Reddit in Full Panic Mode Over Trump
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss how extreme some parts of the federal government have gone on the internet, including the Alt-US National Park Service and a group of federal employees who oppose the elected will of the people during the first Trump administration.
Transcript
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Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because I have received so many
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suggestions from our listeners to visit Fed News on Reddit, which we had previously talked about
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being basically dead, but I guess dead with the caveat that it was mostly government workers who
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were posting on it. So I guess it's not dead when it comes to-
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She means Reddit being dead, not Fed News being dead. And there was a great graph I saw of our
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Fed News on Reddit. And then it looked at work hours, like Fed work hours. And basically people
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are only on our Fed News during government work hours. But I want to talk about what they're
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talking about. I want to show how extreme Reddit has gone, how extreme parts of the federal government
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has gone. I showed you one thing recently, the Our Parks, which has changed their sign to like a
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handheld up fist, Alt-US National Park Service. And it has on the website, ourparks.org,
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a message for President Trump. You've previously shut down our social media use and eroded
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environmental protections, but you can't silence our collective voice. Our Parks is a stand to
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safeguard our environment and prevent four more years of destruction. Join us to protect our national
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parks for future generations. Sign the pledge now. This is a great list for who to fire, Elon,
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by the way. Good list. Oh my gosh. I'm so glad they're putting this together for us. By the way,
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if you're wondering what this organization is, this is a group of federal parks employees that
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specifically got together to oppose the elected will of the people during the first Trump
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administration. And now is trying to redouble their efforts and was in Reddit as seen as sort
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of a champion. They're like, oh, and there was a top post recently about how old parks employees
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are going to stop Trump. And if you're wondering who's funding this stuff, it's being funded to the
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tune of a hundred million dollars by the Lilly Endowment Inc. That's the Eli Lilly Foundations
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that is supposed to be giving money to religious, specifically Christian focused issues and
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education focused issues. But nope, they've been taken over by far leftists. And this is what we
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repeatedly see of Christian nonprofit institutions that were set up in the past.
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And if you're like, oh, come on, you shouldn't be that mean to like the people who are hanging out
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on Reddit. So I go to Reddit and the top post for me, the top post, which is not under Fed News,
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just on the homepage, right? On the homepage. No, it doesn't have that many upvotes. It must have
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gotten a number of them very quickly to shoot it to the top. Also, if you check Reddit today versus
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Reddit of the past, top posts do not have as many upvotes as they used to. The site is not used as much,
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even though its numbers would imply that it is. I have to assume they're FedBots.
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Is six random young people working for Elon, 25, 22, 19, 23, 24, and 21, with just gross
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mischaracterizations of them posted based on the original strong, bad sort of meme from Homestar Runner.
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Teen Girl Squad! Cheerleader! So-and-so! Watch your face! The ugly one!
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So they have the Jesus one, age 25, the lactose intolerant one, age 22, the chronic masturbator,
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age 19, the murderer, age 23, the date-grapist, age 24, and the serious one, age 21. By the way,
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the one who looks a little brown, guess what they named him? The serious one.
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Right? The lactose intolerant one is the Asian one. But then I went to it to see what the most
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And the kid here who they doxxed and listed as a murderer in this chart? Let's see the type of
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20-year-old who Elon is finding to do this stuff. I think when you learn who these people really are,
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you'll understand why they're so terrified of them.
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One day I was just listening to a podcast back in March. It was with Nat Friedman. He just kind of
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got on the podcast, explained like, there are these burnt-up scrolls that were buried in the Pompeii
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eruption. No one knows how to read them, but some professors have created CT scans of these scrolls,
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and they uploaded the data on the internet as a competition to see who could find writing inside
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of these scrolls. And when I heard that, I was just immediately like, oh my goodness,
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this is such a cool project. I have to work on this. I just went home from work that day at the
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end of the day, and I've been working on it evenings and weekends ever since.
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I run most of the things from my laptop. It's just a normal MacBook, don't worry. But then I've just got
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like five surplus computers in here. This is what I do most of my work from. I just spend hours upon
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hours staring at flattened pieces of the scroll like this, trying to find these patterns,
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which are part of the writing. At the start of the challenge, we had not been able to find
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any writing at all within these scrolls. There are hundreds of these scrolls that are from the
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mansion. We've scanned a couple of them, and no one had been able to find any writing in them using
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these methods. Late one Saturday night, I was sitting at a party at a friend's house in Omaha,
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and I get a text from another person on the challenge team, and he says, hey,
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I've just uploaded this new kind of piece of the scroll. You should take a look at it. I remotely
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accessed my computer. I type into it like, please run the algorithm on this new piece of scroll.
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And then I just kind of start it. I pull out my phone again, just nonchalantly like,
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hey, I wonder how that went. And there are three Greek letters on the screen,
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letters I'd never seen before. It was really cool because it's like, oh my goodness,
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like, we actually detected new writing in the scrolls using AI. That was the moment I realized,
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like, this is actually going to work. Like, we were probably going to read the scrolls.
