> too long to sway public opinion

Our founders were aware of the perils of letting public opinion write public policy. We’ve spent a lot of the post-Cold War era dismantling that anti-populist infrastructure.

To the extent I see a guiding light out of this mess, it’s in reducing the electoral fetishism that has dominated post-90s democratic discourse. There is more to democracy (and more pointedly, republics) than popular will. To the extent there is a silver lining in MAGA, it’s that the numpties have given us the tools with which to accomplish this if we choose to.

You're broadly right, but I would argue that the "anti-populist infrastructure" is specifically responsible for electoral fetishism.

The thing to remember is that in the 1950s and 60s the US government was basically running a censorship regime and had manufactured an anti-Communist consensus. They had to do this because democratic politics back then meant political parties actually listening to their constituents. In other words, America had populist infrastructure, which the state had to carefully commandeer to maintain the illusion of a unified society willing to fight a Cold War against a country which, at least on paper, was promising a better America than America.

This broke in the 70s, when the Vietnam War pitted young Boomers against old[0]. A lot of the civic institutions that were powering democracy in that era got torn apart along age lines, and fell apart completely. Politics turned from something you made with your voice to something you purchased with your vote. This is how we got the Carter / Reagan neoliberal consensus of "free trade and open borders for me but not for thee". The state was free to dictate this new public policy to its citizens because the citizenry were too busy fighting to mount an effective opposition to it.

[0] Recall that "Baby Boomer" is actually two generations of people, both because the baby boom was so long and because America's access to birth control was on par with that of a third world country. There's a never-ending wellspring of parental abandonment in that generation.

> The thing to remember is that in the 1950s and 60s the US government was basically running a censorship regime and had manufactured an anti-Communist consensus.

I think it's worth remembering where that came from. Before the war, in the 20s and 30s, the American industrial establishment was quite happy to work with the Soviet Union, both in selling equipment and lending technical expertise to help the Soviet Union set up their own production (for instance, Ford helped them set up GAZ). The ideological incompatibility of the Soviet Union and western capitalism wasn't seen as so much of a problem, it was mutually profitable to be civil and do business with each other.

Genuine concern with the Soviet Union grew during the war when it became difficult to ignore the belligerent nature of the Soviet Union, towards their neighbors and their own people.

To be clear, I'm not saying it was completely unwarranted. I'm saying that America's elites had to work behind the scenes in order to do it, because America itself had already been taken over by a successful populist movement headed by FDR.

> Before the war, in the 20s and 30s, the American industrial establishment was quite happy...

And immediately before that, they (Americans, British, French, Japanese (!)) had invaded Russia to provide support to tsarist and proto-fascist elements that were running around committing pogroms, killing anybody not immediately prostrating themselves to their "saviors", and trying to crush the revolution.

> The keenest Interventionists were equally appalled, regarding the offer of talks [with the Soviet government] as tantamount to diplomatic recognition. From Vladivostok, General Knox sent a 'really fuming' telegram - the proposal put 'brave men...fighting for civilisation' on a par with 'the blood-stained, Jew-led Bolsheviks' - and in Archangel, American consul DeWitt Poole threatened to resign. Happening to be in Paris, Chruchill burst in on Lloyd George while he was shaving, and thundered that if one were going to recognize the regime, 'one might as well legalise sodomy.' Churchill and Foch both also privately assured White contacts that even if they rejected talks, military aid would keep flowing. The Prinkipo proposal thus died at birth.

---

> It is true that the worst violence happened off-stage, in small towns away from the bases where British personnel spent most of their time. But this was not always so, and there was more than enough opportunity to find out what was happening from Jewish relief organisations, or from survivors who had fled to the cities. Typical of the way the British preferred to turn a blind eye was embedded journalist Hodgson, who tied himself in knots criticising the Volunteer Army's obsessive antisemitism ('a fierce and unreasoning hatred'), while simultaneously denying that it had committed any pogroms. He dismissed a Jewish committee's protest to British command at Constantinople as an 'effusion', and on a tour of newly captured towns claimed not to have found 'a sign or whisper of outrage'. On the contrary, he possessed 'the strongest evidence' that Denikin's orders against pogroms were being 'conscientiously observed', and 'every effort' being made, 'with great success, to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.' As for past pogroms, the were 'grossly exaggerated', and had mostly been 'fanned into existence by the nervous panicking of the Jews themselves.'

