How to create your own Banana Republic in three easy steps.
1. Drive out all competent people
2. Replace them with hacks.
3. Lie through your teeth.The unstated here is that now Pompeo will ignore ALL FOIA requests. So who is the winner here… IMO it looks like it could be TRUMP
It has happened before that the State Dept. has had a backlog of business that required them to assign a boatload of people to do work normally completed by fewer people of relatively low rank. In 2008 it was a huge surge in passport applications. There was a reason for this, but I don’t recall what it was. When one is accepted at State on the diplomat track, a very competitive process btw, they first spend a number of months in training as a class. A common track of training is:
The School of Professional and Area Studies (SPAS)
provides job-specific orientation, tradecraft, and area studies training
to empower foreign affairs professionals to advance U.S. interests and
tackle the evolving challenges of 21-century diplomacy. SPAS supports
our professionals through tailored programs in Consular, Economic and
Commercial, Management, Office Management, Political, and Public
Diplomacy, as well as new-hire orientation programs and in-depth Area
Studies courses.
At the end of training the class is graduated in a fancy ceremony sort of like a college grad ceremony. At that time each person is officially assigned their first posting somewhere around the world. It’s all very exciting to find that one is being sent to Lagos and assigned to economic affairs. (Kind of like the Sorting Hat!) The one I attended, there was a large world map with pins showing where the grads were going. I found out later that the next graduation and the one after that was a little different. Instead of the excitement of finding out about a posting to New Zealand or Oman, all the grads were assigned to the Passport Office in D.C. to deal with the surge in applications. I’m sure that this was disappointing, but it was temporary and they were all eventually assigned to Buenos Aires or Stockholm or wherever.
In a non-politicized, non-punative admin, this is how it’s done: use the newbies and promise them that it’s temporary. What was done here is absolutely not business as usual.
An internal memo from the State Department’s Bureau of Administration dated Oct. 12 — obtained by TPM from a Capitol Hill source — described the surge as a “tax” on all bureaus within the agency.
Um…this sounds like it might be important…intentional sabotage…?
Oh for Christs sake! Its not obvious by now that every cabinet agency under Trump was meant to fulfill this purpose? Accomplishing their prinnary function was strictly an afterthought under these goons.
Our embassies gutted, career diplomats run out of State. All for this view of big guys running the planet. Xi consolidates his position in the CPC, Putin in what is largely a Coasian machine, and Trump on the back of the 20th century’s leading country. What is interesting is where the next level of players end up. Modi in India, Abdullah in Saudi, Merkel in Germany, etc. Multipolar is a bitch.
Trump is the most important thing in the world and Trump’s feelings on a minute by minute basis are all that matter. So by extension, nothing else is that important like, for instance, the State Department, or the EPA, or the Justice Department, or the rule of law, or other people who are not Trump. People talk about dismantling government institutions, which is what many of Trump’s cronies are busy doing - but for Trump himself, the word is no more meaningful than an angry toddler knocking over a pile of blocks his sibling built - if you want to call that dismantling, then I guess you can. It is simply destruction of anything that he himself did not build. The malignant narcissistic personality cannot be appeased, cannot be satisfied - all threats must be destroyed, ridiculed and undermined. When you hear that someone is making decisions based on his “gut”, and the gut is that of a malignant narcissist, run for your life.
Everything we are enduring and attempting to survive right now is simply a side effect of a very sick man. The real evil are his enablers who are using his illness to further their own ends. They seem to be happy to watch a toddler wander around with loaded gun as long as it is not aimed at them.
Our department of State had a surging,
That started at Tillerson’s urging.
But it all was a game,
'Cause his actual aim,
Was to see them all leave in a purging.
Evil! Donald Trump and his administration are pure evil, lowest of the low, unbelievable. Swamp dwellers. There should be some retaliation for this. And every person that they have removed or put in a lower position should be compensated and reinstated to their old positions. Evil, fascists! I hate Donald Trump and every one that is ever served under him. Evil explanation point pure and adulterated evil I hope there is a hell for one reason and that’s for Donald Trump to burn there. Rotten to the core.
4. Steal everything that isn't nailed down.
5. For things that are nailed down, figure out how to un-nail them.
6. Steal those things.