What is it with Republicans vs. Science?

[Heathen]

For the life of me, I can't understand it. What is the GOP's beef with science? You have the 'i didnt come from no monkey' crowd, sure. They fought science in schools for awhile and some still do.
But a lot of people are well educated yet have this almost cultish, 'their side vs our side' attitude about basic science as if it threatens their very core compass. People who are lawyers, doctors, PhD candidates..
very intelligent human beings by merit in the least. Yet they seem to lose their better judgment and give into 'what does my side say' when scientific issues arise....

Is it religion? Is it social issues which tie into religion?

The pandemic has turned a disturbing number of one side of the political spectrum into science denying anti-vaxxers. Already, we've seen what 'conservative'
approaches to a pandemic end up costing us (hundreds of thousands of lives, embarrassment from our allies across the globe). Those are just the facts. Even
Democrats are to blame in red states where their constituents cause them to lose their spine and peer pressure to delude their own reality (John Bel Edwards - a DINO, for example, Manchin, etc.).
And in all honesty, a 'D' by their name doesn't make those people any less complicit.

What is it about conservatism that so opposes science these days? Has Covid not already shown that when you fight basic biology with ignorance, we all lose? Or is this just a broader problem
with the US being so right wing that anything outside 'keep your head down and do as i do' is slandered with propaganda (Communist, Marxist, any 'ist' that sounds scary).

Maybe this doesn't even warrant a discussion. But it's frustrating that the richest country on Earth is so shamefully poor at being scientifically competent - at least with regard to
its citizens views on public health. I just don't get us sometimes.

 

[zztop]

NIH budget cuts affect research funding beyond US borders

European leaders say they will fill the funding void. Is that realistic?

arstechnica.com

 

[zztop]

American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

Over the first half of 2025, the USA has cut science as never before. This disaster for American science is a gift to the rest of the world.

bigthink.com

• Throughout the 20th and the first quarter of the 21st centuries, the US became a world leader in science, technology, healthcare, and education by investing in scientific research.
• In 2025, that is rapidly changing, as unprecedented federal cuts, the defunding and closing of many institutions, and devastatingly reduced budgets present an extinction-level event for American science.
• Just as the exodus of scientists and scientific projects from Nazi Germany became known as “Hitler’s gift” to the rest of the world, the actions of the US today seem similarly poised to reward the rest of the world. Here’s an insider’s view into what’s happening.

 

[LA 2 L.A.]

American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

Over the first half of 2025, the USA has cut science as never before. This disaster for American science is a gift to the rest of the world.

bigthink.com

• Throughout the 20th and the first quarter of the 21st centuries, the US became a world leader in science, technology, healthcare, and education by investing in scientific research.
• In 2025, that is rapidly changing, as unprecedented federal cuts, the defunding and closing of many institutions, and devastatingly reduced budgets present an extinction-level event for American science.
• Just as the exodus of scientists and scientific projects from Nazi Germany became known as “Hitler’s gift” to the rest of the world, the actions of the US today seem similarly poised to reward the rest of the world. Here’s an insider’s view into what’s happening.

What Trump and his Republicans are doing to us is a far greater existential threat in regards to falling behind China technologically, than anything China can do to overcome us technologically.

 

[zztop]

New executive order puts all grants under political control

All new funding on hold until Trump administration can cancel any previously funded grants.

arstechnica.com

The order also instructs agencies to formalize the ability to cancel previously awarded grants at any time if they're considered to "no longer advance agency priorities." Until a system is in place to enforce the new rules, agencies are forbidden from starting new funding programs.

In short, the new rules would mean that all federal science research would need to be approved by a political appointee who may have no expertise in the relevant areas, and the research can be canceled at any time if the political winds change. It would mark the end of a system that has enabled US scientific leadership for roughly 70 years.

 

[Dragon]

New executive order puts all grants under political control

All new funding on hold until Trump administration can cancel any previously funded grants.

arstechnica.com

The order also instructs agencies to formalize the ability to cancel previously awarded grants at any time if they're considered to "no longer advance agency priorities." Until a system is in place to enforce the new rules, agencies are forbidden from starting new funding programs.

In short, the new rules would mean that all federal science research would need to be approved by a political appointee who may have no expertise in the relevant areas, and the research can be canceled at any time if the political winds change. It would mark the end of a system that has enabled US scientific leadership for roughly 70 years.

The US is going to be a 3rd world nation within 10 years - if it takes that long. Political appointees is going to cancel any research that inconvienience the administration and their bilionaire backers.

 

[LA 2 L.A.]

The US is going to be a 3rd world nation within 10 years - if it takes that long. Political appointees is going to cancel any research that inconvienience the administration and their bilionaire backers.

I saw a movie last night with the premise that climate change caused a sudden collapse in food production, so all the nations agreed to reduce their population by a given amount. The US instituted a "volunteer" enlistment to be killed. The majority of the people volunteering were the poor, because they desperately needed the money for their families.

That got me thinking. The billionaires in the US are the ones fighting against the changes we need to make to keep climate change from getting worse. They aren't idiots, they know what's coming. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if we found out that this fascist movement by them, Republicans and Trump is there way of dealing with the fallout from the climate disaster they know they are creating.

They refuse to lose a single dollar to change things to avoid the climate disaster, so instead they are setting things up to safely watch as millions die or to actively murder millions of people before they have a chance to unite against them. I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of the plan.

