COMMENTARY: Bureaucratic meltdown is flooding the news by design

Often, the first thought someone has when they think of an iceberg is the frozen behemoth that sank the supposedly unsinkable Titanic — cold, unflinching and relatively immovable, requiring a tough steel hull and an even tougher captain to break through it. We are seeing this scenario play out with the Trump administration’s streamlining of the federal government.

The iceberg is the federal bureaucracy comprising thousands of individuals hired into the executive branch to serve their fellow citizens. Now, they are feeling the heat. For years, these individuals have been crafting and implementing policies from which most Americans are insulated, all without the threat of unemployment should they not perform their duties to the best of their abilities.

Now, the world is seeing what it looks like when icebergs cry.

The meltdown started last month. And, like a child denied his allowance for stealing from mom’s purse, the kicking and screaming are only intensifying. In the face of government efficiency and downsizing, some officials have taken to encouraging “civil disobedience” in the face of DOGE commander Elon Musk’s Office Space-esque letter asking employees, “What would you say you do here?”

It was a simple question asking what each employee accomplished last week, stressing that classified information should not go through that channel. Musk’s assumption was that a nonresponse was a resignation. In the case of the FBI, new Director Kash Patel announced the agency would be handling Musk’s request via the internal review process — yet some reports say this is the first of many “power struggles” within the administration.

It’s not the sobbing we are hearing from bureaucrats and left-leaning politicians defending and encouraging federal employees to not do their jobs, but we are facing an all-out assault attempting to curry sympathy for the employees on the chopping block. It’s taking the form of over-the-top emotional pleas against the new administration’s push for government transparency and efficiency.

Last weekend, in response to the Department of the Interior releasing thousands of employees, disgruntled staffers hung an upside-down American flag — symbolizing a ship in distress — in a park. The day before, there were doom-speaking headlines with hyperbolic claims that Trump’s cutting of the federal workforce “could lead to an economic disaster in some parts of the country.”

Now, we are at the “national security risk” portion of the left’s patented Outrage Cycle. Last week, CNN, acting as the CIA’s string quartet on the Titanic, conducted itself in a sweeping rendition of the American classic, “Our CIA Assets are in Danger from an Internal Email,” amid staffing cuts and an audit of the intelligence agency, complete with the “He’s Only 25 Years Old!” coda that omits the fact that the legislative branch is staffed predominantly by people in their 20s.

I would know. I was one. Shame on me for taking a congressional communications job at 23. Why should I have been given that level of responsibility at such a young and tender age? My thoughts go out to our young men and women in the armed forces (some as young as 17, with parental consent), who join the physical fight to protect us, our families, friends and neighbors.

This symphony also includes a movement from Harvard University claiming that DOGE “is putting the country’s data and computing infrastructure at risk.” Of course, this concert would not be complete without headlines of an “internal feud” in the government over DOGE’s access to federal information technology systems and “chaos” at our national parks over the firings — even though, under the previous leadership, Yosemite National Park had only one employee who had the keys and know-how to open the park’s bathrooms when they were locked.

Do not be fooled by the opalescent cries from disgruntled federal employees or their anointed guardians. This is by design. These are the final mews of a dying beast that knows the jig is up. While we each may know someone within the federal workforce, it is essential to remember that these jobs were never designed for people to make their permanent homes. The American people know this, which is why they voted for change in November.

Houston Keene previously worked in Congress and as a journalist covering politics. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.