U.S. science is in chaos

At this point, there’s no defending it. Anyone who supports this incarnation of the Republican Party is as stupid and backwards as they’ve been castigated.

Uh....that's more the fault of a president who thought a totally normal thing (arms treaties with expiring restrictions) was a "scam" (not to mention, a black man he hates was responsible for said treaty) and ripped up said treaty. We literally were in a treaty, with Iran, that was doing all the things Trump said he wanted.

Then thought he could bully a country he probably thinks of as "a bunch of sand", ignoring the fact that a quarter of the world's oil drives right by them. I've heard foreign policy analysts say that it seemed like Iran never realized how much power they did until Trump pissed them off, they responded, the shipping industry universally said "ohhh hell no" and dropped anchor....and Iranian leadership looked around and said "........wait. We've been able to do that THIS WHOLE TIME?!!!" and then their plan become to outlast Trump's administration.

Iran realizing they can cripple the world economy is a genie that will not be put back in its bottle, even as countries scramble to decarbonize. Oil is still required for lubricants, plastics, and chemical production.

Add in the fact that the US military is being run by a guy who is more concerned about people being clean-shaven than actually running the military as an organization and by all accounts, barely managed ~2 dozen soldiers, then in civilian life failed, repeatedly, at managing businesses. Who has kicked out or pissed off dozens of senior military leaders, as well as pissed off anyone who was remotely debating whether to reenlist.

Disclosure: My education was funded by NSF, and I now work for a company that sells stuff for government funded research, though not exclusively.

I'm not even critiquing any particular cultural stance. But I think it's possible and important to critique anti-intellectualism and specially denialisms specially in things that are actually important and threatening to society -- simply because of greed, most of the time. Let's not fool ourselves, climate change denialism isn't like a random cultural thing they chose to deny, it's specifically because of connections to coal, oil and gas industries.

If things are bad, you should want to know what will be the consequences and what can be done to mitigate things. In fact, I think denial tends to create some reactionary behavior from the left as well, sometimes leading to overblown claims around climate change. All of this leads to increasing polarization.

Slowing down cultural change is perfectly fine (as long as it's respectful of well established things like human rights), cosplaying a farmer is fine, whatever. Or being an actual farmer, or living outside of a big city, etc.. What's not fine is actively denying important scientific facts, being hypocritical (and, largely, stupid) in their positions: for example, farming tends to use very high tech equipment and methods, seeds, and so on; I'm sure most farmers enjoy most technological development, treatment against cancers, all sorts of diseases; computers, the internet, etc.. You can't at the same time want progress in cancer treatment and other conditions and want to cut funding to health sciences. And so on. I am willing to even entertain say technological regression. I don't love every technological change we've been through. But at least be consistent, you can't advocate to stop wearing clothes and want to live in the arctic.

Also, culture should be, carefully yes, questioned. It's not because it's cultural that it should stay frozen forever. People who want their culture completely frozen forever are dangerous to human progress and flourishing (I imagine most people wouldn't find ancient practices of human sacrifice, or say medieval torture practices nice and acceptable today). Being careful and well-reasoned is a completely different thing, and something conservatism could stand for instead.