---

> For the civilian population,. perhaps harshest of the winter's brutalities was the burning of front-line villages. Both sides did it, but rattled, out-of-their-depth Allied troops - ready to see a collaborator in every uncommunicative local - especially so. In early January a false alarm panicked American units into completely destroying the Vaga village of Kitsa, and Scheu describes putting part of disputed Tulgas to the torch:

>> We throw a cordon of troops around the village to prevent interference, notify natives, and set fire to village at 9 p.m. It ignites rapidly, lighting up surrounding country. Have difficulty with natives; we gave them 3 hours notice to pack and vacate. 'Twas a sad sight.

> The next day the cottages were still smoking, 'a big black smudge upon the snow.'

from Reid - A Nasty Little War

You want to know what I think? I have begun to believe that McCarthyism and the “Red Scare” and the House Committee, while purporting to be “anti-communist” were inwardly concerned about Eastern Bloc Jews gaining the upper hand domestically.

Now some Jews were Communist sympathizers and some weren’t. But there were just so many who flooded in from staunchly Eastern-Bloc, Soviet-dominated areas that they were sure to gain powerful footholds in Western society.

McCarthy and the House couldn’t afford to be perceived as “anti-Semitic” so they chose to couch everything in patriotic anti-Commie terms. But in hindsight, look at how miniscule the influence has been here from Soviet Communism, compared to ideologies of Eastern-Bloc Jews [many who are quite secular and Americanized].

The US has (almost by design?) a system the favors tyranny of the minority. I'd argue the opposite: that the majority of voters are not well represented. Our two party system with capped Congress member count (which is reflected in the executive branch) and useless Senate only serve a minority of (monied) interests in the country.

> the majority of voters are not well represented

The majority are well represented. They’re just idiots. This isn’t a criticism of Americans; it’s why direct democracy fails in a predictable, partisan way in any society. (If you really think about it, you’re probably something of an idiot a good amount of the time. And you, like me, probably hold stupid views with low conviction because it was never worth it to do the research.)

They're working on it: https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/05/europe-launches-prog...

Here's an article from a European perspective: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/usa-scientists-lo...

500 million euro's to attract scientists?

I asked ChatGPT, it thought for 3 minutes and 36 seconds. You can see the Q&A here [1].

Assuming that a one year salary of the average scientist is 100K euro's [2] then that means you're trying to attract an extra 1250 scientists that will work for 4 years.

That doesn't sound like a lot on a continental scale.

[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/682376a6-5c68-8005-89ab-2bedd453c7...

[2] It's definitely lower than 100K, but it allows for unexpected hidden overhead that ChatGPT potentially didn't account for.

I respect your opinion, to me it does sound like a lot, and it's also on top of many existing programs and a few other new things included in this announcement.

> The initiative also includes a target for member states to allocate 3 percent of their GDP to R&D projects by 2030. [...] The plan, originally proposed by the French government, also proposes creating long-term “super grants” for outstanding researchers, to provide them with financial stability; these would last for seven years. The program also plans to double the amount of financial support available this year for those who decide to move to the European Union.

You can get a sense of everything they have available here: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/research-and-innovation/....

Ah, thanks for showing me more context about it. I considered the 500 million too much into isolation

1000 scientists is a lot. The entire Microsoft research department is about 1000 scientists, and they are a productive bunch

Here’s the thing: scientists follow roughly a double power law in breakthrough and skills. What if that 1250 is 50 top tier and 1200 of their chosen lab mates?

That's fair

> Good read; too long to sway public opinion though.

Maybe they should have done a TikTok or a YT short? Would that be the right length?

Audience. This will only reach people who agree. It's a lesson Dems just haven't learned yet about where America is in discourse:

Hillary: "This great economy, based on the new globalization means that we will with the help of economists transform Pennsylvania's economic infrastructure away from dirty fuels."

Donald: "I'm going to save coal."

Kamala: "My macroeconomists say this is the best economy the US has ever seen, and they say my plan to help will put money back in American pockets"

Donald: "No taxes on tips."

This is something that most people engaged in internet discourse could learn as well. It's often not productive to write a long response to a pithy sound-byte argument.

