epitaph said:
convey their self-righteousness and anti-development/anti-technology/anti-globalism-related ideas
i will admit that, within the academic community. there is a sort of very crazy left-wing out there that points towards systemic problems with the scientific method and just the language of it all. but that is an intellectual thing in itself. and what's more, it doesn't carry over into politics.
but really what i see where i'm from (the us) is that the conservatives are almost always responsible for blocking science & technology. hence the name, really. the ideology of conservatism, i feel, contains some anti-intellectualism within it, under the veil of skepticism. but there's a difference between being -a- being a skeptic in the empirical, methodical, scientific sense and -b- holding people back in search of some mythical "good old days" that only you can remember.
a lot of the republican party (and some of the dems) tend to misuse/throw about terms like "data accuracy", "data quality", "junk science" (in contrast with "sound science") etc. they use every trick in the book to make sure that, should a study not come out the way they intend, it gets ignored and dr. whoever that's a friend of the white house can just throw something together that will get the shit cited out of it.
internet = tubes anyone? every word out of sen. orrin hatch's mouth, anyone?
i mean c'mon, the current us president is a fucking creationist.
the left wing is not the problem, at least not in the case of science, at least not in the us. yeah, environmental issues can make it harder to develop land, etc. but also a lot of good laws get lumped in with the bullshit corrupt ones that municipal & state governments enforce because it gives them a little bit more power when it comes to deciding who gets to build where. i get what you're saying but i really don't think anti-technology is the right phrase for it. globalism is also a tough one to nail down...i'm sure you're talking about outsourcing and the like. but a lot of the stuff the current american administration is doing is not "global" in any sense.
our idea of globalism is having halliburton do business with a country we're at war with ("light treason") via their cayman island laundry service...it's like arrested development but real and a lot less funny.