And the "real experts" left us dependent on Russia for launching a couple capsules a year to the space station.

They could have done what Musk did with Falcon 9 in the 90's. Instead they chose to mess around more with solid fueled heavy lift vehicles, all the while proclaiming that they were the experts/science.

The fallacy you are committing here is making all the non-spacex experts a homogeneous straw people.