To make it easier to push "alternative truths".

I think the plan might be to reinstate science in some form after they have grabbed full control of the country.

Punishing apparent ideological enemies is a long standing mechanism for fascists and dictators - and scientists in the US qualify. It's an attempt to make people fear standing against them.

Destroying sources of truth is a long standing goal for those who want people to act against their own interest, and scientists are a source of truth. It's shrinking the pie so that the republican leadership can capture a much bigger slice of it.

> but wouldn't a general anti-science movement make the country less competitive

It's not "a general anti-science movement", it's about tight control, everything else is unimportant.

> directly hurt industries like pharma/etc

Not a problem if tight control is in place.

Reality has a well known liberal bias.

For example, the Security of War recently had a well produced video saying we're going to do anyway with vaccine mandates for the military.

>Hegseth announced in late April that he was making the annual flu vaccine voluntary for service members "effective immediately." In a video posted to social media, Hegseth said requiring people to get vaccinated was "overly broad and not rational."

>By early May, all military departments had formally requested exemptions that allow them to keep requiring flu vaccinations for certain service members, and those exemptions were granted in early June, according to the congressional staffer. The exemptions typically apply to vulnerable populations like people who live in communal environments, healthcare workers and other categories, the staffer said

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/military-flu-vaccine-recruits-h...

See that pesky reality thing.

Trying to understand conservative thought is to go into a bizarre twilight zone where vaccines cause autism, do more harm than good, and at the same time our " adversaries" deliberately created illnesses which can be prevented by vaccines.

Then again, maybe the illnesses are designed to get more people vaccinated, in order to spread autism.

Behind it all.

Big Train of course.

> wouldn't a general anti-science movement make the country less competitive in the long run

Less competitive for tertiary industries like tech, pharma, etc. More competitive for lower-level industries like mining, resource extraction, low-tech and labor-intensive manufacturing, etc. The Administration represents the latter economic sectors. They want more people in factories and fewer people in offices.

I know this isn't HN type of a topic or a comment, but looking at US from outside, the theme looks to be explicitly destroying US hegemony and meritocracy...

What I feel to be a common denominator for Trump, Thiel/Musk, and MAGA types, is that they are the people who "otherwise wouldn't have been chosen" for one reason or another. I've had stupidly engaged in a pointless argument with MAGA type people on some anonymous forum, and what I slowly realized is that a lot of them fail to hide having an okay picture of the actual reality when absolutely cornered and pushed hard, with the caveat that the chances for them getting any win whatsoever by embracing some alternative, conspiracy, false narratives is above zero, whereas the same for not doing so is at very most zero. There have been news reports of Bill Gates and Elon Musk both having engaged in quite some reprehensible acts on some island, but Gates would still always come first on headlines whenever they would be in a photo together. This would be contrast to how media universally reports Musk throwing the Nazi salute(which is the worst I've seen in any media that unironically makes me wonder how a real neo nazi would pause, exhale, say "you know," and shut up in German on camera reviewing it), which do yield a bunch of single name headlines. They would not have a chance of getting dopamine hit standing straight on both feet and looking straight ahead uttering all the correct words. Destroying everything that gets in the way to end this their "suffering" seem like the goal to me.

I mean, there's a very succinct and less nice word for that group of people that begins with the letter in the middle of the logo under the crown for the Dutch royal airline, but that word doesn't feel like it captures the verticality of this phenomenon.