, plus they also fund alt-right groups like racial supremcy groups. isreal is similar, just by the USA (which is the most right wing western country even before trump)
So do the Democrats...
I hope they fix their system, but I have no idea how they could.
Has an empire ever been so complicit in their own demise?
Maybe Pol Pot murdering intellectuals and people who wear glasses?
Maybe theocracies like Afghanistan. Even North Korea likes scientists.
Probably all empires seed their own demise, I would guess
But so deliberately? In what world does a half intelligent person believe this to be a good long term strategy?
Most of the US believes in this, or is just unaware. That's how its been for most of history around the world.
...The remarkable issue here is the elites/rules we handed the reigns now drink their own kool-aid. The very top of most authoritarian regimes are at least cognisant of some hypocrisy, even if ideology eats them some.
The other is that people are more 'connected' than ever, but to disinformation streams. I feel like a lot of the world (especially the US fancies) themselves as super smart on shit they know nothing about because of something they saw on Facebook or YouTube.
No, most of the US does not believe in this. This admin got less than half of the people who even voted in the election. Which is only like half the voting population anyway. You're looking at less than a quarter who chose this, and many of those didn't even understand what they were voting for.
Yes, many times. Historically, it seems like the very strong empires first defeated themselves and once they were sufficiently weakened for outside forces to be able to threaten them ... they still kept being self sabotaged by their own elite who prioritized maneuvering against each other for temporary power/wealth grabs over working together to face the outside threats.
The late Roman empire has a bunch of good examples: blatant corruption, over taxation of the poor, many assassinations, sabotaging their peers that were trying to improve the situation, constant civil war, the battle that destroyed the military backbone of the western Roman empire was fought between romans, ... And all that while the empire was being torn apart by outside invasions.
Or a more recent example: the polish Lithuanian commonwealth had a paralyzed government thanks to corrupt elites with veto powers in their parliament of nobles (sejm) and only once the nation was mostly destroyed and the nation on the cusp of final destruction, did the sejm introduce some sensible new laws, but it was too late.
With smaller regional powers you can have cases like "they were in a golden age and had never been as powerful, but then the mongols appeared", but with hegemon empires the failure of their inner workings is always going to be instrumental in their own demise.
Brain drain is a difficult downward spiral to break out of once it starts.
This is something I think a lot of people don’t realize; It’s a cascading failure. It’s not just that some competent people will leave the country. The rest of their teams will have to bear the extra burden and be demoralized. They will then feel compelled to leave as well.
It’s happened numerous times in both the public and private sectors. Now they’re deliberately trying to do this shit on a national scale. If we ever recover from this, it’s going to take decades…
This is a huge opportunity for countries who always played second fiddle in science and tech.
Never played a conquest game where you stop researchers from giving your empire a tech advantage over others.

It's a popular strategy for Fascists.
the Nazis and the OG Fascists did it, and so did the communist Chinese.
China currently churns out more college graduates than any other country, and the rate is increasing.
And they had a hell of a way to go given that it was less than 1% when they took over.
Speed running towards Idiocracy by 2028
no need to rush it, were already here.
who am I kidding, President Camacho would be way better than Trump and most DNC candidates.
I enjoy that movie less and less, not because it's a bad movie, but quite the opposite.
If you know exactly the level of education of your supporters and your enemies. It's time to attack the level of your enemies.
Idiocracy with fascist characteristics.
Thanks to trump, we get to witness a country entering dark ages.
Hey Europe and Canada, anyone still looking for a scientist that just wants to do lab work? I prefer chemistry, but am happy with micro too. Just let me interpret data, please. I'm stuck somewhere where titrations are the most complex process.
German universities are always hiring. Always. And in my experience they need just about everyone
If you have an Irish grandparent you can get a passport. Lots of work here and Americans are welcome.
Otherwise work visas that turn into residency aren't difficult to come by with sponsorship and it's not the kind of sponsorship that makes you a slave.
How about a great grandparent. My grandma was born in NYC but great grandad came from Ireland into Ellis island.
Mmmm. I'm not sure tbh but I don't think so. If your grandmother had an Irish passport though that might work. Worth checking if you're considering it.
My sister lives in the UK a long time now and all her kids have an Irish passport. It's actually a great passport to have for travel. EU is obviously wide open but most places accept it without much (or zero) effort.
