Even outside of politics it is really terrible dealing with them. Habitual liars, always think they are the victim, always want to micro manage others, always think they know better than others, lack of self awareness , etc. etc.
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I'm a graduate student in a STEM field. Most of my life I was fairly libertarian, and when I started I thought it would be fine being a libertarian in a STEM field would be fine. It is absolutely not. I don't feel safe expressing my political beliefs, compounded by the fact that these brainwashed idiots have done more to push me to the right than every post on /pol/ combined.
Honestly I never thought politics would be the main reason I would want out of academia so badly, and I'm not even sure now what to do after getting my doctorate.
Academics really hate libertarians these days.
Jo Jorgenson would be disturbed if she saw the disgusting shit some of the crazy leftist academics I used to work with wrote about her on Facebook last year.
My advice to you is to keep your head down, get your degree and get out of academia.
We are entering dark times in America.
The left is going full Mao Cultural Revolution these days.
You don't want to be surrounded by their most fervent believers every day.
I agree, I don't think some of the professors realize how bad it's getting. I remember there being a social-type event a couple years ago, and overhearing the head of my program talk to a professor about a complaint against him because his rotation student thought he didn't like her because she was a lesbian. He had absolutely no idea about her sexuality and was shocked and blindsided. Both were (and I believe still are) at a minimum hardcore Democrats.
The program chair's response was something to the effect of "I know, I know. Just... be careful, around these students". I mostly just remember the pause he had, it made me wonder if he realized how far it was going. Now that I'm writing this I'm also realizing that he stepped down as chair last year and that makes me wonder if it might have been connected. His replacement is a white woman huge on diversity and inclusion and goes on at length.
I know my advisor is clueless about the world outside his lab, he thinks Biden will be amazing because he "has a plan". He doesn't know the details of the plan, but he had basically the same idea and was unironically excited about Clinton in 2016. He just treats politics like a sports team and he picked the Democrats just because. I keep thinking at some point this far left plague is going to hit here like it did at Evergreen, and he's exactly the sort of guy who would blindly walk into the crosshairs.
I've told this story elsewhere, but your last sentence reminds me of a postdoc from Germany in my lab. Once I was talking with him and his wife at a lab party and the subject of the German economy came up. His wife is from a city in East Germany, and she was going on about how German media was not just incorrect about the state of the economy there, they were actively lying. He kept trying to defend the media "You're overexaggerating. Why would they lie? What would they have to benefit?" Her answer was "I don't know why but I know they are"
This then went to Merkel and the immigration, and when asked they both agreed that Merkel was great and the immigrants were needed because the German media said so. I asked (and in retrospect this was an extremely risky thing to ask) what if the media was lying like they were about her home city. Suddenly she sounded exactly like her husband only a minute earlier and any sense of logic about it went out the window. I didn't challenge it any more, but it made a lot of sense how people can so blindly walk into authoritarianism.
I find it weird how these people can be so educated and informed about our field, and I respect their opinions in that regard, but be so utterly clueless about everything else to the point I can't stand to listen to them speak.