Just A Bureaucratic Nightmare

Dead-eyed smoking a cigarette at the bar watching yet again as an aggrieved cadre of terminally-online post-materialist youths overcorrect on marginal swings in the median voter share to justify sweeping ideological attacks on the last wave of ageing thinkfluencers they are desperate to replace in the trend cycle and dreading having to endure their kayfabe that This Time It's Different.

They want to say whatever they want in the moment and be in a position where nobody will criticize them or push back.

Which is an understandable fantasy, but I cannot emphasize enough that this is not a general principle that they want to extend to other people.

"And it is unclear who is seriously serious about their beliefs and who is a grifter doing it for the bit"

The scary thing is that to this kind of person there is absolutely no difference. That's another thing I mean by not wanting to take responsibility. Everything they do is "the bit".

January 6th was part of "the bit" and they deeply resent the idea that people are pretending it was some serious big deal when really it was basically nothing, and crazy liberals are trying to pretend that this dinky little protest was some kind of "insurrection".

It is, simultaneously, an amazing and serious outpouring of energy that will transform the country, one of the greatest mass movements in American history.

It is seriously serious AND the bit, simultaneously, depending on their psychological needs at the time.

That's what I mean by not wanting to take responsibility, they want to live in a bubble where they don't have to take their own actions seriously.

PS - This is something I've noticed about how conspiracy people network even when they have radically divergent world-views that aren't compatible. They signal to each other that they aren't going to hold each other to any actual specifics. This is not necessarily too sinister in the abstract; putting differences to the side to take on an enemy is important sometimes.

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

stories about crime involving immigrants go viral. even if every story is factual, their viral nature and the emphasis put on them in discourse can create the impression of a massive immigrant crime wave. this tendency latches on to some people’s preexisting xenophobia, and gives them a justification to indulge it. this happens with other groups and prejudices too often course, and just like the phenomenon of crime in general. look at how crime rates compare to perception of crime. and part of this is just the dynamics of media coverage: if it bleeds it leads, and no journalist ever went broke pandering to the lowest political denominator.

but also people’s intuitions on this are totally broken. they think of there being a finite pool of resources immigrants must be taking from, even if those resources are abstract things that more tax paying workers ought, just by their very existence, increase the amount of.

8 months pay with the ability to get a new job is very tempting, especially for lower-paid workers. All that extra money could really cover some gaps and relieve financial pressures. It’s tempting. I get it.

ITS ALSO NOT LIKELY LEGAL AS WRITTEN AND YOUR AGREEMENT COULD ACTUALLY SCREW YOU. There’s a reason so many of the recent EOs and initial memorandums are getting halted or rewritten - no thought or research was given to what they can do given actual regulations and union contracts. Because many are coming from Musk via DOGE, and Musk has NEVER had to deal with unions, federal employee regulations, and strong opponents capable of fighting back HARD with decades of legal precedent at their back.

Right now, r/fednews is the biggest social media hub for federal employees anywhere; you can find resources, advice, news, memes, and encouragement there.

If you're not a federal employee, feel free to pop over anyway for information, and please send well-wishes! They really need it right now, as their jobs are so so so important but not very popular or prestigious, and now the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world are trying to take their livelihoods.

The architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, is now Trump's director for the Office of Managenent and Budget -

ie, the main guy who created Project 2025 is now the topmost-level manager and coordinator of all federal agencies.

His vision for federal civil servants, in his own words:

"We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because 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."

Project 2025 specifically targets federal civil servants for a reason. They are the essential first and second lines of defense of the US democracy and the fascists know it.

Support civil servants, support your rights!

The Watcher

Acrylic painting on canvas