Not only is that losing the engagement economy, but onlookers to the thread are far more likely to read and latch onto the smaller soundbites. Longer replies also give critics more gristle to latch onto - you may think a long post covers all its bases, but you're really just giving people more avenues of rebuttable.

Better to be succinct, and if important context is left out, respond to it as concerns are raised.

Honestly, yes. To sway public opinion, you have to meet your audience where they get their information. I know that my mother gets most of her news from TikTok unfortunately. Reaching out to the public through as many avenues as possible is absolutely necessary at this point.

Depends which public your trying to sway.

The one with a long attention span is clearly a minority.

Not just the Nazis. The Russians had Lysenkoism.

It's a common characteristics of states that start consolidating enough power to nationalize science funding. They often eventually use it to wield power.

IMHO America's success as a scientific powerhouse had more to do with the research infrastructure spun up to win the war than Nazi scientists afterwards.

Honestly way more with just being the one super power standing after the war. We were basically untouched, even accounting for dead and wounded we only lost ~1 million people and practically zero manufacturing infrastructure so we came out of the war roaring and flush with cash. That catapulted the US to where it has been for the whole of the time since but a lot of people seem to have believed we were owed that or earned it through some special property of the US and the come down from it is not going well socially.

This feels revisionist to me. It was not accidental. The US had the booming wartime economy, AND it had a State department that went at solidifying global influence. Essentially the "greatest generation" locked in America's situation, and doubled down on cultural and economic dominance.

The combination of state, industry and WMF-type loans extended American power globally. It was a very very good time to be American. This is the core of the "Great Again" part of the slogan. Boomers remember this America and want the growth, wealth and dominance back.

My point is that dominance flows from the fact that every other major world power of the age got massively bombed and the US didn't. Just look at the graph of pre-War GDPs and note how far you have to scroll down before you see a country that didn't have intense fighting and bombing within their borders. [0] Much of what happened post war that set the US up would not have been possible if the US was bombed out like Germany or the UK and needed to rebuild it's entire economy like Germany, the UK, Russia, France, China and Japan who made up the rest of the upper crust of the GDP pie in the pre-War economy.

> This feels revisionist to me.

Reexamining past narratives/theories based on new data or ways of viewing things is the core of science. It's particularly important in softer social sciences where so much of the effects can only be viewed in the long term.

> Boomers remember this America and want the growth, wealth and dominance back

My point is you can't go back to there, at least not without another massive war and this time the chances the US gets by unscathed is practically zero.

Not to mention shattering the alliances that put the US in that position isn't the way to get back there either. Even if we tried countries are going to be a lot more wary of trusting the US for critical things like military protection which was a major part of the deal for the US's position, we extend a military umbrella across your country and we get good access to your markets.

Trump et al fundamentally misunderstand why we were in the position we were and their actions push us further away rather than bringing us back to it.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334182/wwii-pre-war-gdp...

Maybe not "accidental", but it's lucky for the US that the Nazi regime came to power in central Europe instead of Northern Mexico or Canada.

Or even inside the US itself.

It definitely feels like the US could have swung the other way, we were deeeep into eugenics over here long before the war and there was plenty of explicit support for the american Nazi party.

We were, it’s just that this special property was owning our own private continent.

_It's free real estate_

True I meant more in the political/economic sphere. Being isolated geographically from both WW1 and WW2 was a major boon to the US economy, we got the economic benefit of the wars without the damage (beyond lives lost of course).

And as time has gone on that geography is less and less effective as a shield.

Yeah, I was really just reinforcing your point in a cheeky way.

Australia tried that, too, but their continent is really problematic.

They were also only quasi independent at the time of the wars too so they had less flexibility to decide on their policy.

> America's success as a scientific powerhouse had more to do with the research infrastructure spun up to win the war than Nazi scientists afterwards

Bit of A, bit of B, with B encompassing the Nazis and the British.

And the investments that it continued to make in it after the war.

Parent comment says "the opportunity created by Nazi ideological purges of scientists" , which is not the same as "Nazi scientists".

Did you see the "Oppenheimer" movie? Check the real physicists depicted working on the Manhattan project. A large number of them were European Jews who left before or during the war. Even some others left Europe because of this: Niels Bohr (Jewish Mother) and Enrico Fermi (Jewish Wife).

To be sure there was Wernher von Braun and co as well.