 

[Dragon]

I saw a movie last night with the premise that climate change caused a sudden collapse in food production, so all the nations agreed to reduce their population by a given amount. The US instituted a "volunteer" enlistment to be killed. The majority of the people volunteering were the poor, because they desperately needed the money for their families.

That got me thinking. The billionaires in the US are the ones fighting against the changes we need to make to keep climate change from getting worse. They aren't idiots, they know what's coming. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if we found out that this fascist movement by them, Republicans and Trump is there way of dealing with the fallout from the climate disaster they know they are creating.

They refuse to lose a single dollar to change things to avoid the climate disaster, so instead they are setting things up to safely watch as millions die or to actively murder millions of people before they have a chance to unite against them. I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of the plan.

I have had similar thoughts for years and it is kind of the premise behind Thiels push for Greenland.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

Higgins has got to be the dumbest mutha forker of the Louisiana delegation...

La. congressman calls to defund N.O. health dept. over COVID vaccine post

Louisiana congressman urges defunding of the New Orleans health department over vaccines.

www.fox8live.com

 

[bird]

Higgins has got to be the dumbest mutha forker of the Louisiana delegation...

La. congressman calls to defund N.O. health dept. over COVID vaccine post

Louisiana congressman urges defunding of the New Orleans health department over vaccines.

www.fox8live.com

Idiocracy strikes again.

 

[zztop]

Anti-science bills hit statehouses, attacking longstanding public health protections

More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year.

www.pbs.org

More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year, part of an organized, politically savvy campaign to enshrine a conspiracy theory-driven agenda into law.

An Associated Press investigation found that the wave of legislation has cropped up in most states, pushed by people with close ties to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The effort would strip away protections that have been built over a century and are integral to American lives and society. Around 30 bills have been enacted or adopted in 12 states.

 

[bird]

Anti-science bills hit statehouses, attacking longstanding public health protections

More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year.

www.pbs.org

More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year, part of an organized, politically savvy campaign to enshrine a conspiracy theory-driven agenda into law.

An Associated Press investigation found that the wave of legislation has cropped up in most states, pushed by people with close ties to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The effort would strip away protections that have been built over a century and are integral to American lives and society. Around 30 bills have been enacted or adopted in 12 states.

It is the result of the mixture of politics and religion. Not necessarily just religion in its normal guise of screeching against gays and abortion. But religion in a nihilistic form of psychotic new age meets paranoia in a quest for the chimera of “freedom” meaning a 4 year screaming “you can’t make me.” Until he chokes on diphtheria or pertussis.

 

[MT15]

It is the result of the mixture of politics and religion. Not necessarily just religion in its normal guise of screeching against gays and abortion. But religion in a nihilistic form of psychotic new age meets paranoia in a quest for the chimera of “freedom” meaning a 4 year screaming “you can’t make me.” Until he chokes on diphtheria or pertussis.

There’s a very substantial thread of eugenics here as well. It’s all about “survival of the fittest”. It runs through their disdain for poor people, the chronically ill, the disabled. It’s seen as a punishment from God, and an indication that these people somehow deserve their plight.

The flip side is that if you’re healthy and doing well financially, you deserve it and it is a sign of God’s approval of you.

Kennedy lets it slip when he says things like “only kids with health issues should die from measles”. It’s patently false, not at all true. Healthy kids can and do die from measles. Kennedy was also behind the statements about the girl in TX who died, saying she had other health problems. He had to come to that conclusion to validate his views that you don’t have anything to worry about from measles if you’re “healthy”. It’s eugenics.

 

[MT15]

 

[MT15]

 

[zztop]

The center’s staff includes about 830 employees working under the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a nonprofit consortium of colleges and universities that oversees the center for the federal government.

The center also operates a massive supercomputer, known as Derecho, in Cheyenne, Wyo., that scientists use to predict the behavior of wildfires, space weather, hurricanes and other complex weather patterns.

Trump Administration Readies Plans to Dismantle NCAR Research Lab​

The Trump administration is reviewing proposals to break up one of the world’s leading climate and weather laboratories, transfer its work to universities and private companies, take away its aircraft, and sell its property in Boulder, Colo.

The laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has been targeted for months by the Trump administration. In a social media post in December, Russell Vought, the White House budget director, called the Colorado center “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”

The center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in understanding of weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in forecasting weather events and disasters.

 

[Taurus]

There’s a very substantial thread of eugenics here as well. It’s all about “survival of the fittest”. It runs through their disdain for poor people, the chronically ill, the disabled. It’s seen as a punishment from God, and an indication that these people somehow deserve their plight.

The flip side is that if you’re healthy and doing well financially, you deserve it and it is a sign of God’s approval of you.

Kennedy lets it slip when he says things like “only kids with health issues should die from measles”. It’s patently false, not at all true. Healthy kids can and do die from measles. Kennedy was also behind the statements about the girl in TX who died, saying she had other health problems. He had to come to that conclusion to validate his views that you don’t have anything to worry about from measles if you’re “healthy”. It’s eugenics.

But not just racial eugenics. It's an abhorrent fusion of race, class and religion. Being white, Christian or rich is only partway there. You have to be all three to actually count as a human being.

 

[Optimus Prime]

 

[Heathen]