Based Camp - Reddit in Full Panic Mode Over Trump

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because I have received so many

00:00:06.140 suggestions from our listeners to visit Fed News on Reddit, which we had previously talked about

00:00:13.020 being basically dead, but I guess dead with the caveat that it was mostly government workers who

00:00:18.020 were posting on it. So I guess it's not dead when it comes to-

00:00:20.700 She means Reddit being dead, not Fed News being dead. And there was a great graph I saw of our

00:00:27.260 Fed News on Reddit. And then it looked at work hours, like Fed work hours. And basically people

00:00:33.160 are only on our Fed News during government work hours. But I want to talk about what they're

00:00:39.820 talking about. I want to show how extreme Reddit has gone, how extreme parts of the federal government

00:00:45.360 has gone. I showed you one thing recently, the Our Parks, which has changed their sign to like a

00:00:50.700 handheld up fist, Alt-US National Park Service. And it has on the website, ourparks.org,

00:00:56.600 a message for President Trump. You've previously shut down our social media use and eroded

00:01:02.100 environmental protections, but you can't silence our collective voice. Our Parks is a stand to

00:01:07.680 safeguard our environment and prevent four more years of destruction. Join us to protect our national

00:01:13.300 parks for future generations. Sign the pledge now. This is a great list for who to fire, Elon,

00:01:18.960 by the way. Good list. Oh my gosh. I'm so glad they're putting this together for us. By the way,

00:01:23.740 if you're wondering what this organization is, this is a group of federal parks employees that

00:01:28.380 specifically got together to oppose the elected will of the people during the first Trump

00:01:32.780 administration. And now is trying to redouble their efforts and was in Reddit as seen as sort

00:01:37.960 of a champion. They're like, oh, and there was a top post recently about how old parks employees

00:01:41.840 are going to stop Trump. And if you're wondering who's funding this stuff, it's being funded to the

00:01:48.260 tune of a hundred million dollars by the Lilly Endowment Inc. That's the Eli Lilly Foundations

00:01:54.540 that is supposed to be giving money to religious, specifically Christian focused issues and

00:02:01.560 education focused issues. But nope, they've been taken over by far leftists. And this is what we

00:02:07.280 repeatedly see of Christian nonprofit institutions that were set up in the past.

00:02:11.120 And if you're like, oh, come on, you shouldn't be that mean to like the people who are hanging out

00:02:16.020 on Reddit. So I go to Reddit and the top post for me, the top post, which is not under Fed News,

00:02:21.980 just on the homepage, right? On the homepage. No, it doesn't have that many upvotes. It must have

00:02:26.880 gotten a number of them very quickly to shoot it to the top. Also, if you check Reddit today versus

00:02:31.660 Reddit of the past, top posts do not have as many upvotes as they used to. The site is not used as much,

00:02:37.180 even though its numbers would imply that it is. I have to assume they're FedBots.

00:02:41.680 See our other episode on this.

00:02:43.080 Is six random young people working for Elon, 25, 22, 19, 23, 24, and 21, with just gross

00:02:53.100 mischaracterizations of them posted based on the original strong, bad sort of meme from Homestar Runner.

00:02:59.160 Teen Girl Squad! Cheerleader! So-and-so! Watch your face! The ugly one! 1.00

00:03:09.980 Hey guys, let's go get ready to look so good!

00:03:14.160 Word, word, word! 0.99

00:03:17.480 So they have the Jesus one, age 25, the lactose intolerant one, age 22, the chronic masturbator, 0.78

00:03:25.220 age 19, the murderer, age 23, the date-grapist, age 24, and the serious one, age 21. By the way, 0.90

00:03:33.460 the one who looks a little brown, guess what they named him? The serious one.

00:03:38.540 Right? The lactose intolerant one is the Asian one. But then I went to it to see what the most 1.00

00:03:43.780 like upvoted things were.

00:03:45.440 And the kid here who they doxxed and listed as a murderer in this chart? Let's see the type of

00:03:51.920 20-year-old who Elon is finding to do this stuff. I think when you learn who these people really are,

00:03:57.200 you'll understand why they're so terrified of them.

00:03:59.040 One day I was just listening to a podcast back in March. It was with Nat Friedman. He just kind of

00:04:03.720 got on the podcast, explained like, there are these burnt-up scrolls that were buried in the Pompeii

00:04:08.040 eruption. No one knows how to read them, but some professors have created CT scans of these scrolls,

00:04:14.340 and they uploaded the data on the internet as a competition to see who could find writing inside

00:04:18.680 of these scrolls. And when I heard that, I was just immediately like, oh my goodness,

00:04:22.280 this is such a cool project. I have to work on this. I just went home from work that day at the

00:04:27.000 end of the day, and I've been working on it evenings and weekends ever since.

