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© Revolver
As has been extensively chronicled on Revolver, the American regime is a crumbling edifice. Every day, it becomes less able to win wars, maintain a border, or even keep the lights on. Every day, it drifts further away from anything resembling a real meritocracy. The result? A politically-sifted ruling class that is not only incapable of finding objective truth, but incapable of tolerating truth when it finds it.

But on the bright side, as the regime decays, it at least looks very funny while doing so. The dystopia playing out before our eyes is a tragedy, but it's a tragedy in clown's makeup — often literally so. Men in dresses are trotted out as trailblazing "female" admirals. Barely-literate Congresswomen babble incoherently about why the police should be defunded as they enjoy taxpayer-funded security. Fifteen FBI agents are sent to investigate a garage door pull to see if it might be a noose. To modify the old proverb: Those whom the gods would destroy, they first will make ridiculous.

And no part of the Globalist American Empire is more ridiculous than the State Department.

Earlier this month, Revolver provided a deep dive on the history of Havana Syndrome, the mysterious ailment where employees of the State Department and CIA suffer a baffling array of symptoms with no discernible link, save that many victims are convinced Vladimir Putin is shooting them with an invisible laser beam.

A new report from Politico reveals that even when they aren't developing psychosomatic illnesses, America's diplomatic corps of AWFLs (Affluent White Female Liberals) and AWFL-adjacents remains a complete joke.
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© Politico
The report is meant to be a sympathetic and gripping tale of "trauma" endured by hardworking State Department employees. It fails in this objective mostly by completely lacking in self-awareness.

Instead of making the State Department's damsels-in-distress appear sympathetic, Politico only manages to reveal a coterie of feeble, pathetic, and fragile shrinking violets who much resemble the regime they serve. In fact, the story is little more than a direct catalogue of all the disorders that currently plague the Globalist American Empire at large.

Here's a not necessarily exhaustive list of the disorders and mental imbalances that plague our evolved, enlightened, tolerant, progressive, and diverse class of regime handmaidens.

Delusion

The opening line of the Politico report sets the tone for the rest of the piece.
The Biden administration, like most everyone, was surprised by how rapidly the Afghan government fell to Taliban militants as the U.S. military withdrew. It happened in a matter of days, not weeks or months as the intelligence had suggested. And, as a result, confusion reigned in the region.
Apparently, the U.S. State Department saw Afghanistan as something of a video game. Sure, the government was going to collapse and the Taliban would overrun the country, but it would take a few weeks, the thinking went — at least enough time for the fake Afghan National Army to fight (badly) and then be destroyed. One problem: Members of the ANA had their actual lives on the line, and few people are willing to fight and die for a doomed cause just so US bureaucrats can look smarter. So as soon as the Taliban offensive started, they all just surrendered, surprising nobody in Afghanistan and everybody in Washington. The State Department was the most surprised of all, due to an overwhelming...

Arrogance
Interviews with more than half a dozen State Department employees in addition to government officials and advocates, as well as a review of internal administration emails POLITICO obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the desperation and disorganization that consumed frontline State Department employees. As they feverishly attempted to assist Afghans and Americans stranded in the war-torn country and fielded a crush of calls and emails — the inbox where the State Department directed Afghans to send Special Immigrant Visa applications crashed at least once — officials say they were unclear of their own authorities and what policies they were allowed to employ to help evacuate people. It all triggered mental health issues for some staffers, from which some are still attempting to recover, months later.

Their stories are a testament to the U.S. government's lack of preparedness for the cratering security situation, even as President Joe Biden pushed through his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan by Aug. 31.
The US government had signed the Doha Agreement, pledging to have troops out by May 1, 2020, back in February of 2020. The Biden Administration extended that withdrawal into August, while still making it absolutely clear that troops were leaving. The State Department, with its 25,000 employees and $60 billion budget, had nearly a year and a half to prep for withdrawal.

And yet, apparently, they barely prepared at all. They had to "feverishly" field emails and calls because they hadn't adequately readied everyone beforehand. And that speaks to the arrogance of State Department. The American Deep State successfully perpetuated the Afghan War for twenty years with no goal, no strategy, no plan to achieve victory. They successfully kept troops in the country for the entirety of the Trump Administration. And apparently, they simply assumed that they could force the Biden administration to extend the conflict again. If the Afghan government were collapsing, the thinking went, then the Biden Administration would be forced to swoop in and save it so as to avoid embarrassment. The State Department's genius "public servants" apparently couldn't imagine having to actually execute a withdrawal, and so, like a properly incompetent bureaucracy, they didn't even prepare for the possibility.

