The Transformation of Modern Bureaucracy and Its Impact on Governance

In this episode, we delve into the unexpected resurgence of Fed News on Reddit. Once thought to be inactive, the subreddit is now bustling with federal employees voicing their concerns and resistance against the Trump administration's policies. We explore viral posts and comments that reveal the extreme measures some government workers are willing to take, the ongoing discussions about the inefficacy and political biases within federal agencies, and the implications for Elon Musk's involvement in governmental reform. This episode uncovers a passionate, sometimes incendiary, debate about the future and integrity of America's bureaucratic system.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because I have received so many suggestions from our listeners to visit Fed News on Reddit, which we had previously talked about being basically dead. But I guess dead with the caveat that it was mostly government workers who were posting on it.

So

Malcolm Collins: I guess it's not dead when it specifically means Reddit being dead, not Fed News being dead. Yeah. And there was a great graph I saw of our Fed news on Reddit. And then it looked at work hours, like Fed work hours. And basically people are only on our Fed news during government work hours.

Whoops. But I want to talk about what they're talking about. I want to show, you know, how extreme Reddit has gone, how extreme parts of the federal government has gone. I showed you one thing recently, the hour parks, which has changed their sign to like a, a handheld up fist. I don't know. All U. S.

National Park Service and it has on the website, ourparks. org, a message for President Trump. , you've [00:01:00] previously shut down our social media use and eroded environmental protections, but you can't silence our collective voice.

Our parks is a stand to safeguard our environment and prevent four more years of destruction. Join us to protect our national parks for future generations. Sign the pledge now. This is a great list for who to fire, Elon, by the way. Good list.

Oh my gosh. I'm so glad they're putting this together for us.

By the way, if you're wondering what this organization is, this is a group of federal parks employees that specifically got together to oppose the elected will of the people during the first Trump administration, , and now is trying to redouble their efforts and was in Reddit as seen as sort of a champion.

They're like, oh, there was a top post recently about how all parks employees are going to stop Trump. , and if you're wondering who's funding this stuff, , it's being funded. To, , the tune of a hundred million dollars by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. That's the Eli Lilly Foundation's that is supposed to be giving money to, , religious, specifically Christian [00:02:00] focused issues and education focused issues.

But, , nope, they've been taken over by far leftists. And this is what we repeatedly see of, , Christian non profit institutions that were set up in the past.

And, and if you're like, oh, come on, you shouldn't be that mean to like. The people who are hanging out on Reddit. So I go to Reddit and the top post for me, the top post which is not under fed news,

Simone Collins: just on the homepage, right?

Malcolm Collins: On the homepage

Note, it doesn't have that many upvotes, but it must have gotten a number of them very quickly to shoot it to the top. Also, if you check Reddit today versus Reddit of the past, top posts do not have as many upvotes as they used to. The site is not used as much, even though its numbers would imply that it is.

I have to assume they're fed bots. See our other episode on this.

is six random young people working for Elon.

25, 22, 19, 21 with just. gross mischaracterizations of them posted based on the original strong, bad sort of meme from Homestar Runner.

Speaker: [00:03:00] Team Girl Squad! Cheerleader! So and so! What's a face! The ugly one! Hey, guys! Let's go get ready to look so good! Work, work, work!

Malcolm Collins: So they have the Jesus one, age 25, the lactose intolerant one, age 22, the chronic masturbator, age 19, the murderer, age 23, the date grapist, age 24, and the serious one, age 21.

By the way, the one who, who looks a little brown, guess what they named him? The serious one. Right. The actors tellers one is the Asian one, but then I went to it to see what the most like upvoted things were.

And the kid here, who they doxed and listed as a murderer in this chart. , let's see the type of 20 year old who Elon is finding to do this stuff.

I think when you learn who these people really are, you'll understand why they're so terrified of it.

Speaker 7: One day I was just [00:04:00] listening to a podcast back in March. It was with Nat Friedman. He just kind of got on the podcast, explained like, there are these burnt up scrolls that were buried in the Pompeii eruption.

No one knows how to read them. But some professors have created CT scans of these scrolls and they uploaded the data on the internet as a competition to see who could find writing inside of these scrolls. And when I heard that, I was just immediately like, oh my goodness, this is such a cool project. I have to work on this.

I just went home from work that day at the end of the day and I've been working on it evenings and weekends ever since. I run most of the things from my laptop. It's just a normal Macbook, don't worry. But then I've just got like five surplus computers in here. Um, this is what I do most of my work from.

