@drianweissman.bsky.social

What's your personal feeling about that?

Progress is not linear or assured. But this country can surprise us. Things are worse than I ever expected but I still have hope. Trump is like -8% in approval ratings. It is not a situation where we have a dictator with large-scale approval... yet

I have strange feelings about all this. One the one hand, I too am hopeful for some semblance of a return to normalcy in a couple of years. NIH will persevere and we'll all go back to arguing about fonts and formatting.

Another part of me worries (senses?) about a fundamental shift in the system. The federal government is no longer a trustworthy partner (even if Dems win in 26/28). Once you have no confidence in the US government and its institutions, where do you go from there?

This is what I worry about most. Once you poison the well of trust that underpins the system, then what we really have is a game of political brinksmanship. And the R's have advantages in winning that because of demographics and because they frankly have no qualms destroying the country to "win"

Gerrymandering and the supreme court are the best examples. R's have a first mover and structural advantage in a way they can consolidate power even against broad democratic (small d) wishes. It is an orthogonal and deeply insidious strategy vs just making a political case to try and win elections.

If projects funded by the federal government can be terminated at every election for any reason, how can you have any sort of federally funded research that takes longer than 1-4 years to complete?

I'm incredibly bearish on all of this tbh, not just the NIH.

yes, this is so much deeper and wider than NIH an isolated “reset” of NIH is IMO impossible — and I don’t know if or how we do that for our entire political system, or if that would be enough to rebuild in our lifetime

I keep asking myself "is this the country I want my children to grow up in?" and I am finding it harder and harder to say yes. I simply do not see a bright future here.

Yet

hope for the best — but prepare for the worst