00:04:30.120 I run most of the things from my laptop. It's just a normal MacBook, don't worry. But then I've just got

00:04:34.760 like five surplus computers in here. This is what I do most of my work from. I just spend hours upon

00:04:42.040 hours staring at flattened pieces of the scroll like this, trying to find these patterns,

00:04:46.840 which are part of the writing. At the start of the challenge, we had not been able to find

00:04:52.360 any writing at all within these scrolls. There are hundreds of these scrolls that are from the

00:04:56.280 mansion. We've scanned a couple of them, and no one had been able to find any writing in them using

00:05:00.920 these methods. Late one Saturday night, I was sitting at a party at a friend's house in Omaha,

00:05:05.720 and I get a text from another person on the challenge team, and he says, hey,

00:05:09.320 I've just uploaded this new kind of piece of the scroll. You should take a look at it. I remotely

00:05:14.520 accessed my computer. I type into it like, please run the algorithm on this new piece of scroll.

00:05:19.640 And then I just kind of start it. I pull out my phone again, just nonchalantly like,

00:05:23.000 hey, I wonder how that went. And there are three Greek letters on the screen,

00:05:26.440 letters I'd never seen before. It was really cool because it's like, oh my goodness,

00:05:30.680 like, we actually detected new writing in the scrolls using AI. That was the moment I realized,

00:05:35.080 like, this is actually going to work. Like, we were probably going to read the scrolls.

00:05:38.760 And I completely freaked out. My friends were there, and I was cheering, jumping up and down,

00:05:42.600 you know, screaming, crying, all the stuff. Now we're reading entire paragraphs from the scrolls,

00:05:46.920 and hopefully we'll be able to read the entire book and read the hundreds of other books that

00:05:50.840 were buried in this condition as well. The entire thing was shut down,

00:05:53.880 couldn't see any comments. And it turned out that most I put a comment on it when I was on it

00:05:57.240 was a nine negative downvote one. Why was this a top comment? I don't know. Reddit is jank these days.

00:06:03.000 No, I didn't accidentally have my filter set to most controversial. And it was somebody saying,

00:06:07.800 while this entire situation is effed, this post is still just blatant slander. They're basically kids,

00:06:14.680 and you call them, quote unquote, murderers and, quote unquote, date rapists. Really? 0.96

00:06:18.840 And then under that, people are saying, well, I agree with you to some extent. I don't think,

00:06:23.560 quote, they're basically kids, end quote, is a valid excuse, given their current unearned

00:06:28.280 position of power in the federal government. I'm sorry, what do you think any federal government

00:06:32.040 employee is? Unearned a position of power? What, what is this? Well, I don't. So what I learned,

00:06:38.760 and I mean, you, you spent time living and interning, at least in DC, and I spent time

00:06:44.760 living and schooling and working in DC. Government jobs, I think when people work for the federal

00:06:49.880 government, they get a very different understanding of what earning means, because there are all these,

00:06:54.280 like, levels and codes and certifications. Oh no, it's an MLM. Yeah, like after a certain

00:07:01.160 number of years, then you, you classify for this tier and this level, and it's all extremely

00:07:05.880 complicated. And none of it is based on your competency or how well it is. But I think that

00:07:09.320 they have, I mean, once you spend enough time inside a cult, you normalize the cult activities. I think

00:07:13.880 what's going on is they're like, well, I earned my place, because I am now. I sat at an office on

00:07:19.160 Reddit for X and orange level tier five, you know, clearance number three, eight, five, H Y.

00:07:26.680 And therefore I've earned my position and it's, I mean, it is their reality. How can you question

00:07:33.400 that? I mean, and there are people that we know and love who work for the federal government. Like,

00:07:36.760 I'm not saying that everyone who works for the federal government is, is, is completely delusional.

00:07:40.920 Most people aren't, most people are really reasonable, but I do think that there are some

00:07:43.960 people who, I don't, I mean, I think you might be being a little too generous. Let's go to some

00:07:47.560 of the other comments here. So then this is somebody defending them under that person. They go,

00:07:51.160 but are there any basis to the claims in the pick? They can be people doing Elon's bidding,

00:07:57.480 which is illegal, but also not the things pointed out above, unless some facts back it up. Then they

00:08:03.640 say, edit downvoted by people playing right into the hands of the people that will ignore everything

00:08:09.080 you say, because you can't stay on topic without childish BS, but all they are is childish BS.

