Uncivil Service: Diaries of a Civil Servant

Stories and experiences from serving the public at a state environmental agency.

[uncivil-service]

To all the Republicans in office kowtowing to Trump's Cult, remember that "I was just following orders" was insufficient reason to save the last group of Nazi scum, and it won't save you either.

Authoritarian and fascist regimes always fall, because the people will only comply for so long, and there are way more of us than there are of you. You will not be in power forever, and protecting the people who aim to subdue and control the population will not protect you in the end.

So, continue to cower. Continue to cave. Continue to show the world the cowards you are. We will remember what you've done, and history will not be kind to you.

[political-us]

[dialemformurder]

The Disappearances Have Begun

Splinter is your home for news and opinions that challenge power in our political and economic system that's becoming more unhinged each and

Over the weekend, agents of the government entered a legal resident’s home without a warrant and arrested him, and then flew him a thousand miles away without notifying his family or lawyers about his whereabouts for a day. If you read about it in any other country, you would know what to call it.

This happened to Palestinian activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil in New York on Saturday night. The ostensible crime was, per a Homeland Security spokesperson, leading “activities aligned to Hamas” — or, described another way, protesting a genocide while a masters degree student at Columbia University, an obviously First Amendment-protected activity at the very core of theoretical American values. Khalil’s wife, an American citizen who is eight months pregnant, was present during the arrest, and was threatened with detention herself.

The arresting agents apparently told him his student visa had been revoked — only he doesn’t have one, and is, again, living here legally with a green card. According to Khalil’s lawyer Amy Greer, his wife tried to visit him the following day at a detention center in New Jersey but was told he was not being held there. For at least a while, no one outside of the government knew where he was — and it later became clear that he had been flown all the way to Louisiana to be detained.

This is, obviously, blatantly illegal, horrendously immoral, and straight-up fascist. This is what dictatorships do — arrest people without legal backing for thought and speech crimes against the government. As many have already pointed out, the choice to start such depravity with a Palestinian activist seems deeply and cynically calculated, given the attitudes of much of the government itself as well as various elite institutions on the subject; at one point on Monday Morning, a small-type link to a story on Khalil’s arrest was 39 stories down on the New York Times homepage. As of this writing a couple of hours later, it does not appear to be on the homepage at all.

Call it a trial balloon. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it outright when he shared the Khalil story: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.” But why stop there? As Jamelle Bouie said on Bluesky, “if they can disappear permanent residents they can disappear citizens.”

There have been plenty of examples of creeping fascism since Trump took office, but this seems like the most breathtakingly obvious one yet. “Silencing dissent is unlawful, unjust, and authoritarian through and through,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D—MA). “A President who detains a protestor and revokes their legal status can only be called one thing: A dictator.”

[afurioushawk]

The fact that DOGE's Brightest Minds have been exposed just going in there typing "gay" "trans" and "black" in the search bars and deleting whatever comes up el em ay oh

[mediumsizetex]

Tell 'em about it!

[icecream-noodle]

HHHHHH-

[octolight]

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Lmk if I typoed anything

[rhynee]

people who dont experience it cannot comprehend how awful executive dysfunction is. I WANT to do the task, i have the resources TO do the task, i will feel better having DONE the task

but i cant fucking do the task

[onlytiktoks]

Georgetown law dean rebuffs DEI warning from top federal prosecutor for DC

Georgetown Law School’s dean has rebuffed an unusual warning from the top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C., that his office won’t hir

If Democratic lawmakers were smart, they’d pay attention to the way the dean of Georgetown's law school just handled a Trump-loving U.S. att

[uncivil-service]

Grandmother: These people leading the government right now need to go back and actually read the constitution.

Me: As someone who has emailed people in various levels of government and found many of them incapable of reading anything with more than one short paragraph much less answering questions about it, I am not 100% they know how to read. To say nothing of actually comprehending the words in front of them.

Me: We need a constitution picture book. A coloring book, even. We need kindergarten constitutional scholars to explain to these fuckers that if they want to be like Russia they can just fucking move there.