I just spend hours upon hours staring at flattened pieces of the scroll like this, trying to find these patterns which are Um, part of the writing. At the start of the challenge, we had not been able to find any writing at all within these scrolls. There are hundreds of these scrolls that are from the mansion, we've scanned a couple of them, and no one had been able to find [00:05:00] any writing in them using these methods.

Late one Saturday night, I was sitting at a party at a friend's house in Omaha, and I get a text from another person on the challenge team. And he says, Hey, I've just uploaded this new kind of piece of the, of the scroll. You should take a look at it. I remotely accessed my computer. I type into it like, please run the algorithm on this new piece of scroll.

And then I just kind of started. I pull out my phone again, just nonchalantly like, Hey, I wonder how that went. And there are three Greek letters on the screen. Letters I'd never seen before. It was, um, really cool, because it's like, oh my goodness, like, we actually detected new writing in the scrolls using AI.

That was the moment I realized, like, this is actually going to work. Like, we were probably going to read the scrolls. And I completely freaked out. My friends were there, and I was cheering, jumping up and down, you know, screaming, crying, all the stuff. Now, we're reading entire paragraphs from the Scrolls, and hopefully we'll be able to read the entire book, and read the hundreds of other books that were buried in this condition as well.

Malcolm Collins: The entire thing was shut down, couldn't see any comments, and it turned out the most upvoted comment on it when I was on it was a nine negative down vote one.

Why was [00:06:00] this a top comment? I don't know. Reddit is jank these days. No, I didn't accidentally have my filter set to most controversial.

And it was somebody saying, while this entire situation is effed, this post is still just blatant slander. They're basically kids and you call them quote unquote murderers and quote unquote date grapists. Really? And then under that people are saying, well, I agree with you to some extent. I don't think, quote, they're basically kids, end quote, is a valid excuse given their current unearned position of power in the federal government.

Actually, what do you think any federal government employee is? Unearned a position of power. And what, what

Simone Collins: is it? Well, I don't. So what I learned, and I mean, you, you spent time living and interning at least in DC and I spent time living and schooling and working in DC government jobs, I think when people work for the federal government, they get a very different understanding of what earning means because there are all these like.

Levels and codes and certifications and then

Malcolm Collins: MLM. [00:07:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah, like after a certain number of years and you classify for this tier and this level and it's all extremely complicated and none of it is

Malcolm Collins: based on your competency or how well I think

Simone Collins: that they have. I mean, once you spend enough time inside a cult, you normalize the cult activities.

I think what's going on is they're like, well, I earned my place because I am now. I sat at an office on reddit for x and orange level tier five, you know clearance number Three eight five h y and therefore i've earned my position and it's I mean, it is their reality. How can you question that? I mean, and there are people that we know and love who work for the federal government.

Like, I'm not saying that everyone who works for the federal government is completely delusional. Most people aren't. Most people are really reasonable. But I do think that there are some people who

Malcolm Collins: hold mean, I think you might be being a little too generous. Let's go to some of the other comments here.

And they go, but are there any basis to the claims in the pick? They can be people doing Elon's bidding, which is illegal, but also [00:08:00] not the things pointed out above unless some facts back it up.

And then they say, edit, downvoted by people playing right into the hands of the people that will ignore everything you say because you can't stay on topic without childish BS, but all they are is childish BS. An upvote here is somebody with the black person emoji, thumbs up. Next one is somebody saying, F them.

They'll be tried as adults in any court. If they had darker skin, they'd be called thugs, and Trump would take them out and execute them. This is what they really think is happening, by the way. They chose to join the coup. F them in association. And then the next one is old enough to commit the crimes old enough to be called names.

So, you know, the, the, the mindset of these people is extreme. I was in looking at like, okay, what's being said in our fed news. One of the top posts was C SPAN is taking calls from federal employees right now called, and then they have the number. And they go, they are currently talking about a certain billionaires meddling in the government.

Oh, you [00:09:00] didn't care when all those other billionaires, because you know, Kamala did raise three times the amount Trump raised. Yeah. Like really? Where was the

Simone Collins: money

Malcolm Collins: people? Where was the money? It's not like Bill Gates and stuff. Oh, they don't care when it's their billionaires. But anyway, they, the, the top comment here I love is do not call during your duty hours.

Because apparently they know that, that Fed employees wouldn't even think to be like, Oh yeah, I probably shouldn't. Go and the government's paying me to do something else. And recently was the what's the department that drums that that elon's been shutting down gay elon, by the way you usa is

Simone Collins: what he has like almost completely right. So one of the areas where there's a lot of attack taking place is Elon is 100 percent going hard on USAID, which allegedly gives a lot of international aid. But I remember having conversations with people who worked at USAID.