In fact, it would be quicker to list the Manhattan project physicists depicted in that movie who were not Jewish at all:

* Ernest Lawrence

> America's success as a scientific powerhouse

If you really think about it, America's "success as a scientific powerhouse" owes a significant debt to foreigners: scholars from abroad and workers on H1-B visas.

It has been a well-known fact for decades that white native-born Americans are at a real disadvantage in academia, tech fields, and any sort of research positions, because for whatever reason, the foreigners coming in on H1-B can run circles around them in terms of productivity, innovation, and even sheer numbers.

Perhaps this isn't the sort of "stealin' our jerbs" people first think of, rather than picking strawberries and selling oranges off the 405, but it's a real phenomenon. This is a very prominent reason for skepticism about DEI from the Right, because the outsized influence of foreigners on academia, and by extension STEM and other sciences, has been steadily growing and growing and inflamed by DEI hiring practices in the industries. Essentially, thousands of foreign nationals have been immigrating to the USA to be educated at our best schools, and then exert two-way influence over culture and commerce. Is that a sustainable practice? Is America enough of a "melting pot" that we can withstand that sort of outsized foreign influence within our borders?

Furthermore, America was first in line to embrace Eastern-bloc Jews, from the outbreak of WWI through the end of WWII. Those German and Soviet Jews from the diaspora gained significant prestige, not merely from sympathy or pity, and they now have outsized influence in many Western industries, including Hollywood, finance, manufacturing, and psychology. These are markedly distinct career paths from the ones taken by homegrown Jews, such as the Hasidic ones and other Orthodox communities from New York.

You talk about this like it's an accident almost. It was a considered Federal policy to brain drain as hard as possible.

Anecdotally, I too worry about the influx of the dirty Irish into our borders, stealing good jobs and spreading their Irish culture. Oh, sorry, I forgot it's not 1940. In my opinion, America has a strong, strong culture -- brain drained scientist's kids in general look pretty integrated to me, at least the ones I know.

> Is America enough of a "melting pot" that we can withstand that sort of outsized foreign influence within our borders?

Depends.

If your idea of America consists of just the pre-colonial native groups, Navajo etc., then America was already gone a century and a half ago.

But the America of 1925 had exactly the same arguments about Italians, and of 1845 about the Irish, in that the local born were complaining a lot and didn't trust the newcomers.

The melting pot has been melting for a long time now; you're a big endless stew of a country. (Except for the "real" natives, if there is such a thing).

> These are markedly distinct career paths from the ones taken by homegrown Jews,

Actually "Oppenheimer" the movie also supplies examples of two very different New York Jewish backgrounds:

J Robert Oppenheimer, from an affluent, non-religious family - with an Upper West side apartment and a summer vacation home on Long Island. His father came to the USA as a teenager, and prospered in business.

Isidor Isaac Rabi, from an orthodox, Yiddish-speaking family living in a two-room apartment on the Lower East Side. He was born shortly before the family came to the USA.

>Considered most charitably, the current administration sees itself as trying to return to an era of imperialism for the good of the country.

I mean there's charitable interpretation, then there's being an emu and pretending that the transfer of massive wealth to Trump and his cronies through stock market manipulation (after removing checks on said manipulation, apparently) isn't just wide scale theft. $3.4B to only two of Trump's circle {Trump bragged in a recent video} direct from the pockets of regular investors through market manipulation - I could well imagine the total is trillions.

'I'm stealing from you for your own good'!

Hmm.

Oh it's clearly a kleptocracy at the top, don't get me wrong. You can have both.

There imperialism, sure, but the "for the good of the country" is very clearly not true.

> If I were in charge of science in a wealthy country right now I would be working overtime to brain drain US researchers.

European universities would love to do so, the problem is that our model of funding is just as braindead as it is in the US (if not worse, like in Germany) and our politicians are too braindead or unwilling to fix the circumstances.

There are no free countries wealthy enough to do that. European salaries in the academia are laughable even by American academic standards, including supposedly rich countries like Germany and Netherlands. Switzerland is too small, and cut her scientific funding recently as well. UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia etc are authoritarian petrostates.

One country that will actually drain American researchers will be China.

> One country that will actually drain American researchers will be China.

