Students and Faculty at UCB Protest Attack on Science and Research

Photos: Leon Kunstenaar

(Berkeley, March 7) - As students and professors, including a Nobel laureate, addressed the crowd, I tried to understand: "Why would any government, of any ideological bent, want to destroy the nation's scientific research establishment when it claims to want to make the country "great".

As I questioned demonstrators at Friday's rally and protest, the answers were varied. They mostly attributed the lunacy of Trump actions to the kind of individual that he is.

1. "Make American Great Again" is just an empty meaningless slogan to label Trump's dismantlement on the US Government in order to gain ever more power and plunder the country's wealth.

2. He knows that rational inquiry would reveal that everything he claims would prove that he is, technically speaking, utterly full of sh**t.

3. His only way of interacting with others is threat and intimidation or flattery as with foreign dictators. He is an an excellent actor but he can only play one role, himself. He is intellectually void. If he were to walk into the faculty lounge at any institution of higher learning, he would be sent to get the refreshments. He knows this and this is why he hates academics.

4. What happens to the country is outside of his perceptive frame. Only he matters. His self hatred requires him to endlessly "win" at the expense of others. From the time his father hired "models" to hang on his arm to make him look successful with the girls to the pretend phone calls to make him look important he made as a real estate manipulator, he learned that he could win only by cheating.

5. He has no friends, only enemies to conquer or sycophants that must grovel. He seeks perpetual gratification which is always inadequate.

This, then, is the one our nation, with its electoral system rotted by money, has "elected" as its leader.

See all high resolution photos here.