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And I completely freaked out. My friends were there, and I was cheering, jumping up and down,
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you know, screaming, crying, all the stuff. Now we're reading entire paragraphs from the scrolls,
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and hopefully we'll be able to read the entire book and read the hundreds of other books that
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were buried in this condition as well. The entire thing was shut down,
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couldn't see any comments. And it turned out that most I put a comment on it when I was on it
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was a nine negative downvote one. Why was this a top comment? I don't know. Reddit is jank these days.
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No, I didn't accidentally have my filter set to most controversial. And it was somebody saying,
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while this entire situation is effed, this post is still just blatant slander. They're basically kids,
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and you call them, quote unquote, murderers and, quote unquote, date rapists. Really?
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And then under that, people are saying, well, I agree with you to some extent. I don't think,
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quote, they're basically kids, end quote, is a valid excuse, given their current unearned
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position of power in the federal government. I'm sorry, what do you think any federal government
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employee is? Unearned a position of power? What, what is this? Well, I don't. So what I learned,
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and I mean, you, you spent time living and interning, at least in DC, and I spent time
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living and schooling and working in DC. Government jobs, I think when people work for the federal
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government, they get a very different understanding of what earning means, because there are all these,
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like, levels and codes and certifications. Oh no, it's an MLM. Yeah, like after a certain
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number of years, then you, you classify for this tier and this level, and it's all extremely
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complicated. And none of it is based on your competency or how well it is. But I think that
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they have, I mean, once you spend enough time inside a cult, you normalize the cult activities. I think
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what's going on is they're like, well, I earned my place, because I am now. I sat at an office on
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Reddit for X and orange level tier five, you know, clearance number three, eight, five, H Y.
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And therefore I've earned my position and it's, I mean, it is their reality. How can you question
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that? I mean, and there are people that we know and love who work for the federal government. Like,
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I'm not saying that everyone who works for the federal government is, is, is completely delusional.
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Most people aren't, most people are really reasonable, but I do think that there are some
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people who, I don't, I mean, I think you might be being a little too generous. Let's go to some
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of the other comments here. So then this is somebody defending them under that person. They go,
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but are there any basis to the claims in the pick? They can be people doing Elon's bidding,
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which is illegal, but also not the things pointed out above, unless some facts back it up. Then they
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say, edit downvoted by people playing right into the hands of the people that will ignore everything
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you say, because you can't stay on topic without childish BS, but all they are is childish BS.
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An up vote here is somebody with a black person emoji, thumbs up. Next one is somebody saying,
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F them, they'll be tried as adults in any court. If they had darker skin, they'd be called thugs,
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and Trump would take them out and execute them. This is what they really think is happening,
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by the way. They chose to join the coop, F them in association. And then the next one is old enough to
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commit the crimes old enough to be called names. So, you know, the, the, the mindset of these people
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is extreme. I was in looking at like, okay, what's being said in our fed news. One of the top posts
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was C-SPAN is taking calls from federal employees right now called, and then they have the number
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and they go, they are currently talking about a certain billionaires meddling in the government.
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Oh, you didn't care when all those other billionaires, because you know, Kamala did raise
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three times the amount Trump raised. Yeah. Like really, where was the money people? Where was
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the money? It's not like Bill Gates. Oh, they don't care when it's their billionaires.
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But anyway, they, the, the top comment here I love is do not call during your duty hours,
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because apparently they know that the fed employees wouldn't even think to be like,
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oh yeah, I probably shouldn't go. And the government's paying me to do something else.
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And recently was the, what's the department that Trump's, that, that Elon has been shutting
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down. Yeah. Elon, by the way. USAID is what he has like almost complete. Right. So one of the areas
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where there's a lot of attack taking place is Elon is 100% going hard on USAID, which allegedly gives
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a lot of international aid. But I remember having conversations with people who worked at USAID
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as, as federal employees. We're saying like eight, eight, more than eight years ago now. So like,
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not like this is anything new, just like, this was just how it was saying, yeah, you know,
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like I fly out and we go to these conferences and, you know, I'll work for weeks on a report. And like,
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no one really reads it. It doesn't do anything, but I do really enjoy the work. And I remember
00:10:13.400
thinking that and being like, wait, but you're not frustrated. And, and this person really just did
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just, you know, enjoy the work, enjoy the research. So it was kind of just cool to be paid for it,
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even if it wasn't making any difference in the world or like being utilized by the people who
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are receiving it. And I only just put two and two together when Elon Musk went hard on
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the actual department of like, wait, these are federal tax dollars being used to pay for a bunch
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of reports and people flying out to conferences and meetings to talk about a whole lot of change
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that's never going to happen. Like, yeah, this is a very egregious waste of tax dollar money.
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And I feel conflicted because I really respect the person who had told me this.