[liberalsarecool]

Stay focused. Stay engaged. We will organize and abolish Dark Enlightenment neo-monarchs.

[uncivil-service]

Trump, Musk, and Vance are like the unholy trifecta of weaponized incompetence and they're destroying our country to prove it.

[liberalsarecool]

#GovernmentAccountabilityOffice

Let’s just say neither the print media nor the cable/networks have distinguished themselves in reporting here.

GAO should’ve been mentioned in the first paragraph of every story since DOGE came onto the scene.

[liberalsarecool]

The fascist Felon is very obvious.

[political-us]

Representative Al Green quotes MLK “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” concerning ethnic cleansing of Gaza - promises to begin impeachment process against President Donald Trump.

[liberalsarecool]

Strong progressive parties with engaged labor unions are the best defense against fascism.

Corporate tyranny is the enemy. Billionaire overlords want you destitute.

[thashining]

Musk is the biggest government welfare recipient

[onlytiktoks]

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5177965-crockett-putin-trump-tariffs-mexico-canada-ukraine-russia-war-zelensky-vance/

The Texas lawmaker has grown tired of Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s supposed alliance in the Russia-Ukraine peace talk

[technofeudalism]

Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral

The World War II-era "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" is full of steps that office workers can take to resist leadership.

A declassified World War II-era government guide to “simple sabotage” is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and “describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly.”  Over the last week, the guide has surged to become the 5th-most-accessed book on Project Gutenberg, an open source repository of free and public domain ebooks. It is also the fifth most popular ebook on the site over the last 30 days, having been accessed nearly 60,000 times over the last month (just behind Romeo and Juliet). 

Link to the Guide at Project Gutenberg can be found here

A Wikisource entry can be found here.

Mirrors can be found here, here, here, here and here.

[transbiantechnerd]

Here's a thing we should spread far and wide. You're welcome!

[joint-hurty-juice]

Life-changing OCD hack is learning that you can literally call poison control to check if you fucked up and took medications wrong in a way that could kill you instead of having a panic attack while reading reddit and quora threads for an hour. They won't even be mad at you. Like obviously don't do it every day or something but genuinely you can do this if you need to

[moorishflower]

as people turn more and more towards the internet as a first choice for information, poison control (which has rebranded as poison help? i think?) is seeing fewer and fewer callers

part of this is because the USAmerican birth rates have slowed, and the number 1 culprit for why you'd call poison control is kids under 5 put shit in their mouths all the time

but part of it is BECAUSE people are turning to the internet first

and you don't have to! poison control is FREE and available in EVERY US STATE AND TERRITORY

they are staffed 24/7 365 days a year! they do everything they can to minimize wait times and they have an ENORMOUS database of medications, household cleaners, chemicals, pesticides, and MORE! and not only information on JUST those things, but how they interact with other things! they can even give you advice on if your pet ingests something they shouldn't!

but poison control isn't federally funded! they're a frankenstein mishmash of state funded, federally funded, and a couple of other weird ones (like organizations helping with funding) just for flavor. poison control NEEDS you to be politically aware. keep a finger on local and state politics; if your state is voting to shut down their poison control center, make sure your reps hear about how pissed you are!

poison control saves lives, but even more than that, it keeps people out of emergency rooms and walk-ins when they don't have to be. when Louisiana closed its PCC in 1988, people who called the PCC hotline were instructed to call their local hospital instead. the number of medically-treated poisonings rose by 42%...meaning ERs and walk-ins were flooded with people who'd taken, say, one extra pill of ibuprofen by accident, or got a bit of rubbing alcohol in their mouth, or got their dog's flea medicine on their skin. stuff that was SCARY, sure...but wouldn't have needed medical care at all if there had just been someone to tell those people you can just wash your mouth out, or wash your skin, or refrain from taking any more ibuprofen for at least 24 hours!

anyway help ur local PCC, put the pressure on your political reps, and if you ever have questions like "hypothetically what would happen if you inhaled iodine," you can call 1 800 222 1222 and speak with a real live reassuring person any time day or night!