Do you or have you ever worked in science? I did for a bit and that was not my impression.
I imagine it depends heavily on the field. In some fields there are ideas that one can’t seriously study because they’re considered settled or can’t be studied without doing more harm than any believed good that could be achieved. There are others subject to essentially ideological capture where the barrier to publish is largely determined by how ideologically aligned you are (fields linked to an identity group have a bad habit of being about activism first and accurate observation of reality second).
…and yet they’ve had power before - several times, including once with it being literally this dipshit - and haven’t burned it all down to gain power yet.
But then this election is different, it’s the most important election of our lifetimes, just like the Democrats have said about every other election since at least 2004. Down to the literal phrase “the most important election of our lifetimes.”
The reality is both major parties benefit from the system, and both market based on fear because they don’t have anything positive to offer voters that isn’t an outright lie that the voters know is an outright lie. The big difference is the the GOP markets on fear of the other and the Dems market on fear of the GOP.