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And I, although I also remember feeling really conflicted when this person said that to me,
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because I was like, wait, but you're so talented and you're so smart. Your, your work could actually
00:11:09.480
make a difference somewhere. Are you sure that you want to work for the federal government and
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do this work that no one's going to pay attention to or listen or, or heed it is kind of, yeah,
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I don't know. It feels almost like talented players out of the US. Yeah. It's like,
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it's like the worst version of an IQ shredder. And I think one of the reasons this person preferred
00:11:29.480
it was because it was very stable work. It, there was very low change, great benefits. You know,
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it was a comfortable job. It's not like doing the same kind of work in academia or something
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where things could be a lot more competitive resources are dwindling, et cetera. It's really
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political. I mean, it was political where she worked as well, but anyway, I just, I feel so
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conflicted about it now, but I'm also like, man, but like eight years ago, I was hearing about basically
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just money and time being wasted in this entire department. And it's weird to hear it being attacked.
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Now I'll, I'll, I'll pivot a little bit to just like what's going, what's going on in Fed news,
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which many of our viewers are already well aware. But I think one of my favorite things is I look at
00:12:11.560
the theme that, that if you go, for example, to top this month and you sort of see the initial
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reactions to everything that's happening, a really big theme is remember the oath, hold the line,
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hold the line. Like this is being repeated across many posts. One, one person made an illustration.
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That I'll share with you of like a cry baby Trump and a diaper saying, give me in front of a line
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of federal workers. That is extremely DEI looking because they're like intentionally people of all
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colors of the rainbow. And you got to share this or viewers can see it. And there's, there's a person
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in a wheelchair. So, you know, that like, they're all about the diversity. It's actually interesting to see
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what this particular Redditor decided to represent as the federal government being the CDC,
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Medicare, the EPA, U.S. mail, education, social security, freedom, democracy, and the FDA.
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No, they're not all BIPOC. There's plenty of possibly white people there.
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A person with microcephaly, clearly. Right under the FDA is a person suffering from microcephaly.
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So we've got disability. We've got different ethnicities. We've got the wheelchair.
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Wait, do you think that that's what it is, microcephaly, or they're just a bad drawer?
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Well, let's be nice and charitable to them and assume that it's someone with microcephaly working
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for the federal government, Malcolm. It happens, okay?
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Hold on. So I love, so something I learned about really interesting today. So when he's taking
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apart this department, Elon, right? Everyone's freaking out the USA department. He's like,
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okay, when I got to this department, I thought it was like an apple was a worm in it. And what
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it turned out was just like a big ball of worms.
00:13:52.440
Well, yeah, because his, his big thing is focus is on, let's just go after overpayments and payments
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for stuff that isn't doing anything. And I think that the bigger issue is he's like,
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wait, they don't even give out that much money. The thing they take, it looks like they might be
00:14:07.240
taking more than the CIA. I think it's 17 billion a year or something. That is mind-blowing. I did not
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know that. Yeah. And if you look at the stuff that they are putting money into, you know,
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Brill Crystal, that guy who handled Trump, sorry, hassled Trump forever and made up this Russia
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collusion story. It was like the core person pushing it. And his org was the core org pushing
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it. They were paid by USDA. So they were funded. All of that Russian collusion stuff was funded by
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this org and Trump didn't even shut them down in his first administration. It was created by an
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executive order. So there's no reason for it to even exist. And the guy who did all of that,
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he's still on their payroll right now. Oh, well, you know, it's hard to fire federal employees for
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more color on this. Bill Crystal founded the DDT or the Defending Democracy Together Foundation.
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This played a pivotal role in amplifying concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
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This organization received a hefty donation from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, RPA,
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a donor-advised fund, which received $38 million from USAID. Now, some will claim,
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well, you know, it's not for certain that any of that money went to them because the portion of it,
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about half of it was earmarked. So $20 million was earmarked for a media initiative in South Africa.
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However, the rest of it, not earmarked. So it could have gone to him considering that his organization
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did things like a $1 million ad by trying to legitimize the Mueller investigation and a $35 million,
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a DDT-funded 2020 initiative designed to draw a connection between Trump and Russia.
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This was called Republican Voters Against Trump, R-V-A-T. Quick side note here, but with the shutdown
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of USAID on our Discord, somebody was complaining about, oh, now this program that kept African kids
00:16:01.800
from getting aid is being shut down. So I look at the program. We spent over $100 billion on this.
00:16:07.560
This is kids in another country. We've got plenty of kids suffering in the United States right here.
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And these kids who are saving, are they even going to care? Are they even going to have an
00:16:17.560
appreciation for the United States after this? No. Why should we be sacrificing for them?
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It's not the US's job to be the world police. I thought the rest of the world wanted us to stop
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that. It's not our job to be the world's social security system. It's not our job to be the world's
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Medicare system. If you want to do that, you can do that through personal donations,
00:16:39.800
rather than forcing the US taxpayer to do it. It's oh so easy to be a philanthropist when it's
00:16:45.320
not your own money that you're donating. But there is no morality in being a philanthropist when it's
00:16:50.760
not your own money that you're donating. You're just taking money from struggling children in the
00:16:55.800
United States and giving it to struggling children in another location.
