Hmm this section sounds familiar:

The persecution drove hundreds of directors, managers and workers – including the author – into exile and/or imprisonment. In their place, the government appointed political operators, lacking knowledge and experience in the oil sector, who provided unconditional support to Maduro’s policies but damaged the company’s operational capacities, bypassing all control or accountability mechanisms.

That’s essentially what Trump admin wants to do. Fire civil servants en masse, replace with loyalists (proficiency for the job is optional).Then if something is goes wrong, and it will, just blame it on DEI, Biden, wokeness or something.

Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with career bureaucrats // civil servants per se. ¿Do you want to swap out every geologist, accountant, teacher, interpreter, ranger, manager, safety inspector, lawyer, technician, secretary every 4 years? These people literally run the country and by extension allow society to continue. And they are part of the idea that power and expertise are spread amongst many people.

Is it fair to criticize individuals, agencies, institutions. Yes. Is there corruption, mismanagement, incompetence? All the time, happens for any sufficiently large enough organization.

But no need to spin this into some bonkers conspiracy theory.

I’ve updated my initial comment.

This guy literally wrote a book about what he dubs “the executive branch deep state” including a list of high profile names he wants to target.

It’s all out in the open. Confirmation hearings are supposed to weed out people like him.

Edit: the way I previously worded my comment it might have been construed as me stating Patel was rightfully going after these people. Instead I meant to indicate that they rightfully resisted/investigated Trump.

One of her arguments against the allegation of her spewing Russian talking points was that she doesn’t follow Russian Propaganda.

Truthfulness aside, that argument is not the elegant dodge that she probably thinks it is. Because that speaks against her informedness. As someone applying for this job she should be interested or better yet well versed in what current Russian propaganda is, how it is disseminated, who the target audience is, how well it is working, and how it relates to the wider goals of the Russian regime.

Strangely enough Robert Kenney also made use of a similar defensive veil a couple of times. Well I’m not a medical expert, so I really couldn’t tell you. 🙄 Bro, why are you applying for this position then?

There’s so many parts and pieces that all failed to get to where we are today. Each time you reflect a moment and realize that we shouldn’t be be here in the first place:

• The FBI // justice department shouldn’t be a tool of personal revenge.
• But wait Trump/Musk shouldn’t have become presidents to begin with.
• Voters should be educated and well informed enough to simply not vote for an autocrat.
• Merrick Garland should never have become attorney general and even so Biden should have pressured him hard to do his job.
• Trump should have been impeached multiple times already.
• But the democrats too should have had a better alternative candidate.
• The democrats should have had a real primary contest.
• Biden should have never announced to run for another term out of the blue.
• And his handlers shouldn’t have tried to hide his frailty for so long.
• If only Donald Trump should have been sentenced for his many crimes.
• And he shouldn’t have had the backing of the Republican party for this long.
• Arguably voters should have realized he’s inept the first time around.
• The media shouldn’t have sensationalized him as much when he first ran as a publicity stunt

The list is not exhaustive and goes on and on…

And in the background there’s all the systemic failures and problems that enabled this: terrible public education, ignoring a large chunk of the electorate for too long, citizens united, social media and outrage culture, rampant disinformation and propaganda disguised as news, the electoral college and de facto 2 party system, too few checks and balances being hard codified, obvious loop holes like presidential pardons, …

Petty sure historians will analyze this for generations. If we will still live in a world where historians are allowed to about their work freely.

¿Remember how much Trump administration bungled the COVID response? Imagine again, but this time with his guy in charge. I see dead people.