As, as federal employees, we're saying like eight, eight, more than eight years ago now, so like, not like this is anything new, just like this was just how [00:10:00] it was saying, yeah, you know, like I fly out and we go to these conferences and, you know, I'll work for weeks on a report and like, no one really reads it.

It doesn't do anything, but I do really enjoy the work. And. I remember thinking that and being like, wait, but you're not frustrated. And, and this person really just did just, you know, enjoy the work, enjoy the research. So it was kind of just cool to be paid for it. Even if it wasn't making any difference in the world or like being utilized by the people who are receiving it.

And I, I only just put two and two together when Elon Musk went hard on. The actual department of like, wait, these are federal tax dollars being used to pay for a bunch of reports and people flying out to conferences and meetings to talk about a whole lot of change. That's never going to happen. Like, yeah, this is a very egregious waste of tax dollar money.

And I feel conflicted because I. really respect the person who had told me this. And [00:11:00] I, although I also remember feeling really conflicted when this person said that to me, because I was like, wait, but you're so talented and you're so smart. Your, your work could actually make a difference somewhere.

Are you sure that you want to work for the federal government and do this work that no one's going to pay attention to or listen or heed? It, it, it is kind of, yeah, I don't know, it feels almost criminal. It's drawing talented players out of the U. S. economy. Yeah, it's like, it's like the worst version of an IQ shredder.

And, and I think one of the reasons this person preferred it was because It was very stable work. It, there was very low change. Great benefits. You know, it was a comfortable job. It's not like doing the same kind of work in academia or something where things could be a lot more competitive, resources are dwindling, etc.

It's really political. I mean, it was political where she worked as well. But anyway, I just, I feel so conflicted about it now, but I'm also like. Man, but like eight years ago, I was hearing about basically just money and time being wasted in this entire department, and it's weird to hear it being [00:12:00] attacked now.

I'll, I'll, I'll pivot a little bit to just like what's going, what's going on in Fed news, which many of our viewers are already well aware. But I think one of my favorite things is I look at the theme. That if you go, for example, to top this month and you sort of see the initial reactions to everything that's happening, a really big theme is.

Remember the oath, hold the line, hold the line. Like this is being repeated across many posts. One, one person made an illustration that I'll share with you. Of like a crybaby Trump in a diaper saying, gimme. In front of a line of federal workers that is extremely DEI looking because they're like intentionally people of all colors of the rainbow.

And you got to share this

Malcolm Collins: so our viewers can see it. And

Simone Collins: there's, there's a person in a wheelchair. So, you know, that like, they're all about the diversity.

And it's, it's actually interesting to see. What this particular redditor decided to represent as the federal government being the CBC, [00:13:00] Medicare, the EPA, U. S. mail, education, social security, freedom, democracy, and the FDA.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and they're BIPOC.

Simone Collins: No, they're not all BIPOC. There's plenty of plausibly white people there.

Oh, I love the wheelchair guy. One person with microcephaly, clearly right, right, right under the FDA is a person suffering from microcephaly. So we've got disability, We've got different ethnicities. We've got the wheelchair. Wait, do you think

Malcolm Collins: that that's what it is? Microcephaly or they're just a bad drawer?

Simone Collins: Let's be nice and charitable to them and assume that it's someone with microcephaly working for the federal government. Malcolm, it happens. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So I love so something I learned about really interesting today. So when he's taking apart this department, Elon, right? Everyone's freaking out the USA department.

He's like, okay, when I got to this department, I thought it was like, An apple was a worm in it and what it turned out was just like a big ball of worms.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because his, his big thing is focus is on, let's just go after overpayments and payments for stuff that [00:14:00] isn't doing anything. And I think that the bigger issue is he's like, wait, you don't even give out that much money at the thing.

They really don't.

Malcolm Collins: It looks like they might be taking more than the CIA. I think it's 17 billion a year or something. That is mind blowing. I did not know that. I'm going to do it. Yeah. And if you look at this stuff that they are putting money into, you know, Brill Crystal, that guy who handled Trump sorry, hassled Trump forever and made up this Russia collusion story.

It was like the core person pushing it and his org was the core org pushing it. They were paid. By U. S. D. A. D. So they were funded. All of that Russian collusion stuff was funded by this organ. Trump didn't even shut them down in his first administration. It was created by an executive order. So there's no reason for it to even exist.