Not really. Even if they'd shower American scientists in money, who will guarantee they won't be taken hostage in a political conflict? It has happened in the past [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_an...

respectfully disagree on several points.. if "public opinion" is only legitimate in 240 characters or less, then you have doomed yourself.

secondly, sitting in California, this repeated cool-kid refs to Nazis is just more knee-jerk polarization. Serious topics are at hand. Excess and overly-optimistic polarizing rhetoric with smug bank accounts are a root cause of this recent extreme swing in Federal powers. IMHO

I think your perspective on this matters a lot less than that of the researchers. Their perception is that what’s happening at Harvard and NSF is fascism.

The perception is that we have a gestapo in ICE arresting mayors and judges, an admin talking about suspending habeas corpus, going after scientists who come to conclusions they don’t like, and just gutting funding for research in general.

You can say, “oh this is hyperbole” and “these people are wrong to leave,” but all that really gonna matter is that they were terrified and left.

> respectfully disagree on several points.. if "public opinion" is only legitimate in 240 characters or less, then you have doomed yourself.

I have very bad news for you re: the last ~70 years of research on voter behavior in democracies.

The story of the field is, if I may paint it a bit poetically, researchers hiding under their desks and rocking back and forth going "it can't be that bad... it can't really work like that..." until they gin up the courage to look again, find it's even worse than they thought, and repeat the cycle.

is it knee-jerk if certain highly influential people have direct ties to the Nazi party?

You might want to read about why the Musk's moved from Canada to South Africa, and also the orgins and links of some of the ideologies that family continues to associate with.

Given support to extemist far right parties, given nazi salutes ... the knee jerk "ref to nazi is inappropriate" thing is not convincing anymore.

> respectfully disagree on several points.. if "public opinion" is only legitimate in 240 characters or less, then you have doomed yourself.

That's the problem of the tiktokification of public discourse. Attention spans of the wide masses are really, really low, everything longer than a tiktok or youtube short just gets dismissed as "too long, didn't read". Trump, for all his faults, is a master of that - each of his speeches is not designed to be appealing to the audience, but to be cut into very short "soundbites" that just convey the core message.

This is not a knee jerk mention of Nazis, it is a well known fact that after world war II the US changed strategy to invest in research and pull the best talent from around the world. That was in part motivated by German scientists fleeing Nazi Germany.

I'd say the swing in Federal powers comes from the real income dropping for most Americans over the last 30 years. Nobody wants to be told "this is great!" when it is not. Especially when it's "Macroeconomists say this is great!".

Bread and circuses -- the prior administrations, regardless of political camp, have delivered neither the circus nor the bread. People want to try something else.

That's in my opinion totally orthogonal to the aims of those digging in Federally right now; those aims are fairly diverse in my opinion, if themed.

> If I were in charge of science in a wealthy country right now I would be working overtime to brain drain US researchers.

My perception (probably skewed by overly negative media) is that the US is leading a global trend (emphasis on leading). It feels like the world is too busy preparing for war or economic gloom than trying to poach scientists.

Counterpoint via anecdotes… this week I am at the International Symposium for Green Chemistry. >600 chemists from all over the world. They are all psyched to advance safer and sustainable solutions to a wide variety of problems. You see all their funding sources from the UN to EU to country to city to local, as well as private companies. You see their collaboration and enthusiasm.

Of course the US comes up… but it seems that the rest of the world is just moving on without us (I am American). Our government is simply an unreliable partner. Some US PhD candidates here are looking for post-doc labs in the EU.

A speaker for Dow Chemical was talking about their Year 2050+ plan for net-zero CO2 and circular economy. I was surprised to learn (news was last month) that Dow cancelled their $9B net-zero ethylene processing facility in Canada because US tariffs will make it too expensive (to build it and long term it’s the source of ethylene). Imagine the jobs lost, contracts lost, US exports lost, and environmental damage.

This morning I had this conversation (before seeing OP): “If all the US university research funding disintegrates, how does that affect the primacy of US science education? How should somebody applying to college now think about this?” Perhaps focus on a teaching-focused college and then try to do the research abroad? Of course such choices are more easily available to the wealthy. US higher science education and industry will just naturally decline?

Random: Only one talk I’ve seen so far included a GitHub repo.

Separately, I have multiple friends who lost their US lab funding and/or jobs. I also have a friend who was being poached via Dutch Visa fast-track. I think the science brain drain is real.

Somebody should really tell the world about the artificial sun scientists cooked up last time we asked them to focus all their attention at war stuff.