00:08:14.120 An up vote here is somebody with a black person emoji, thumbs up. Next one is somebody saying, 0.99

00:08:19.960 F them, they'll be tried as adults in any court. If they had darker skin, they'd be called thugs, 1.00

00:08:26.600 and Trump would take them out and execute them. This is what they really think is happening, 1.00

00:08:30.600 by the way. They chose to join the coop, F them in association. And then the next one is old enough to

00:08:36.840 commit the crimes old enough to be called names. So, you know, the, the, the mindset of these people

00:08:43.960 is extreme. I was in looking at like, okay, what's being said in our fed news. One of the top posts

00:08:49.240 was C-SPAN is taking calls from federal employees right now called, and then they have the number

00:08:55.000 and they go, they are currently talking about a certain billionaires meddling in the government.

00:08:59.480 Oh, you didn't care when all those other billionaires, because you know, Kamala did raise 1.00

00:09:03.720 three times the amount Trump raised. Yeah. Like really, where was the money people? Where was

00:09:08.520 the money? It's not like Bill Gates. Oh, they don't care when it's their billionaires.

00:09:12.360 But anyway, they, the, the top comment here I love is do not call during your duty hours,

00:09:17.800 because apparently they know that the fed employees wouldn't even think to be like,

00:09:21.880 oh yeah, I probably shouldn't go. And the government's paying me to do something else.

00:09:25.880 And recently was the, what's the department that Trump's, that, that Elon has been shutting

00:09:30.200 down. Yeah. Elon, by the way. USAID is what he has like almost complete. Right. So one of the areas

00:09:37.320 where there's a lot of attack taking place is Elon is 100% going hard on USAID, which allegedly gives

00:09:45.960 a lot of international aid. But I remember having conversations with people who worked at USAID

00:09:51.480 as, as federal employees. We're saying like eight, eight, more than eight years ago now. So like,

00:09:57.000 not like this is anything new, just like, this was just how it was saying, yeah, you know,

00:10:02.200 like I fly out and we go to these conferences and, you know, I'll work for weeks on a report. And like,

00:10:07.720 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

00:10:17.720 just, you know, enjoy the work, enjoy the research. So it was kind of just cool to be paid for it,

00:10:22.680 even if it wasn't making any difference in the world or like being utilized by the people who

00:10:27.560 are receiving it. And I only just put two and two together when Elon Musk went hard on

00:10:33.640 the actual department of like, wait, these are federal tax dollars being used to pay for a bunch

00:10:41.800 of reports and people flying out to conferences and meetings to talk about a whole lot of change

00:10:46.200 that's never going to happen. Like, yeah, this is a very egregious waste of tax dollar money.

00:10:52.200 And I feel conflicted because I really respect the person who had told me this.

00:10:58.440 And I, although I also remember feeling really conflicted when this person said that to me,

00:11:04.600 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

00:11:15.480 do this work that no one's going to pay attention to or listen or, or heed it is kind of, yeah,

00:11:21.160 I don't know. It feels almost like talented players out of the US. Yeah. It's like,

00:11:25.080 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,

00:11:35.960 it was a comfortable job. It's not like doing the same kind of work in academia or something

00:11:40.280 where things could be a lot more competitive resources are dwindling, et cetera. It's really

00:11:43.960 political. I mean, it was political where she worked as well, but anyway, I just, I feel so

00:11:49.720 conflicted about it now, but I'm also like, man, but like eight years ago, I was hearing about basically

00:11:54.680 just money and time being wasted in this entire department. And it's weird to hear it being attacked.

00:12:00.040 Now I'll, I'll, I'll pivot a little bit to just like what's going, what's going on in Fed news,

00:12:05.960 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

00:12:17.160 reactions to everything that's happening, a really big theme is remember the oath, hold the line,

00:12:22.440 hold the line. Like this is being repeated across many posts. One, one person made an illustration.

00:12:29.960 That I'll share with you of like a cry baby Trump and a diaper saying, give me in front of a line

00:12:35.720 of federal workers. That is extremely DEI looking because they're like intentionally people of all

00:12:42.280 colors of the rainbow. And you got to share this or viewers can see it. And there's, there's a person

00:12:46.440 in a wheelchair. So, you know, that like, they're all about the diversity. It's actually interesting to see

00:12:51.880 what this particular Redditor decided to represent as the federal government being the CDC,

00:12:59.800 Medicare, the EPA, U.S. mail, education, social security, freedom, democracy, and the FDA.