And the guy who did all of that, he's still on their payroll right now. Oh,

Simone Collins: well,

Malcolm Collins: you know, it's hard to fire federal employees.

For more color on this, , Bill Kristol founded the DDT, or the, , Defending Democracy Together Foundation. , this played a [00:15:00] pivotal role in amplifying concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election. This organization received a hefty donation from,

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, or PA, a donor advised fund, which received 38 million from USAID. , now some will claim, well, you know, it's not for certain that any of that money went to them, because a portion of it, about half of it, was earmarked. So 20 million was earmarked for a media initiative in South Africa.

However, the rest of it Not earmarked. So, it could have gone to him. , considering that, , his organization did things like a 1 million ad buy trying to

Legitimize.

the Mueller investigation and a 35 million, , DDT funded 2020 initiative designed to

Try to draw a connection between Trump and Russia.

, this was called Republican Voters Against Trump, RVAT.

Quick side note here, but with the shutdown of USAID on our Discord, somebody was complaining about, Oh, now this [00:16:00] program that kept African kids from getting aid is being shut down. So I look at the program. We spent over a hundred billion dollars on this. This is kids in another country. We've got plenty of kids suffering in the United States right here.

And these kids who we're saving, are they even gonna care? Are they even gonna have an appreciation for the United States after this? No, why should we be sacrificing for them? It's not the US's job to be the world police. I thought the rest of the world wanted us to stop that.

It's not our job to be the world's social security system. It's not our job to be the world's Medicare system. If you want to do that, you can do that through personal donations rather than forcing the US taxpayer to do it.

It's oh so easy to be a philanthropist when it's not your own money that you're donating. But there is no morality in being a philanthropist when it's not your own money that you're donating.

You're just taking money from struggling children in the United States and giving it to struggling children in another location.

Speaker 5: want [00:17:00] more? I've got more. No, . I mean, I have a lot more. You're alright. A

Speaker 6: lot more!

Speaker 4: Uh, hey. So, I'm kinda underwater. Is there any way you could help me and my family get out?

Speaker 5: Oh, I'm poor! I'm so poor! I just couldn't possibly afford it. Dad, are they gonna help us?

Speaker 6: Too poor?

Speaker 5: In fact, if you could lend me some money, arrest anyone who tries to help his family.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's the wrong impression. What the org will tell you is like, we distribute money where it's needed. No, it tells other orgs to distribute money where it's needed. And they don't

Simone Collins: listen.

Apparently they don't listen.

Malcolm Collins: It's, it is, it is 100 percent a scam. This org needs to be shut down. If you look at the percent, I mean, again, it's

Simone Collins: not just that it's that it also [00:18:00] locks up. Um, And, and shreds it and, and wastes it. Let's, let's look at other. Yeah. So I want to, I would just want to point out like the key thing now, like a theme under under fed news is basically.

We will resist the Trump administration. The, the big theme and I encourage anyone to be fired is to go to reddit. com slash r slash fed news and then filter, you know, top of my month or week just to kind of see what's most popular. One, I will point out it's, it's good Reddit adequate or reticent as it were to look at the rules of a subreddit and respect them when operating within that subreddit and yet.

The rules are no harassment, threats, trolling, or inciting violence. No shilling, trolling, or impersonation. No sharing sensitive or classified information. No political content. All, you know, except for like pictures of Trump as a crying baby. No speculative questions, no duplicate posts. No social media content.

Basically, like, this is, this subreddit has flown into anarchy. The [00:19:00] rules don't matter anymore because, you know, when it comes to inciting violence or you know, resisting or federal hiring questions or speculative questions or political information, like. No. Because now, you know, jobs are,

Malcolm Collins: they've totally lost the run.

My brother recently sent me a screenshot, which I'll post here, which was the Reddit front page for him, you know, just like a default front page. Only three of like 23 posts weren't about Trump. He had to go through and look for them, but let's go like, okay. So now they're bragging about like, no one took the offer.

So they're like less than 0. 7%. Fork offer. Yeah, so the fork offer for

Simone Collins: context is when the Office of Management and Budget emailed a huge swath of federal employees saying, we will pay you through the month of September of this year if you just reply to this email with the word resign and just stop coming into work.

You can get a job as soon as you want. No hard feelings, love you, bye. And apparently only 0. [00:20:00] 7 percent of people have taken up on that offer. And a lot of this is because allegedly People are being told that the, the offer is not legitimate, that it wouldn't be honored. There's another top comment is, hold the line, don't resign, federal workers, don't do it.

