I think that what you'll find with a lot of scientists is that their first loyalty is to all of humanity, in front of any national loyalty.
Scientists in the US have basically zero influence on any policy, on anything to do with Trump. They are not elite enough. Their voices are not heard.
Under that regime, a few people deciding that their talents are best used to advance science, rather than screaming into the wind in their home country, makes a lot of sense.
Plus, it's really important to understand how these things change so quickly. People are currently being abducted by masked men, presumably under the control of the state, but without any certainty, and being sent to prisons outside the US without any due process, in direct violation of the constitution. Scientists are being detained at the border, and sent to camps for months at a time without any clarity about if there was a crime, if they will be released, if they will ever get to see the inside of a courtroom.
Bring any of this insanity up, and slightly less than half the country will say "OK, that's fine, you're obviously exaggerating or making things up or these detained scientists deserved it." Which is an environment that only leads to even further suppression of the people.
There are a few scientists in Russia, but they mostly try to get the fuck out of there as fast as possible. And all the brave souls that dared say that the war against Ukraine was a war, well, they are now rotting in cells for daring to speak a very mild truth.
Our society will not come to protect scientists when Trump decides to go after them, and scientists realize that. And as a source of "truth" outside of the approved information environment of Trump, they are going to be one of the first casualties as Trump consolidates power, and there's jack shit that staying in the country will do to stop that, except to be the meat that gets fed into the grinder. Honestly, leaving the country now is probably more effective at stopping Trump than staying, because at least it makes a statement.
Thinking through this, by writing it out, is actually making me rethink my decision to stay. My spouse is a scientist, with lots of local support and connections, so we will probably stay because we don't want to let down all the people that have believed in her research and it will be difficult to move it to a new country. But Our staying here does not help fight against fascism, and it puts all the other work in great peril.
I just don't think it's going to be good for humanity if US ceases to be a democracy. Sure, scientists probably don't have to be on the forefront of the struggle, and I understand those who decide to leave but saying that there is no other choice as to leave - or even that that is the most moral choice - is wrong in my opinion. US has long taken freedom for granted, but there are many countries in the world where civil societies have fought against much more brutal regime than Trump tries to install, had very little reasons for hope - and still won.
It's kind of an important topic to me - I myself left Russia for good, but not when Putin's regime has started, but rather when it has become so entrenched that there was indeed no hope left. At the same time I've always looked with awe at nations that made it, most of all Ukraine - and sincerely hope that Americans won't give up easily now.
Yeah, I fully agree, it'll be awful for everybody if the US goes full on rogue state.
But I also believe the best thing left for us to do is to build up the remaining free world to a point where it can convincingly deter aggression by authoritarian states including the US.
I feel like once you're at the "masked men disappear unwanteds to Gulags without due process" stage, it's hard to come back.
I don't want to downplay it, but even if US literally had masked men disappear American citizens without trace, that would be... well, just a dictatorship - many of them were overcome when society picked up the fight.
I think we are very kindred spirits. If you have thoughts on what to do, please share because I'm desperate to find out.
I think that US culture is far closer to Russia or Belarus in culture these days than Ukraine. The Ukrainians I know all said "why aren't the Americans all out in the streets" when Trump started doing all these things. Because that's what Ukrainians do when there's injustice. In the US, those who resist feel defeated already, because of the reelection of somebody who was clearly criminal and has no respect for democracy, and there's very little leadership on pushing back.
I think the energy may come back, we in the US may find our strength again. But the information environment is so poisoned that I fear only violence will finally break through to the poisoned minds, and I really really don't want it to come to that. Maidan happened in Ukraine because the general populace said "we won't tolerate the government beating students doing protests." In the US, we've become quite tolerant of that, and even of the masked police.
I want to stay and fight, but I don't know how. I don't know if anybody knows how. Eastern Europe is about 10-20 years ahead of where the US is in terms of government evolution, because the fall of the USSR caused a speed-run through.
The points you make strongly remind me of this book based on interviews of Germans post-WW2, about the rise of Nazism:
> In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
> "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
> "But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
> "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
They Thought They Were Free - The Germans, 1933-45
Scientists in the US have basically zero influence on any policy, on anything to do with Trump. They are not elite enough. Their voices are not heard.
Under that regime, a few people deciding that their talents are best used to advance science, rather than screaming into the wind in their home country, makes a lot of sense.
Plus, it's really important to understand how these things change so quickly. People are currently being abducted by masked men, presumably under the control of the state, but without any certainty, and being sent to prisons outside the US without any due process, in direct violation of the constitution. Scientists are being detained at the border, and sent to camps for months at a time without any clarity about if there was a crime, if they will be released, if they will ever get to see the inside of a courtroom.
Bring any of this insanity up, and slightly less than half the country will say "OK, that's fine, you're obviously exaggerating or making things up or these detained scientists deserved it." Which is an environment that only leads to even further suppression of the people.
There are a few scientists in Russia, but they mostly try to get the fuck out of there as fast as possible. And all the brave souls that dared say that the war against Ukraine was a war, well, they are now rotting in cells for daring to speak a very mild truth.
Our society will not come to protect scientists when Trump decides to go after them, and scientists realize that. And as a source of "truth" outside of the approved information environment of Trump, they are going to be one of the first casualties as Trump consolidates power, and there's jack shit that staying in the country will do to stop that, except to be the meat that gets fed into the grinder. Honestly, leaving the country now is probably more effective at stopping Trump than staying, because at least it makes a statement.
Thinking through this, by writing it out, is actually making me rethink my decision to stay. My spouse is a scientist, with lots of local support and connections, so we will probably stay because we don't want to let down all the people that have believed in her research and it will be difficult to move it to a new country. But Our staying here does not help fight against fascism, and it puts all the other work in great peril.