Additional Background: US government provides funding, US government tries to use that leverage to decide how the show will be run.

Over the years I've come to accept the blind spot most people have where, despite all evidence, they assume that the government goals match their own. But it still isn't the case. The prudent approach is to set up institutions that are largely independent of government. Government funding is not an answer to long term problems. Governments are too fickle and the political bandwidth isn't high enough to handle complex arguments like whether researching structure in sequences of 0s and 1s is a good idea.

I know the fashion is to present Trump as some weird aberration but he's been a factor for about 10 years now and won his 3rd election pretty convincing margins. Nobody can say they are surprised that the US government is behaving erratically if it is an environment where Trump is a top contender for high office.

But government funding was set up in a way meant to counteract fickleness. Government actions are supposed to be proposed publicly, accept and consider public comments, and then allow legal arguments about the process and motivations. And funding is assigned by Congress, two legislative bodies with hundreds of members that follow extensive rules and procedures to do anything.

The current "fickleness" is from a single individual. The other branches of government are refusing to check out even criticize his actions. This is what would happen with any funding from individuals. The lesson we should be taking from this situation is either (1) controls on the government need to have more teeth and not rely solely on politicians, or (2) the US accepts authoritarianism right now and no Constitution would stop that.

> Government funding is not an answer to long term problems.

Funding from private sources who are usually more short-sighted and less transparent can't be the alternative. An alternative I can think of are international entities that have some semblance of independence from constituent nations. I think that for a democratic government, public funding is alright, as long as the government is, well, healthy. In this light the issue with funding is simply a symptom of a government that does not serve its citizens well, which is the root cause that must be cured.

> US government provides funding, US government tries to use that leverage to decide how the show will be run.

Pray tell where are the examples from previous administrations of how billions of dollars in funding was yanked or suspended from multiple colleges until they paid "settlement fees" just to make it go away and get their funding restored, without even any due process.

Yes, the gov have always exercised some pressure on institutions or shifting funding towards their priorities. But no one but Trump has engaged in blatant mafia-style extortion.

> Government funding is not an answer to long term problems

It has been said that government funding is the worst form of funding except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time

He has only won two elections. In the first one, he lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote. In the second one, he did win the popular vote by 1.5%, which is hardly a convincing margin.

You're right, Trump is not a weird aberration; he's a natural progression of the Republican Party since at least Barry Goldwater in the early 1960s. I never thought I would live to see the John Birch Society go from radical crazies to mainstream

>> won his 3rd election

Really - I think that more or less confirms your bias.