So there's, there's a lot of people who They're acting

Malcolm Collins: like the offer is super shady when I've seen nothing to suggest it's shady. They're like, oh, they won't even be able to pay it because it's not approved by the government. These are existing federal workers. Of course, it's approved by the government.

It's your existing salary. And in this post here, they're already just in one of the top comments blaming Curtis Yarvin for it. They're saying really it seems like he's trying to be a tech lord to a network feudal cyber kingdom. Yarvin is his and the other tech bros profit.

This is the kind of guy Yarvin is. In 2008, software developer in San Francisco named Curtis Yarvin, writing under the pseudonym Perose, a horrific solution for people he deemed not productive, convert them into biodiesel, which will help power the Mooney [00:21:00] buses. That's

Simone Collins: Amazing. I didn't know he said

Malcolm Collins: that.

Yeah, Jarvan!

So I was going through more on Fed News this morning, and this keeps coming up in the comments. This fear that they're going to be turned into biodiesel for the tech lords. And I love this. Well, not they,

The unproductive citizens, they say. And I love this. And I just want to go with it as much as possible, call people biodiesel, be like, hey, look, I don't need to take this type of crumbs from future biodiesel, just to freak them out.

And if they get real angry, you have to be like, I said bio, do you hate the environment? It's green energy.

And, more importantly, helps with overpopulation. Are you doing your part?

Alright, continue, continue.

Simone Collins: Starlit Green is federal workers. Yeah, so there's, there's a lot of discussion basically on like actively resisting and it's also so interesting. We did a separate episode on the Deep State being real and I'm Just like I [00:22:00] still, even after all that, after reading about the first Trump administration's deep state encounters and the various efforts that were made to stymie its progress.

Now I'm just seeing like on a public forum, open resistance and the framing of the Trump administration as evil. Well, I think the second. From the top, for the last month in this subreddit under like, Hexagram11 wrote, Remember the oath, hold the line He reiterates the pledge, I think, that Federal workers make, you know, I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, blah, blah, blah.

He ends with, the only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing. Which is basically inciting insurrection. I mean, it sounds very insurrection Well, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: you saw what was happening with the, the federal, like, department around, like, national parks and stuff like that, right?

Like, this is an active insurrection that we're dealing with right now. Yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: These are, these are people who [00:23:00] are refusing to carry out the orders or honor the requests of the elected executive office. And that's, it's interesting. And just, just the idea for them to be like, well, they're evil. And from my understanding, the, the thing that makes them evil.

And then this is so classic pragmatist guide to governance content. You know, you wrote about this when you talked about governance design. Is it bureaucracies care only about perpetuating themselves? And of course the people within bureaucracies care about protecting the bureaucracies because those bureaucracies are their sources of work.

There was one post that made me a little sad to read of someone being really disheartened because he was 55 years old and he had a, you know, a mortgage and a disabled son and he knew that he wouldn't be able to get another job. And I think that, that, that is something that's underrated. This blase oh, these people will just get new jobs No, they won't they're not qualified and they've been doing nothing [00:24:00] No, but also like no knowledge workers just aren't getting jobs there are some people who are like, you know specialized workers who do very physical work very, you know unique work that Will be picked up elsewhere and they are very employable.

But I think that those people are not the majority of federal workers, especially those who are on the chopping block right now, because those are the like we're talking about middle management, which is just going to evaporate in the age of AI. So I do. My heart does go out for the plight of people who are supporting family members and who have, you know, there are some people who are posting in Fed News who are third generation government workers.

This is kind of like all they've known their family has made it their specialization, their line of business. Yeah. And. It is sobering to think about, you know, their frustration and their understanding that like they're at risk. And I can understand why they're reacting to the Trump administration with enmity because Their livelihood is being attacked [00:25:00] by that.

It's not

Malcolm Collins: enmity, it's rebellion, Simone. Oh, same thing. I mean, what's the difference? Okay, so here's an example of one of the top posts over the last few days. Feds, this is the time to cut off anyone who backed Trump and his agenda. This isn't the moment for agree to disagree. This is the top of Fed news.

This is the top of Fed workers, okay? This isn't about quote unquote, both sides. This is about power money and who benefits when democracy erodes. I love democracy to them. Isn't the people's will it's on a unelected government bureaucrats. That's democracy in their mind. If a company bank, an executive, a politician, or a local business supported Trump and it's pushed to cancel DEI, Oh, I love that.

That's what they're most mad about. They're telling you exactly who they are and it's time to act accordingly. You don't need to keep throwing your money at corporations and billionaires who see you as disposable. We are still shopping on Amazon when Bezos and his empire have never once given a damn about you.