Mental Feebleness
In interviews with POLITICO, State Department staffers describe having been "manic" or suffering "a complete mental breakdown" at the time of the evacuation. They spoke of the need for mental health support in its aftermath. One official reported that colleagues continue to meet on occasion for breakfast "just to cry." Another disclosed seeking out therapy. More than one State Department official described the Afghanistan withdrawal as having damaged them emotionally. The people interviewed for this article asked to remain anonymous so they could speak candidly.
Keep in mind, Politico's piece is only based on interviews with slightly more than "half a dozen" State staffers! So even within the narrow grouping of people Politico spoke with, there are many testimonials of people having mental breakdowns, going to therapy, and holding special breakfast cry sessions.

At the height of the British Empire, Britain's ruling class cultivated the ideal of the "stiff upper lip," a detached calmness in response to frightening or traumatic events. It's an attitude that carried Britain through the Napoleonic Wars, the Great War, and the German blitz. Unsurprisingly, now that Britain is a fallen empire, its ruling class today says that the stiff upper lip is bad for "mental wellbeing" and should be shunned.

Americans don't need to be lectured. Our ruling class has fully embraced the effeminate ideals of letting emotions run rampant, and of having performative "mental breakdowns" and cry sessions and panic attacks in response to distress. The natural question is: Why should anyone look to such a crybaby class of people for leadership?

Amnesia
"We're not used to failure at State, and in every single possible circumstance, it was failure," one of the officials said. "You're failing with the email, you're failing with getting guidance on what we could do and what we could not do. We weren't empowered enough."
Not used to failure at State? Did this person fall through a time warp? This is the State Department of the Benghazi catastrophe, the State Department that got anally swabbed by China and then let the Chinese ritually humiliate it over American "racism," the State Department that has driven Russia and China into near-alliance through its own belligerence toward both.

So what's the root cause when the State Department fails, as it has so many times? According to the apparatchiks talking to Politico, the problem is that State didn't have enough power! Or, in the politically correct therapy-speak psychobabble of today, "We weren't empowered enough."

Of course, in reality, the State Department's power is and has always been enormous. The careerists at State arrogated to themselves the right to set US foreign policy, overruling the preferences of actual elected US leaders. But since it's not a full-blown dictatorship of "experts," it will never be enough.

Failure to Cope
In response to this article and questions about caring for the mental health of its employees, the State Department released a lengthy statement to POLITICO that said Secretary of State Antony Blinken's top priority was the health, safety and well being of department personnel and their families. Department officials said they made mental health professionals available to staffers in the United States and abroad, even using therapy dogs, among other types of support.
Revolver eagerly looks forward to 2022's revelation that State Department employees are demanding coloring books and cookies to help them cope with their jobs.

Manipulative Behavior

Politico's report is presented as a piece of reporting on the State Department. In reality, Politico is merely laundering Deep State talking points, and thus fulfilling the familiar and traditional role of so much of the mainstream press.

The State Department's agenda is to proclaim that the fall of Afghanistan means "death, torture," or a "nightmare of life" under the Taliban, unless every Afghan who wants in is immediately brought to America (meanwhile, the Taliban is imperfectly pursuing amnesty toward its old foes).

The State Department wants you to know that it is a collection of brave, hardworking, overstretched bureaucrats, and the nation's problems could just be avoided if they were handed more power. The end result is an article only barely meant to meaningfully inform the public about goings-on in the federal government. The real purpose of the article is to elevate the State Department and advance its agenda. Maybe it would succeed in doing so, except that the Globalist American Empire is so rotten that it can't tell the difference between what makes it look heroic and what makes it look pathetic.

In our reporting on Havana Syndrome earlier this month, Revolver noted that there are wider implications to having a foreign service so vulnerable to group hysteria:
The US State Department employs close to 25,000 people and has a budget of nearly $60 billion. The CIA employs another 21,000 with a budget of $15 billion, and who knows what is being hidden on black budgets and black ops.

These are vast organizations, given tremendous resources and tremendous trust, to represent the interests of the world's richest and most powerful country. The State Department and CIA have the power to prevent major wars — or to ignite them. And right now, both organizations are openly announcing to the world that they are prone to delusions about imaginary sci-fi weaponry, and that a large share of their stuff can be disabled by spreading Havana Syndrome memes.
A similar lesson is on display here. The U.S. State Department, using its own friendly reporters, is broadcasting to the world how mentally fragile its personnel are, how easily they can be shell-shocked, how delusional they are about their capabilities, and how weak they are when faced with an embarrassing setback.

And that's the American Deep State in a nutshell. By the day it grows more desperate, more mentally ill, and more frantic to accumulate power, while also becoming less stable, less competent, and less worthy of all the power it demands for itself. The U.S. government of old might brag to the world about its great accomplishments. But today's generation of bureaucrats have none, so they tell the world about their therapy dogs, thinking it will make them look hardworking when it instead makes them look insane.

The manifest ludicrousness of our corrupt and decrepit ruling class is in a sense an undignified insult added to the daily injuries of life in the Globalist American Empire. At the same time, it serves to underscore the illegitimacy and ultimate fragility of the regime. Equally important, it serves to remind us of our solemn duty not only to triumph over our nation's enemies, but to laugh at them as well.