00:17:07.800
Hey, so I'm kinda underwater. Is there any way you could help me and my family get out?
00:17:16.360
Oh, I'm poor. I'm so poor. I just couldn't possibly afford it. Dad, are they gonna help us?
00:17:29.000
You're too poor? In fact, if you could lend me some money. Arrest anyone who tries to help his family.
00:17:37.800
What the org will tell you is we distribute money where it's needed. No. It tells other orgs to
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distribute money where it's needed. And they don't listen, apparently.
00:17:49.560
They don't listen. It is 100% a scam. This org needs to be shut down. If you look at the percent
00:17:56.840
money- Well, Ed, I mean, again, it's not just that. It's that it also locks up otherwise
00:18:01.720
amazing talent and shreds it and wastes it. Okay, let's look at other fun stuff.
00:18:05.880
Yeah, so I just want to point out, like, the key thing now, like, a theme under Fed News is basically,
00:18:13.560
we will resist the Trump administration. The big theme, and I encourage anyone listening to this-
00:18:19.640
Is to go to reddit.com slash r slash Fed News and then filter, you know, top of my month or week
00:18:25.160
just to kind of see what's most popular. One, I will point out, it's good Reddit etiquette,
00:18:30.040
or redicate, as it were, to look at the rules of a subreddit and respect them when operating within that
00:18:34.920
subreddit. And yet, the rules are no harassment, threats, trolling, or inciting violence,
00:18:40.440
no shilling, trolling, or impersonation, no sharing sensitive or classified information,
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no political content. Oh, you know, except for, like, pictures of Trump as a crying baby.
00:18:50.760
No speculative questions, no duplicate posts, no social media content. Basically, like,
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this subreddit has flown into anarchy. The rules don't matter anymore because, you know,
00:19:01.960
when it comes to inciting violence or, you know, resisting or federal hiring questions or
00:19:09.320
speculative questions or political information, like, no, because now, you know, jobs are being
00:19:16.280
They've totally lost a run. My brother recently sent me a screenshot, which I'll post here,
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which was the Reddit front page for him, you know, just like a default front page.
00:19:24.760
Only three of, like, 23 posts weren't about Trump. He had to go through and look for them.
00:19:30.760
But let's go, like, okay, so now they're bragging about, like, no one took the offer. So they're like,
00:19:38.840
Yeah. So the fork offer for context is when the Office of Management and Budget
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emailed a huge swath of federal employees saying, we will pay you through the month of September of
00:19:48.680
this year. If you just reply to this email with the word resign and just stop coming into work,
00:19:53.720
you can get a job as soon as you want. No hard feelings. Love you. Bye. And apparently only 0.7%
00:20:00.280
of people have taken up on that offer. And a lot of this is because allegedly people are being told that
00:20:06.200
the offer is not legitimate, that it wouldn't be honored. There's another top comment is hold
00:20:12.600
the line. Don't resign federal workers. Don't do it. So there's, there's a lot of people who
00:20:18.360
They're actually like, the offer is super shady. When I've seen nothing to suggest it's shady,
00:20:22.280
they're like, oh, they won't even be able to pay it because it's not approved by the government.
00:20:25.400
These are existing federal workers. Of course it's approved by the government. It's your existing
00:20:30.040
salary. And in this post here, they're already just in one of the top comments,
00:20:33.960
blaming Curtis Yarvin for it. They're saying really, it seems like he's trying to be a tech
00:20:38.520
lord to a networked feudal cyber kingdom. Yarvin is his and the other tech bros profit.
00:20:45.400
This is the kind of guy Yarvin is in 2008 software developer in San Francisco named Curtis Yarvin
00:20:50.040
writing under the pseudonym perose a horrific solution for people he deemed not productive,
00:20:55.160
convert them into biodiesel, which will help power the Mooney buses.
00:21:07.400
So I was going through more on Fed news this morning, and this keeps coming up in the comments,
00:21:12.120
this fear that they're going to be turned into biodiesel for the tech lords. And I love this.
00:21:18.280
Well, not they, the unproductive citizens, they say. And I love this. And I just want to go with it as
00:21:23.800
much as possible. Call people biodiesel. Be like, hey, look, I don't need to take this type of
00:21:28.440
crumbs from future biodiesel. Just to freak them out. They get real angry. You have to be like,
00:21:33.400
I said bio. Do you hate the environment? It's green energy. And more importantly,
00:21:41.000
helps with overpopulation. Are you doing your part?