Why are you still using banks whose executives had front row [00:26:00] seats to Trump's inauguration? Why are you paying for subscriptions and services that pumped money into his campaign? You know, we felt about this when you guys controlled all this stuff. We effectively did boycott. Let's see if you guys can do that.

They won't, by the way. Because they lack any ability at self control. And if you look at the top comments here top one, Trump supporters keep advancing the idea that federal workers are dumb, lazy, and incompetent. I wonder why. I have no idea why a federal employee would want to keep these relationships when they clearly have such a low appointment interview, 2.

7k upvotes. I know several mega federal employees, and they use the Few lazy people in the office, as an example, that the entire system needs to be overhauled. Their way of thinking doesn't make sense.

Simone Collins: But here's, here's what I just, we need to be clear that there are earnest, hardworking people here who are going to get caught up in this and going to get hurt.

And though I think this has to happen, I want to acknowledge [00:27:00] that it sucks for them and that this is going to be happening across all layers of middle management in large bureaucracies, private organizations, NGOs and the government. So the man that I was talking about, he got 12 K upvotes. And he wrote, I'm at the end of my rope here.

It feels like no one has our backs. The anxiety and stress keeps me up at night. I have a family, a son that is disabled, a mortgage and 20 years of federal service, military and civilian.

Malcolm Collins: You're bonding. Okay, so

Simone Collins: there's no way I can get a similar paying job in the private sector. I'm an M. P. A. The V. A. And just like the TSA workers, the corrections officers, the FPS, air traffic controllers, and food inspectors, I'm not part of the Deep State.

I didn't try to indict the president. I didn't even mind going back to the office. And he wants revenge on my GS 12 ass. I called my congressman, a Democrat, to ask what he was doing about it. His staff just rushed me off the phone. Three days later, I haven't heard back from him. I don't see a light at all.

I feel pleasure in nothing these days. What

Malcolm Collins: faction of the government is this guy in, if he's not Deep State? What is he saying? He's

Simone Collins: an MPA at the VA. He works for Veterans Affairs. [00:28:00] He's ex military. He's very

Malcolm Collins: unlikely to be fired with the crackdowns that are happening right now.

For more color on this, the parts of the VA that have been shut down is their DEI program, , which placed only, , 60 employees on paid leave who earned over 8 million combined annually, , and they have a hiring freeze, which again is not going to be relevant to him. , the only part where it looks like you might have significant cutbacks in VA employment is A proposed closing of underutilized VA facilities, reviving a plan blocked under the Biden administration.

, while not formally announced, this signals an intent to streamline the VA infrastructure, which again, you know, this is about serving our troops. If It is being inefficiently deployed, so the money isn't getting to helping them in underutilized facilities. Yeah, something should be done about it, but overall it seems he's fairly safe.

Unless he's at one of these few facilities.

Yeah, but he's, he's getting really distracted.

But let's talk [00:29:00] about who actually is being fired. So remember the post I was just reading, like the third most upvoted comment on it was Trump just said as much in his speech, he said that many of those who work from home are just collecting a paycheck and doing nothing, possibly working second jobs.

Top comment under that is a crunk thing. About so lazy, they're working a second job. Everybody thinks this is hilarious, right? Oh, so lazy, they're working a second job. Because they're all working second jobs. You, you are buying into the person who's, who's, who's buying into the fantasy that has nothing to do with reality.

Like, why would you say like, oh, this guy, I feel bad for him when he's not even in a department where they're doing cuts.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, I guess. I mean, he thinks that

Malcolm Collins: he's in his, his, his silo right here, his bubble right here.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, maybe. Now what I didn't expect to see, [00:30:00] which there is at least one post of that has 10k of votes as of now it was posted three days ago was.

Reddit user Kali Doley saying, Black federal employees, how are you? And she talks about how she, well, I'll just read it. I am a Black female DOD fed and I feel beat the hell down. Every mention of stifling DEI efforts and removing any evidence of DEI achievements feels like a slap in the face. It feels like a personal attack.

Every damn day, I'm holding the line for sure but I wonder if any other Black feds feel like this. Go to the

Malcolm Collins: comments, go to the comments, come on, find some, find some outrageous stuff here. Well, see, like,

Simone Collins: I didn't expect to see this. I didn't expect to see that there were actually people in the federal government who were like, yeah, man, this DEI stuff was really important to me.

And I'm surprised to see it because, because they're SNF supremacists.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What is her comment other than SNF supremacism?