00:13:05.800 Oh, and they're BIPOC. 0.91

00:13:07.640 No, they're not all BIPOC. There's plenty of possibly white people there.

00:13:10.680 Oh, I love the wheelchair guy.

00:13:11.800 A person with microcephaly, clearly. Right under the FDA is a person suffering from microcephaly.

00:13:16.840 So we've got disability. We've got different ethnicities. We've got the wheelchair.

00:13:21.080 Wait, do you think that that's what it is, microcephaly, or they're just a bad drawer?

00:13:24.680 Well, let's be nice and charitable to them and assume that it's someone with microcephaly working

00:13:29.640 for the federal government, Malcolm. It happens, okay?

00:13:31.960 No, hold on.

00:13:33.240 Hold on. So I love, so something I learned about really interesting today. So when he's taking

00:13:40.760 apart this department, Elon, right? Everyone's freaking out the USA department. He's like,

00:13:45.400 okay, when I got to this department, I thought it was like an apple was a worm in it. And what

00:13:50.040 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

00:13:59.240 for stuff that isn't doing anything. And I think that the bigger issue is he's like,

00:14:02.600 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

00:14:12.120 know that. Yeah. And if you look at the stuff that they are putting money into, you know,

00:14:16.280 Brill Crystal, that guy who handled Trump, sorry, hassled Trump forever and made up this Russia

00:14:21.400 collusion story. It was like the core person pushing it. And his org was the core org pushing

00:14:26.040 it. They were paid by USDA. So they were funded. All of that Russian collusion stuff was funded by

00:14:33.720 this org and Trump didn't even shut them down in his first administration. It was created by an

00:14:37.880 executive order. So there's no reason for it to even exist. And the guy who did all of that,

00:14:43.560 he's still on their payroll right now. Oh, well, you know, it's hard to fire federal employees for

00:14:50.680 more color on this. Bill Crystal founded the DDT or the Defending Democracy Together Foundation.

00:14:58.520 This played a pivotal role in amplifying concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

00:15:04.920 This organization received a hefty donation from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, RPA,

00:15:11.480 a donor-advised fund, which received $38 million from USAID. Now, some will claim,

00:15:17.720 well, you know, it's not for certain that any of that money went to them because the portion of it,

00:15:22.040 about half of it was earmarked. So $20 million was earmarked for a media initiative in South Africa.

00:15:27.880 However, the rest of it, not earmarked. So it could have gone to him considering that his organization

00:15:36.360 did things like a $1 million ad by trying to legitimize the Mueller investigation and a $35 million,

00:15:43.960 a DDT-funded 2020 initiative designed to draw a connection between Trump and Russia.

00:15:49.800 This was called Republican Voters Against Trump, R-V-A-T. Quick side note here, but with the shutdown

00:15:55.000 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.

00:16:14.280 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?

00:16:23.560 It's not the US's job to be the world police. I thought the rest of the world wanted us to stop

00:16:29.320 that. It's not our job to be the world's social security system. It's not our job to be the world's

00:16:35.000 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

00:17:46.840 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-

00:18:18.280 This is why they all need to be fired.

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,

00:18:45.080 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,

00:18:56.680 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,

00:19:20.120 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,

00:19:34.920 less than 0.7% took fork offer.

00:19:38.840 Yeah. So the fork offer for context is when the Office of Management and Budget

00:19:43.640 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.

00:21:00.360 That's amazing. I didn't know he said that.

00:21:03.560 Yeah, Yarvin!

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?

00:21:44.120 All right, continue, continue.

00:21:45.640 It's thoroughly green as federal workers.

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.

00:25:00.280 It's not enmity. It's rebellion, Simone.

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. 1.00

00:26:25.240 I wonder why. I have no idea why a federal employee would want to keep these relationships 0.99

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 1.00

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,

00:28:54.360 unless he's at one of these few facilities.

00:28:56.360 Yeah, but he's getting really stressed out.

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

00:29:39.560 where they're doing cuts?

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 0.99

00:30:30.920 like this. And of course-

00:30:32.280 Go to the comments. Go to the comments. Come on, find some outrageous stuff here. 0.68

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

00:30:45.400 me. And I'm surprised to see it.

00:30:48.120 Because they're SNO supremacists.

00:30:51.320 Yeah.

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, 0.95

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

00:31:16.040 done and instead get up and get shit done. 0.97

00:31:18.760 And these are federal employees right here. Simone, here's another one. Okay, so this is one of the top 0.99

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, 1.00

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, 0.98

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 0.83

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. 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

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.

Based Camp - February 05, 2025

Reddit in Full Panic Mode Over Trump

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