If you visit the State Department’s website for the Global Engagement Center, you will read that “The Global Engagement Center closed on December 23, 2024.”
Not really.
As has been often observed, the nearest thing to immortality this side of the pearly gates is a government initiative. I have noted in this space and elsewhere that the innocuous-sounding “Global Engagement Center” was actually (in Vivek Ramaswamy’s accurate summary) a “key node of the censorship industrial complex.” According to its mission statement, the GEC was supposed to be focused on “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.” I thoughtfully added the italics to the word “foreign.”
The point is that the GEC—like the State Department as a whole (like, indeed, the CIA and the rest of the alphabet soup that makes up our “intelligence” services tout court)—is supposed to be focused outward: on foreign threats. Thanks in part to reporting by people like Matt Taibbi, we know that much of our government has been weaponized against the American people, at least against those of whom the regime disapproves. On issues ranging from COVID to Hunter Biden’s laptop, Taibbi has shown that “every corner of government”—“the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, . . . even the CIA”—has leaned on virtually all social and traditional media companies to toe the approved government line. The GEC has played a small but not insignificant role in this clandestine effort to monitor opinion and suppress entities and individuals emitting “Wrongthink” (what George Orwell called “Crimethink”).
Item: Because the GEC could not operate against Americans directly, it did so indirectly by funding entities like the British-based Global Disinformation Index, which compiled a list of publications and individuals that said things the regime did not like. That list was consulted by advertisers wary of winding up on the wrong side of the government. The Washington Examiner made the list. So did RealClearPolitics, Reason, The New York Post, Blaze Media, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the American Conservative, Newsmax, and many conservative entities. Result? Millions of dollars of ad revenue dried up, imperiling the future of those outlets.
Funding for the GEC was in the original 1500-page obscenity that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had the temerity to bring to his colleagues as a “continuing resolution” last month. That monstrosity instantly drew some portion of the contempt and ridicule it deserved, not least from Elon Musk, whose fingers got a workout on the platform formerly known as Twitter. A 120-page, slimmed-down version of the bill was hastily cobbled together minus the GEC funding and other objectionable features (a raise for the legislators, for example). That passed, and so a putative “government shutdown” was avoided.
There was modified joy over this seeming victory. The fact that funding for the GEC was cut was one of the principal goads to celebration. Here at last was proof that a bad government activity could actually be zeroed out. No money, no activity.
But the joy was short-lived. Deploying a pragmatic version of the Juliet Principle (“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”), the deep staters in the State Department just cooked up a new name.
Allow me to introduce you to the “Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub,” a polysyllabic, “rebranded” version of the GEC. Many of the people employed by the GEC are now employed by the new “hub.” They’ll need new business cards, stationery, and signs for their offices. Doubtless, there will be other expenses. But since much of the GEC’s budget has been “realigned” to the new shop, that won’t be a problem.
That’s not the end of the story. Donald Trump takes office in two weeks. As The New York Post reported, news about the rebranding of the GEC has sparked outrage. Said one GOP aide, Trump and incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio will have “to track every single office, down to every single staffer, if they want to end the weaponization of the federal government against conservatives.”
The question remains: will that happen? How serious is Donald Trump about rooting out the ideologically driven waste in government? How serious is he about reining in the surveillance apparat of the deep state, about surfacing the deep state as a destroyer surfaces an enemy submarine?
The truth is that we do not know. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have made a splash with DOGE, the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Will they actually be able to accomplish much? At first, I thought the news that the GEC had been zeroed out and shuttered was proof that DOGE could actually make a difference.
News that they were instantly reconstituted under a different name gives me pause. What if the National Endowment for the Arts and other left-wing playgrounds are zeroed out but then rebranded under other names? Not “The National Endowment for the Arts” but “The Creative Center for Gender, Equity, and Narcissistic Self-Indulgence.” Not the “Department of Education” but “The Department of Reeducation.” Will it be the same thing under different names?
That brings me to the big question facing the republic as we await Donald Trump’s second term. Among Trump’s supporters, there has been a lot of justified euphoria. There has also been a lot of talk about a “vibe shift,” a change in the Zeitgeist in the culture at large, as more and more Trump skeptics become former Trump skeptics and embrace the MAGA agenda. All of that is encouraging. But now for the hard part: moving from talking the talk to walking the talk. It may well be that the woke consensus that has gripped the culture like a boa constrictor is disintegrating. Maybe what just happened with the GEC is just the twitching of a dead or dying animal, the anatomized frogs’ legs of an exploded ideology.
But we don’t know yet what will happen. Hercules, when he set out to kill the Lernean Hydra, found the beast surprisingly robust. It was not enough to smash its many heads. Hercules had to enlist the services of his nephew Iolaus to cauterize each stump with a torch; otherwise, two new heads would burst forth to take the place of the one that was destroyed.
We know how to decapitate the hydra-like monstrosity that is the woke-inspired administrative state. Completely defund its activities. I believe Donald Trump has the gumption to do that. We will know within days of his taking office whether he does.
But even if he comes riding into Dodge with a satchel of world-changing executive orders, the regenerative powers of Leviathan are awesome. Trump will need to find a way to let Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy be like Hercules and Iolaus. He will, in fact, need a battalion of such crusaders. Let’s see if they appear.
A modest recommendation would be to trace those individuals which can be linked to the GEC and terminate those positions–and those individuals.
Can’t run a censorship department without personnel.
Look at those in positions of power provided to them by government. Would their ability to pursue wealth and prosperity be furthered, diminished, or unaffected by what they influence and control? We are not speaking about capitalism or crony capitalism or free and competitive markets any more. What is really going on is a form of undiagnosed fascism coming in under a very faulty radar system. It is soft fascism and during the Biden Administration it was Marxist ideology, using the censorship of historical fascism, to create massive advantages for the privileged and elite under various guises.
If the principle players associated with the Biden Administration, and International Global Entrepreneurial Efforts, were in power in France, at the time of their people’s infamous revolution, those who worked the guillotines would be enumerated voluntarily with joy and glee by the masses. I see no evidence as to why the electorate should not be doing the same thing today. Any indexes of happiness and satisfaction, such a system would generate, would likely exceed any imaginable measurement scales.
A question that should loom is whether Donald Trump will be the Master of the apprentices he needs to aid him. The magic in his wand should not be in the hands of ordinary “do gooders” and reformers. Best of all would be, perhaps, to destroy the wand, the bureaucracy/bureaucracies and the powers it (they) likely should never have been allowed to have and use in the first place.
The Undersecretary for Management [M] is the person/place to enforce the President’s will on State Department personnel. The Director General of the Foreign Service is the senior personnel officer, but must, by law, be a career Foreign Service Officer [DG]. The tricky part will be finding a Pro-Trump FSO who is qualified to be DG.
And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man
Yes, indeed, the Deep State monster’s primary inspiration and motivation is aiding and abetting the Democrat Party in its ongoing crime spree against the American people. That support means everything to its members, more than their department’s and agencies’ survival—they can’t imagine it coming to that anyway. They believe the Deep State is eternal. It’s up to Trump 2.0 to prove it isn’t. To that end, he and his people had better bring to DC a ruthlessness that takes no prisoners. Far more than the success of his second term depends on it.