In my faculty, there's often vacants for lab technicians, if you want to give it a go
The pharma industry is currently booming in Denmark (Novo and others are expanding like crazy), so perhaps you could try and look into that
A country for REAL (white Christian male) Americans.
When are you people going to get the message. It was never a country that was about equality. It was about enrichment for a select group of people. When their privilege was threatened, the veil came off.
None of this changes until the rest of America decides enough is enough. That might never happen. If it does, it won't be for years or decades.
The US died on Jan 20th, 2025.
I'd argue Nixon started it.
I'd argue Johnson sealed our fate when he rolled over for Confederates after the war.
But really the argument could bemade that the moment European explorers realized they could just kill people and take their homes away and nobody would stop them, they decided to make it a core part of their identity by rationalizing everything they can, and dismissing whatever they can't.
The devil works hard, but colonizers work harder.
The country built on brain drain, assumes it is great without the brain.
I hope the scientist find favorable places that value science.
remember germany, they wouldve develop thier own atomic weapons if wernt the persecution of the jewish and asian scientists. same thing happen in the cold war, persecution of"communism" caused some chinese scientist to flee, and resulted in the CCP gaining access to hydrogen bombs from fission bombs much quicker than any other country.
Wait, the bottom ones are PreK-12 students.
How are they planning to reduce the number of children?
Is this why they hired RFK?
a dumb population is easier to control than an educated one. They don't plan on reducing the number of children, no they need more to produce for the wealthy. What they need are dumb kids that will grow into dumb adults. uneducated adults are more likely to have A LOT of kids. So you strip education, you strip healthcare, you make abortions illegal across the board, thus you force the population to keep pumping out new workers. many will die, the strong idiots will survive.
They're turning the country into cattle.
Nah see we gonna use AI to train the kids instead of teachers. Also gotta make sure the AI uses the correct training data, like how the world is 6000 years old and the gays are a sin.
Number of children, being educated. Surely we could do that.
Europe will welcome them with open arms.
People starts to realize that having a higher wage in the US doesn't translate into a better quality of life.
only the PI/PHDs, and postodcs, the ones that do "majority of the work" in a research lab, undergrads, and grads wont have the same opportunities in europe.
In the "first world" sphere that regularly ignores and denigrate any country that could be perceived as inferior even if it's not necessarily, then yes, maybe. We're doing great over here in some places that are often overlooked.
Unfortunately I think Trumpism is lowering the bar. Maybe right now it's not fascism everywhere, but there's no doubt that on a decades time the world will be more fascist than it would have been without Trump.
I have confidence in the one step backward, two steps forward doctrine. If our current government is any indication, we're heading in the exact opposite direction of the fash trend for the foreseeable future. There's hope. Please don't lose yours!
Yeah.
I'm in Australia, I suspect you might be also, but for reference a few months ago our centre-left party ground our centre-right party into the dust in a landslide election victory.
I suppose I agree that its not all bad news.
However, I'm gravely concerned about the US trajectory and I'm certain it will have an impact here sooner or later.
Right now our PM is trying to negotiate the current tariffs. The US will want us to increase military spending, and reduce investment in science and research. We might resist, but it's certainly pressure to move in the wrong direction.
no, but it safer than if a authoritarian is control, like trump, Russia, and china. until those other countries in europe starts attacking science(defunding, jailing them, or alternative "science") its better than the US.
Quality has nothing to do with the money they gain, but whith what they can buy for it, apart of the quality of the public services. Higher wages in the US mean nothing, when even this isn't enough for education and health, which in the EU isn't a problem. There the people don't lose their existence base because of hospital bills or to pay the studies of their children.
Europe will welcome them with open arms.
The next step in the authoritarian playbook will be to limit the movement of educated people. Soon enough, those people won't be able to leave even if they wanted to.
Deeply unserious managers of empire continue to self-cannibalize their own productivity in an effort to go even more all-in on financial capital, all while the global south is doing its best to pivot towards more favorable relations with countries like China. When the US Empire runs out of countries to exploit, and financial capital ceases to be profitable, it will have no developed industrial base nor a strong scientifically trained worker base to pull itself back up. The US is cooked, this is just speedrunning the demise of the empire in a faster and harder fashion.
The good news is that the worse this gets, the more favorable the conditions for organizing become, and the more vulnerable to revolution the state becomes. We can legitimately take advantage of this, and gain mastery over capital, rather than the inverse. We can re-industrialize, become socialist, and begin the long and difficult but necessary path towards legitimate progress. It won't be easy, but it will be doable.


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