00:21:47.720
Yeah. So there's, there's a lot of discussion basically on like actively resisting. And it's also
00:21:53.960
so interesting. We did a separate episode on the deep state being real. And I'm
00:21:59.000
just like, I still, even after all that, after reading about the first Trump administration's
00:22:04.040
deep state encounters and the various efforts that were made to stymie its progress. Now I'm just
00:22:10.040
seeing like on a public forum, open resistance and the framing of the Trump administration as evil.
00:22:18.520
Well, I think the second from the top for the last month in this under like hexagram 11 wrote,
00:22:27.720
remember the oath, hold the line. He reiterates the pledge. I think that federal workers make,
00:22:33.720
you know, I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the constitution of the United States,
00:22:37.240
blah, blah, blah. He ends with the only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good people
00:22:42.120
to do nothing, which is basically inciting insurrection. I mean, it sounds very
00:22:46.600
insurrection. Well, I mean, you saw what was happening with the, the federal like department
00:22:51.960
around like national parks and stuff like that, right? Like this is an active insurrection that
00:22:56.920
we're dealing with. Yeah. Yeah. These are, these are people who are refusing to carry out the orders
00:23:04.440
or honor the requests of the elected executive office. And that's, it's interesting. And just,
00:23:11.720
just, just the idea for them to be like, well, they're evil. And from my understanding, the,
00:23:17.080
the thing that makes them evil, and then this is so classic pragmatist guide to governance content.
00:23:21.560
You know, you wrote about this when you talked about governance design, is it bureaucracies care
00:23:26.440
only about perpetuating themselves. And of course the people within bureaucracies care about protecting
00:23:31.080
the bureaucracies because those bureaucracies are their sources of work. There was one post that made me a
00:23:36.760
little sad to read of someone being really disheartened because he was 55 years old and
00:23:44.360
he had a, you know, a mortgage and a disabled son, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to get another
00:23:49.560
job. And I think that, that, that is something that's underrated. This blase, oh, these people
00:23:54.760
will just get new jobs. No, they won't. No, they won't. They're not qualified and they've been doing
00:23:59.640
nothing for the past 20 years. AI? No, but also like, no, knowledge workers just aren't getting jobs.
00:24:03.560
And there are some people who are like, you know, specialized workers who do very physical work,
00:24:07.880
very, you know, unique work that will be picked up elsewhere and that, you know, they, they are
00:24:12.520
very employable. But I think that those people are not the majority of federal workers, especially
00:24:17.720
those who are on the chopping block right now, because those are the, like, we're talking about
00:24:21.080
middle management, which is just going to evaporate in the age of AI. So I do, my heart does go out
00:24:27.000
for the plight of people who are supporting family members and who have, you know, there are some people
00:24:32.760
who are posting in fed news who are third generation government workers. This is kind
00:24:37.400
of like all they've known their family has made it their specialization, their line of business.
00:24:42.440
Yeah. And it is sobering to think about, you know, their frustration and their understanding that,
00:24:50.120
like, they're at risk. And I can understand why they're reacting to the Trump administration
00:24:56.200
with enmity because their livelihood is being attacked by that.
00:25:02.680
Well, same thing. I mean, what's the difference?
00:25:04.680
Okay. So here's an example of a, one of the top posts over the last few days.
00:25:08.040
Feds, this is the time to cut off anyone who backed Trump and his agenda. This isn't the moment
00:25:12.840
for agree to disagree. This is the top of fed news. This is the top of fed workers. Okay.
00:25:18.200
This isn't about quote unquote, both sides. This is about power, money, and who benefits
00:25:22.520
when democracy erodes. I love democracy to them. It isn't the people's will. It's
00:25:27.400
unelected government bureaucrats. That's democracy in their mind. If a company, bank,
00:25:32.520
an executive, a politician, or a local business supported Trump and it's pushed to cancel DEI.
00:25:37.560
Oh, I love that. That's what they're most mad about. They're telling you exactly who they are.
00:25:41.960
And it's time to act accordingly. You don't need to keep throwing your money at corporations
00:25:46.280
and billionaires who see you as disposable. We are still shopping on Amazon when Bezos and his
00:25:52.360
empire have never once given a damn about you. Why are you still using banks whose executives
00:25:58.840
had front row seats to Trump's inauguration? Why are you paying for subscriptions and services
00:26:03.320
that pumped money into his campaign? You know, we felt about this when you guys controlled all this
00:26:07.880
stuff. We effectively did boycott. Let's see if you guys can do that. They won't, by the way,
00:26:15.240
because they lack any ability at self-control. And if you look at the top comments here, top one,
00:26:20.680
Trump supporters keep advancing the idea that federal workers are dumb, lazy, and incompetent.
