[chii]

If you've read the three-body problem series (or the tv show) [spoiler incoming]

- - - -

the way to stop humanity from being able to fight back (against alien invasion) is not via weapons, but via disabling science. It's a long term strategy.

So the conspiracy theory that trump is a russian asset (or is influenced by them at the least), seems plausible, if you imagine that such removal of science and research funding is meant to disable american technological progress for decades to come. This would be a strategy that outlasts the tenure of the russian asset.

[andix]

Those concepts are not science fiction, they were very often used in the past already. Just read about how the most famous dictators in history came to power, and what they did first.

Discrediting scientist is a standard step for most dictators. They only keep the bare minimum they need for the military and surveillance.

[late2part]

Who is the dictator here? Obviously the states that run these schools will raise taxes to fund the state schools, no?

[ncallaway]

> Who is the dictator here?

I’d say the leader of the executive branch who is unconstitutionally restricting (without an act of Congress) money that Congress lawfully appropriated, thereby seizing most of the power of the purse.

[MyOutfitIsVague]

The dictator is still in the oven, but it's nearly ready. Just needs a topping of constitutional crisis and a suspension of elections and it'll be done.

[dragonwriter]

You don't need to suspend elections you just need to subvert them. For-show elections make good dictatorial theater.

[MyOutfitIsVague]

Yeah, I was going to say that the most likely thing is "making the voting process more secure and reliable to make sure elections are fair" by setting up voting machines and counting processes run entirely by loyalists, but that's less punchy and didn't fit the metaphor.

[hayst4ck]

The constitutional crisis was Trump's pardon of Joe Arpaio's contempt of court.

If the president can pardon contempt, then the president has the power to exempt a person from the obligation to show up in court, admit guilt, or experience consequences for their crime.

That was the moment of structural executive supremacy and an actual constitutional crisis -- when the law contradicts itself calling the laws themselves into question.