[TonyStr]

Yeah, this read more like a long twitter rant than anything I'd expect to find on science.org. With posts like these, I always wonder what the intent is? I'm an outsider, so to convince me of anything you'd have to give more context to your claims (linking to a few publications and using their titles as a priori fact isn't convincing). If you want to convince someone who has enough context to understand each claim, wouldn't their opinions already be too entrenched to sway from a post like this?

[SpicyLemonZest]

If you were a true outsider, if you genuinely didn't know what's going on, you would be very alarmed. Why is science.org posting things that sound like Twitter rants? They say the government hates science and wants to destroy it, that's pretty scary! Achieving this alarm is the intent of the post; the author doesn't normally post about politics, but he wants outsiders who don't know about what's going on to understand that this is a really big deal, not just another round of the eternal debate on precise funding priorities.

What's actually happening is that you do know what's going on, but you've adopted a strong identity as an apolitical "outsider". So when you notice that the Trump regime hates scientific research and wants to destroy it, that's deeply uncomfortable; you'd be forced to adopt political opinions if you focused on that and paid attention to it. You're left with no choice but to blame the messenger for pointing towards it.

[R_D_Olivaw]

Hear hear! Well put.

Ostriches with their heads in the sand not wanting to state at the doom. Upset at someone that made them look up, not at the doom itself.