re: #125 oaktree

That is a factor. Will probably take us getting “sputnik-ed” by China or India in some noticable technological and politically visible way to make scientific endeavor popular enough again to draw truly meaningful funding.

Aside: Was at a party over the weekend and a side discussion was a middle-aged man expounding on how the “liberals” gave up on funding space exploration in order to keep up welfare payments and support to the idle poor in order to guarantee continuing to get their vote. (I should put scare quotes on ‘idle poor’ since it was essentially being used as a dog whistle for minorities.) I resisted getting involved since I did not know the relationship between the man and my hosts - and guess he was probably a relative. Besides the fact that there was a 80+% chance that the guy would not listen too or believe facts if I offered them.

America definitely needs to feel its weakness and lack of supremacy for a while, maybe this is it, maybe this unemployment, this housing popped bubble, it’s all the new normal for a while. But we can’t have an actual leftist party? Oh no! That would be unamerican! Nope, still stuck with center and center right, as usual, the corporatists who aren’t bigots, and the corporatists who are

And yeah, you can’t argue with those people, like trying to teach a dog how to play chess, probably all hopped up on bad talk radio