Posted on 05/25/2025 3:26:50 PM PDT by ransomnote
If you want to know who’s running the State Department these days, it helps to peruse the website of a relatively new, conservative-leaning organization called the Ben Franklin Fellowship.
The group’s roster includes Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau, top officials in bureaus such as consular affairs, and even an acting undersecretary or two. The fellows include current and former members of the foreign service, as well as other international affairs specialists. And while the Fellowship describes itself as nonpartisan, its right-of-center views are obvious: It emphasizes goals such as border security; opposes typical diversity, equity and inclusion practices; and advocates for the careful use of U.S. resources abroad.
I have had a number of conversations with founders of the Fellowship, and they clearly cast it as a refuge for a group they believe is marginalized in U.S. diplomacy.
“It is a network of people who are not progressive and who have felt as though they’ve not had a forum like so many others in the State Department over the decades,” said Matthew Boyse, a Fellowship founder and a former foreign service officer.
But many career U.S. diplomats are suspicious of the organization.
They warned me that it could politicize a foreign service that is supposed to be nonpartisan and undermine policymaking by promoting MAGA-infused ideology over facts. Some worry that joining the Fellowship is an unofficial requirement to get ahead in their careers under President Donald Trump, and that its anti-DEI message will hurt women and minorities in a State Department historically dominated by white men. Some also question the qualifications of Fellowship members who have gotten plum assignments.
Well, there may be a few Trumpian upstarts pretending to run the State Department (and I hope they succeed). And maybe they have even gotten rid of a few leftist-globalist-warmonger 0bama-Biden elitists that have been there for years....
.... But who REALLY still runs the State Department is ‘The Deep State’ career embeds who are going to continue to sabotage the current but temporary Trump political appointees. .
The idea that the State Department is non-political is laughable. Having known many people in the State Dept for the last 30 years, all I can say is that Keith Laumer’s “Retief” series was absolutely spot-on. I am starting to think that only sociopaths can exist in that environment.
Amazing how Leftists like Politico hate it and want to make people think something nefarious is going on when Republicans do the same thing democrats do and listen to Conservatives and real Republicans rather than the media and democrats and Leftists.
Heard of Keith Laumer but never read those. Could you summarize, please?
... there’s someone else needs taking care of in Washington. Rose Tucci.
I certainly do not miss it. I was there for Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Lurch, Hillary.... I reported her clinton email server the first week she was there and my life became a dangerous living hell where both my wife were assaulted and stalked, threatened and abused.
Foggy Bottom has long been Red and down for The Revolution.
Correct. When Obama was elected I found myself as the only conservative in a misison of 25 members of the foreign service. Had I not been their communications expert they probably would have never spoke to me.
Being in the room where every single person thinks they are the smartest person in the room sucks. Every single person at State has an elevated sense of their own superior intelligence. During every course you take, you do the Myer’s Briggs and everyone knows exactly what they are - you can game it to your desired personality traits. When I joined I was told I was selected form a pool of over 1900 applications as the only one selected; that all my classmates were of the same caliber. By the time I left state it was up to 2600 applicants for every position selected. The worst thing is that under Obama fully 20% selected were for genderbender backfills - thus we know we were not getting much in the way of quality, but they all seemed to believe they were smarter than you.
I found that everyone at State was a hard core marxist. They were open in their hatred of Christians, military veterans, white men, and they loved their homosexuals. I have seen people wearing a cross told to hide because it offended them.
Liberals are the worst. Many of them would claim their parent died in every assignment until someone finally figured it out around 2009, but some of women at my mission had used that trick for free furneral trips 14-17 times and nothing was done to recover the money.
I learned to HATE at the State Department. I hated myself for joining, and I hated most the liberals I worked with. There are no cute or normal liberals; they are all college created monsters on a mission. They are social/socialist foot soldiers.
Many will tell you they hate America. In the next breath they are patting themselves on the back for being America’s Royality, because that’s what we are told in our three weeks at State during orientation.
They will screw each other over and lie about each other just to destroy someone’s career because they feel like in every assignment they need to thin the herd for their next promotion.
I was in my late 40s when I joined while working overseas. I had retired and always been successful. I was gratified and shocked, and did not expect to be selected when I went back to DC on my own dime for the interviews. I was there for 3 hours and told congratulations, that most of them would be there until 7 pm if not sent home without an offer. Being older and conservative, I was cautioned that my those with my worldview would be mostly in the Diplomatic Security and Information Resources, which was true.
Liberals can only exist in an environment where rules are broken; conservatives are only allowed because lives depend on us and critical information systems cannot be DEI staffed.
“it could politicize a foreign service that is supposed to be nonpartisan and undermine policymaking by promoting MAGA-infused ideology over facts”
https://www.lerctr.org/~transit/healy/blowit.wav
liberals at State Dept.
Retief is a Diplomatic Service agent in the distant future, except mysteriously the diplomatic scene in the far future seems to resemble world politics in the 1950s and 1960s. Career diplomats constantly attempt to surrender to alien powers, only for Retief to take decisive action, win the girl, and save the world. Mostly, the series is a witty and well-written satire of the U.S. State Department as it attempts to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory time and again only for Retief to foil their efforts and put they human confederacy on top. Here’s a link to audio of some of the stories (not professionally narrated): https://archive.org/details/the-retief-stories-vol-1-by-keith-laumer
They warned me that it could politicize a foreign servicePoor dear must have lost her job at the Atlantic Council when DOGE turned off the spigot.
Lies so big that one dare not doubt them. They hope.
Yep, Hillary ran the State Dept from ‘93 to 2024
Only Trump was strong enough to clean house.
GWB was too busy attacking Iraq to pay attention.
Thanks very much.
Having researched a zillion issues over the years I can't count the times it was clear the State either worked with CIA or visa versa. Both departments have been as corrupt as govt. departments can get.
Let's hope under Trump we will see major changes. Many of the criminals in both departments are known. It's just a matter of the right person telling the truth about the wrong person.
Diversity, equity and inclusion practices are not typical. DEI presented as Anti-White is an abomination.
Wow, I read and enjoyed a bunch of them back in the 1970s.... Hadn’t thought of them for decades. Thanks for the reminiscence!
The State Dept was about 100% Leftist a few months ago. That probably has not changed much. I had hopes for a Twitter-style 80% staff reduction or greater.
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