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, let's see. Top, top voted comment, 4. 5 upvotes. I feel defeated, sad, [00:31:00] now I'm pissed the f**k off. I ain't leaving my job, I'm staying. And someone responds to her affirmative response, the OP's original response.

This is the stage of grief that we, collectively as a country, must hurry to get to. The anger phase. This is when we stop watching in horror as things are being done and instead get up. And get that s**t done. And these are

Malcolm Collins: federal employees right here. Simone, here's another one. Okay, so this is one of the top upvoted comments, 13, 000 upvotes on Fed News, okay, for federal employees.

All right, it says, is there any point where the media will grasp that this is a coup or a coup attempt? I work in the federal agency space and I am totally baffled by the media's unwillingness to call this for what it is. It's a genuine national emergency. And I, as a tax paying, you are a tax receiving citizen, you .

You don't get to call yourself a tech, you tax . I should not have to go to a freaking subreddit to get accurate news and content. Well, maybe you're not getting accurate news and context when the media [00:32:00] is already inaccurate and insane. You just want your insane fantasies validated for you, but okay.

I am so grateful everyone here, muskite trolls excluded, of course, for holding the line and standing strong in a situation that is explicitly intended to cause immense trauma. Explicitly intended to cause immense trauma.

Simone Collins: They are claiming Actually, that, that, that is explicitly true. I, I think Resvaat, I'll try to look up the The quote, he's setting up the OMB, the Office of Budget and Management, that's kind of overseeing a lot of this.

Speaker 2: We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. We want, when they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work. Because they are so, they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

We want to put them in trauma.

Mission effin accomplished, my man.

Simone Collins: He said something along the lines of like, I want [00:33:00] them to feel traumatized by this. So that's, that's accurate actually. Which is kind of great.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, he's in the background here.

Simone Collins: So. But yeah, I'll go to your calendar and rebook. That's the best way to do it. Right?

Ho Math: Yes, that's fine.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, that's home math, by the way, for people who don't know. Top. GigaChad. Um.

Simone Collins: GigaChad. No. I'm sorry. Every time I hear the word GigaChad, I just picture Trogdor the Berninator.

Hold on.

Come on. I gotta go here.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. No, it's been clear since well before the election that the media is writing stories to match their owner's preferences and get clicks. Whatever gets them clicks. Claiming that there's a literal coup going on? Reporting on a coup would get bad clicks though. Yes! It would upset Musk.

What?! Okay, so keep in mind, if you are a federal government employee. Okay. And you believe that there is a coup going on. That means that you have a right. And, and what is a coup to them, but losing an election, losing the popular vote in [00:34:00] an election that at the coup. In their minds because they believe that they have a right to this country and its government services.

That is horrifying. Like, we should be, like, well more worried that they feel okay publishing all of this. And can I say how much that I love that Elon chose, like, okay, we didn't get parts in the, in the, in the Doge department, but that Elon chose a bunch of 20 year olds. Like, that's better than us.

These people can, can spend time on this that we can't spend.

Simone Collins: They don't have the commitments that we do. They don't have children to keep alive. And, homes, they can very easily, you know, like, just chill in the government offices, in the beds. Which is so cool and very efficient. It sounds like, very stressful, but a very great time in the end.

You know, very meaningful part of your life, so.

Malcolm Collins: Well, if you look at what people are saying here, because that's what people are here for right now. They want to see people freaking out. So I got comments here saying, I tried to put this in a post since this is a burner [00:35:00] account. It got denied. This is the first coverage I've seen that starts to grasp the severity of this issue.

I'm terrified, and it's musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems. Thank God, by the way given that this is what the government workers are saying. Like, why should we not want them locked out of systems if this is what they're saying? And then the person under this says, I just came here on Reddit to post this.

I'm actually Shaking from fear, it is a coop, and no one is admitting it. The silence is deafening. Then under that it goes, Me too, I'm literally sick over this. And there was a, a, a good post from whatever that service, the, the, the Fed, whatever news, and it's all the progressive, and they're like, I'm shaking, I'm shaking, and the Trump made like a battery from them to power the, the U.

S. Because they all say this, they're like, I'm literally shaking.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, it's It's interesting. I [00:36:00] mean, the, the themes here are a little, I mean, not, not disheartening, kind of what I would expect, but I'm surprised that there's so much, like, don't resign, don't do it. And not more just like, well, you know, a few people, like if you really aren't into your job and you're not doing anything, why not?