00:26:25.240
I wonder why. I have no idea why a federal employee would want to keep these relationships
00:26:30.120
when they clearly have such a low appointment in a view, 2.7K upvotes. I know several MAGA federal
00:26:36.120
employees and they use the few lazy people in the office as an example that the entire system needs
00:26:42.280
to be overhauled. Their way of thinking doesn't make sense. I mean, but here's what I just,
00:26:49.000
we need to be clear that there are earnest, hardworking people here who are going to get
00:26:54.920
caught up in this and going to get hurt. And though I think this has to happen, I want to acknowledge
00:26:59.800
that it sucks for them and that this is going to be happening across all layers of middle management
00:27:05.640
in large bureaucracies, private organizations, NGOs, and the government. So the man that I was
00:27:11.000
talking about, he got 12K upvotes. And he wrote, I'm at the end of my rope here. It feels like no
00:27:16.440
one has our backs. The anxiety and stress keeps me up at night. I have a family, a son that is
00:27:20.520
disabled, a mortgage, and 20 years of federal service, military and civilian.
00:27:24.200
At 55, there's no way I can get a similar paying job in the private sector. I'm an MPA at the VA.
00:27:30.600
And just like the TSA workers, the corrections officers, the FPS, air traffic controllers,
00:27:34.520
and food inspectors, I'm not part of the deep state. I didn't try to indict the president. I
00:27:38.040
didn't even mind going back to the office. And he wants revenge on my GS-12 ass. I called my
00:27:43.960
congressman, a Democrat, to ask what he was doing about it. His staff just rushed me off the phone.
00:27:48.840
Three days later, I haven't heard back from him. I don't see a light at all.
00:27:51.400
What faction of the government is this guy in, if he's not deep state? What is he saying?
00:27:56.840
He's an MPA at the VA. He works for Veterans Affairs. He's ex-military.
00:28:01.160
He's very unlikely to be fired with the crackdowns that are happening right now.
00:28:04.360
For more color on this, the parts of the VA that have been shut down is their DEI program,
00:28:09.320
which placed only 60 employees on paid leave, who earned over $8 million combined annually.
00:28:17.560
They have a hiring freeze, which again is not going to be relevant to him.
00:28:20.760
The only part where it looks like you might have significant cutbacks in VA employment
00:28:26.120
is a proposed closing of VA facilities, reviving a plan blocked under the Biden administration.
00:28:34.200
While not formally announced, this signals an intent to streamline the VA infrastructure,
00:28:39.480
which again, you know, this is about serving our troops. If it is being inefficiently deployed,
00:28:46.360
so the money isn't getting to helping them in underutilized facilities, yeah,
00:28:51.160
something should be done about it. But overall, it seems he's fairly safe,
00:28:59.240
But let's talk about who actually is being fired. So remember the post I was just reading,
00:29:03.320
like the third most upvoted comment on it was Trump just said as much in his speech,
00:29:09.000
he said that many of those who work from home are just collecting a paycheck and doing nothing,
00:29:13.080
possibly working second jobs. Top comment under that is a crunk thing about so lazy,
00:29:20.040
they're working a second job. Everybody thinks this is hilarious, right? Oh,
00:29:24.280
so lazy, they're working a second job because they're all working second jobs.
00:29:29.400
You are buying into the person who's buying into the fantasy that has nothing to do with reality.
00:29:35.640
Like, why would you say like, oh, this guy feel bad for him when he's not even in a department
00:29:43.000
Yeah, yeah, I guess. I mean, he thinks that he's in his silo right here, his bubble right here.
00:29:52.280
Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Now, what I didn't expect to see, which there is at least one post of that has
00:30:02.360
10K of votes as of now, it was posted three days ago, was a Reddit user, Callie Doley saying,
00:30:08.840
Black federal employees, how are you? And she talks about how she, well, I'll just read it.
00:30:14.280
I am a Black female DOD fed, and I feel beat the hell down. Every mention of stifling DEI efforts and
00:30:20.760
removing any evidence of DEI achievements feels like a slap in the face. It feels like a personal
00:30:25.480
attack every damn day. I'm holding the line for sure, but I wonder if any other Black feds feel
00:30:32.280
Go to the comments. Go to the comments. Come on, find some outrageous stuff here.
00:30:35.720
Well, see, like, I didn't expect to see this. I didn't expect to see that there were actually
00:30:40.920
people in the federal government who were like, yeah, man, this DEI stuff was really important to
00:30:51.640
What is her comment other than SNO supremacism?
00:30:55.480
Yeah, well, let's see. Top voted comment, 4.5 votes. I feel defeated, sad. Now I'm pissed the
00:31:00.520
fuck off. I ain't leaving my job. I'm staying. And someone responds to her affirmative response,
00:31:06.600
the OP's original response. This is the stage of grief that we, collectively as a country,
00:31:11.240
must hurry to get to. The anger phase. This is when we stop watching in horror as things are being
00:31:18.760
And these are federal employees right here. Simone, here's another one. Okay, so this is one of the top
00:31:24.840
voted comment. 13,000 upvotes on Fed News. Okay, so for federal employees. All right,
00:31:30.120
it says, is there any point where the media will grasp that this is a coup or a coup attempt?
00:31:37.560
I work in the federal agency space and I am totally baffled by the media's unwillingness
00:31:42.760
to call this for what it is. It's a genuine national emergency. And I, as a tax paying,
00:31:47.800
you are a tax receiving citizen. You don't get to call yourself a tax. You tax. I should not have to go
00:31:53.880
to a freaking subreddit to get accurate news and content. Well, maybe you're not getting accurate
00:31:58.200
news and context when the media is already inaccurate and insane. You just want your
00:32:03.560
insane fantasies validated for you. But okay, I am so grateful everyone here, muskite trolls excluded,
00:32:09.880
of course, for holding the line and standing strong in a situation that is explicitly intended to cause
00:32:15.880
immense trauma. Explicitly intended to cause immense trauma.
00:32:18.840
Actually, that is explicitly true. I think Russ fought. I'll try to look up the quote. He's setting
00:32:25.400
up the OMB, the Office of Budget and Management, that's kind of overseeing a lot of this.
00:32:30.200
We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning,
00:32:35.480
we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want
00:32:43.480
their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry
00:32:50.360
because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.
00:32:55.560
Mission effing accomplished, my man. He said something along the lines of,
00:32:59.160
like, I want them to feel traumatized by this. So that's that's accurate, actually,
00:33:03.160
which is kind of great. Oh, he's in the background here.
00:33:07.160
But yeah, I'll go to your Calendly and read book. That's the best way to do it, right?
00:33:10.120
Yeah. Yes, that's fine. By the way, that's home ass, by the way, for people who didn't know
00:33:14.440
a top giga chad. Um, no, I'm sorry. Every time I hear the word giga chad, I just picture trogdor,
00:33:23.480
the burninator. Hold on. I gotta go here. Yeah, no, no. It's been clear since well before the election
00:33:32.520
that the media is writing stories to match their owners preferences and get clicks. Whatever gets
00:33:36.920
some clicks. Claiming that there's a literal coup going on, reporting on a coup would get
00:33:42.280
mad clicks though. Yes. It would upset Moscow. What? Okay. So, so keep in mind, if you are a
00:33:49.240
federal government employee. Okay. And you believe that there is a coup going on, that means that you
00:33:55.160
have a right and what is a coup to them, but losing an election, losing the popular vote in an election.
00:34:00.600
Yeah. That is a coup in their minds because they believe that they have a right to this country and
00:34:06.600
its government services. That is horrifying. Like we should be like, well, more worried that they
00:34:11.800
feel okay publishing all of this. And can I say how much that I love that Elon chose like, okay,
00:34:17.640
we didn't get point parts in the, in the, in the doge department, but that Elon chose a bunch of 20 year
00:34:22.120
olds. Like that's better than us. These people can, can spend time on this that we can't spend.
00:34:27.000
Yeah. They don't have the commitments that we do. They don't have children to keep alive and
00:34:35.080
homes. They can very easily, you know, like just chill in the government offices in the beds,
00:34:42.920
which is so cool and very efficient. It sounds like a very stressful, but a very great time in
00:34:48.120
the end, you know, very meaningful part of your life. So. Well, if you look at what people are saying
00:34:52.280
here, cause that's what people are here for right now. They want to see people freaking out. So I got
00:34:55.160
comments here saying, I tried to put this in a post since this is the burner account. It got denied.
00:35:01.720
This is the first coverage I've seen that starts to grasp the severity of this issue. I'm terrified.
00:35:07.400
And it's Musk aids lock government workers out of computer systems. Thank God, by the way,
00:35:13.160
given that this is what the government workers are saying, like, why should we not want them locked out
00:35:17.160
of systems of this is what they're saying? And then the person under this says, I just came here
00:35:23.880
on Reddit to post this. I'm actually shaking from fear. It is a coop and no one is admitting it.
00:35:31.720
The silence is deafening. Then under that goes me too. I'm literally sick over this. And there was a,
00:35:38.120
a good post from whatever that service, the fed, whatever news. And it's all the progressive.
00:35:43.560
And they're like, I'm shaking. I'm shaking. And the Trump made like a battery from them to power
00:35:48.040
the, the U S because they all say this. They're like, I'm literally shaking.
00:35:55.560
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting. I mean, the, the themes here are
00:36:02.360
I a little, I mean, not, not disheartening, kind of what I would expect, but I'm surprised that
00:36:08.840
there's so much like, don't resign, don't do it. And not more just like, well, you know,
00:36:14.040
a few people, like if you really aren't into your job and you're not doing anything, why not?
00:36:17.400
I'm glad we're not going to have to pay for their, whatever. We just need to get rid of them all.
00:36:22.440
Yeah. I mean, maybe that is why Senator Tim Kaine told them to not accept the buyout.
00:36:31.080
One of the more popular posts recently was someone saying Senator Tim Kaine said to not accept the
00:36:36.040
buyout because it's a trap and that he said, no one should take it from president Trump because
00:36:41.960
there is no budget line to make payments for this. And it's a trap. I've not received the email
00:36:48.760
salary line. What is he talking about? Yeah. That's, that's what I don't get. Is it like
00:36:53.160
all of these departments had budgets for these staffs that presumably were going to run through
00:36:57.480
September. The only difference here is that the government is somewhat acknowledging that they
00:37:02.840
were a write-off, like the work that they would have done during this period between now and
00:37:07.240
September wasn't of use to the federal government anyway. So the federal government isn't losing
00:37:11.800
anything. And the fact that at least their salaries stop after September is a win. So.
00:37:17.960
Look at them freaking out about them, quote, unquote, covering up core values at the FBI.
00:37:22.760
Core values. There's an image of, and it's, it's beautifully dystopian actually of
00:37:28.520
someone taking a very depressing color of gray and just painting over a series of like a very,
00:37:36.120
very lame corporate wall with a bunch of words. Like. Oh no. Yes. All like DEI. Yeah.
00:37:43.000
Slop. And people are panicking. Equality. And yeah, it's.
00:37:47.640
Please share with the media pictures, speak a thousand words. Yeah. But I'm sure just seeing people
00:37:53.560
coming in and painting over signage in their offices. Oh, this is great. They just fired all
00:37:58.280
the agents who worked on January 6th cases. I know one personally. Someone, someone wrote that.
00:38:04.760
Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is a great source of entertainment and gossip in general, but let's,
00:38:10.040
let's sort of, you know, everyone, we would just encourage everyone to go in and read this to yourself.
00:38:14.280
Keep informed of what, if you, if you want to know what the deep state's doing, you don't even have to
00:38:18.760
like wait for some Trump administration employee to leak a report or make a report. You can just
00:38:25.480
see what they're saying themselves on fed news on Reddit, where apparently this is like the one
00:38:30.840
corner of Reddit. That's still full of real people, which is both kind of great and kind of not
00:38:38.120
considering that they seem to be doing this during work hours, but this is, it's really interesting.
00:38:44.600
And this is something I don't think we've ever seen before. Oh my God. Oh, you got to look at
00:38:51.000
this. Hold on. This is a gift. Feds being told not to leak information. Oh, I saw. And it's that
00:38:55.880
clip from mean girls, um, where she's just like dropping papers everywhere. Just drops her burn
00:39:01.240
book. They're saying we are insurrectionists. We need to be put down. That's what I'm seeing from
00:39:06.680
this. We're going to absolutely rebel. No, I, this is it's, it's eyeopening and you should look at it.
00:39:11.080
And what I'm, what I think is so useful for anyone to peruse this subreddit is to see something
00:39:18.360
unprecedented play out in real time. On one hand, basically you're seeing, you know,
00:39:22.600
Trump's and Elon Musk's posts on truth social and on X talking about what they're doing. And on the
00:39:30.040
other hand, you see the other side of the battle, the active battle posting on Reddit and probably a
00:39:36.920
lot more on blue sky, which I still am not going to try to figure out how to have an account on.
00:39:41.080
Maybe I'm asked to get a blue sky account. I don't, I really don't want to, I really don't
00:39:45.400
want to merge ourselves in toxicity. No, no, but it, this is, I don't think this level of trying to
00:39:54.520
clear out bureaucratic rot has ever been done before. And keep in mind, bureaucracies are
00:40:00.220
relatively new. It needs to be done. They are proving that they are treacherous. They hate the
00:40:04.400
American people. They hate democracy. They are. And they believe that the quote unquote, a coup
00:40:09.160
is the American people saying enough is enough. Yeah. But the modern bureaucracy as it exists
00:40:14.680
from a governance standpoint, and obviously there have been big sprawling organizations before
00:40:19.360
the industrial revolution, like the Catholic church, but I think they did, you know, they
00:40:24.000
did operate, I would say in an arguably much more agile way than even, you know, bureaucracies now.
00:40:28.840
So modern bureaucracies really only began to spring up with the British Imperial Empire and with the
00:40:35.380
industrial revolution. We've never really seen a time, a reckoning in which people have
00:40:42.700
systematically fought back to pare down bureaucracies that have grown out of control. There have been
00:40:48.360
periodic times in which economic or governmental disruption have caused organizations to simply
00:40:56.980
fail and then, you know, go bankrupt and cease to exist. But never have we seen with, with the
00:41:02.700
exception of Elon Musk and Twitter, kind of like a test case there, any effective attempt to actively
00:41:11.020
pare down and streamline an ossified, large, sprawling bureaucracy. And now we're seeing this
00:41:19.720
massive, this isn't just a political stunt. This is a social experiment. This is an experiment in
00:41:26.960
governance and bureaucratic management to see, can this be done? And you can see it playing out on
00:41:32.420
Reddit. I think that you see these people freaking out. You see a portion of the government saying we
00:41:36.880
plan to act to disrupt the will of the people in the United States. And I don't think that there is
00:41:44.780
any way our country survives unless we completely clear this out. Yeah. Get your popcorn.