I'm

Malcolm Collins: glad we're

Simone Collins: not going to have to pay

Malcolm Collins: for their, whatever we just need to get rid of them all.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, maybe that is why. Senator Tim Kaine told them to not accept the buyout. So one of the more popular posts recently was someone saying, Senator Tim Kaine said to not accept the buyout because it's a trap.

And that he said, no one should take it from president Trump because there is no budget line to make payments for this. And it's a trap. I've not received the email yet, but when I do get it,

Malcolm Collins: salary line, what is he talking about? Yeah,

Simone Collins: that's, that's what I don't get. Is it like. All of these departments had budgets for these staffs that presumably were going to run through September.

The only difference here is [00:37:00] that the government is somewhat acknowledging that they were a write off, like the work that they would have done during this period between now and September wasn't of use to the federal government anyway, so the federal government isn't losing anything. The fact that at least their salaries stop after September is a win.

Look at them

Malcolm Collins: freaking out about them, quote unquote, covering up core values at the FBI. Core, core, core values. There's an image

Simone Collins: of, and it's, it's beautifully dystopian actually of someone taking a very depressing color of gray and just painting over, A series of, like, a very, very lame corporate wall with a bunch of words, like Oh no, yes, all like DEI slop,

Malcolm Collins: and people are panicking.

Equality, and yeah, it's Please share with the media, pictures speak a thousand words.

Simone Collins: Yeah but I'm sure just seeing people coming in and painting over signage in their offices Oh, this is

Malcolm Collins: great, they just fired all the agents who worked on January [00:38:00] 6th cases, I know one personally.

Simone Collins: Someone

Malcolm Collins: someone

Simone Collins: wrote that.

Yeah, this is this is a great source of entertainment and gossip in general, but let's let's sort of, you know, everyone, we would just encourage everyone to go in and read this yourself. Keep informed of what if you if you want to know what the deep state's doing, you don't even have to like, wait for some.

Trump administration employee to leak a report or make a report. You can just see what they're saying themselves on Fed News on Reddit, where apparently this is like the one corner of Reddit that's still full of real people. Which is both kind of great and kind of not considering that they seem to be doing this during work hours.

But this is it's really interesting and This is something I don't think we've ever seen before. Oh my God. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: you got to look at this. Hold on. This is a GIF. Feds being told not to leak information. Oh, I saw. And it's that clip

Simone Collins: from mean girls where she's just like dropping George everywhere, just [00:39:00] drops her burn book.

They're saying

Malcolm Collins: we are insurrectionists. We need to be put. That's what I'm seeing from that. We're going to

Simone Collins: absolutely rebel. No, I, this is, it's, it's eyeopening and you should look at it. And what I'm, what I think is. So useful for anyone to peruse this subreddit is to see something unprecedented play out in real time.

On one hand, basically, you're seeing, you know, you're seeing

Malcolm Collins: a coup attempt. Trump's and Elon

Simone Collins: Musk's posts on truth social and on X talking about what they're doing. And on the other hand, you see. the other side of the battle, the active battle posting on Reddit and probably a lot more on blue sky, which I still am not going to try to figure out how to have an account on.

I really don't want to merge ourselves in toxicity. No, no, but this is, I don't think this level of trying to. clear out bureaucratic rot has ever been done before. And keep in mind, [00:40:00] bureaucracy is a relatively new thing.

Malcolm Collins: It needs to be done. They are proving that they are treacherous. They hate the American people.

They hate democracy. And they believe that the quote unquote, a coup is the American people saying enough is enough.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But the, the modern bureaucracy as it exists from a governance standpoint, and obviously there have been big sprawling organizations before the industrial revolution, like. The Catholic Church.

But I think they did, you know, they did operate, I would say in an arguably much more agile way than even, you know, bureaucracies now. So modern bureaucracies really only began to spring up with the British Imperial Empire and with the Industrial Revolution. We've never really seen. A time, a reckoning in which people have systematically fought back to pare down bureaucracies that have grown out of control.

There have been periodic times in which economic or governmental disruption have caused organizations to simply fail and then, you know, go bankrupt and cease to exist. [00:41:00] But never have we seen with, with the exception of Elon Musk and Twitter, kind of like a test case there any effective attempt to actively pare down and streamline a, an ossified, large, sprawling bureaucracy.

And now we're seeing this massive, this isn't just. A political stunt. This is a social experiment. This is an experiment in governance and bureaucratic management to see can this be done and you can see it playing out on Reddit.

Malcolm Collins: You see these people freaking out. You see a portion of the government saying we plan to act to disrupt the will of the people in the United States.

And I don't think that there is any way our country survives unless we completely clear this out.

Get your popcorn.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe