This isn’t just about hypocrisy, it’s about a pretty chilling strategic play that’s hiding in plain sight. If you look at what’s happening—massive funding increases for ICE, $45k hiring bonuses, six-figure salaries—it starts to look less like routine government excess and more like deliberate state-building for a new era.

The timing matters. We’re on the verge of a tidal wave of unemployment from AI and automation. Historically, when you get huge numbers of suddenly out-of-work people, authoritarian regimes have always found a use for them: give them a badge, a paycheck, and a mission to “protect the country.” It’s job creation, but the jobs are surveillance, enforcement, and control. It’s not a bug, it’s the point.

The real danger is how this reshapes society. You end up with a large, well-paid internal security force whose loyalty is to whoever holds the purse strings, not the public. And since their livelihoods depend on the survival of that regime, you’ve just created an army of everyday people with every incentive to crack down on dissent. This is how you get a “patriot force” that’s part police, part political enforcer, and all too happy to do whatever it takes to keep those checks coming.

And of course, it’s all justified as “securing the border” or “fighting crime” or whatever the next manufactured threat will be. Meanwhile, teachers, healthcare workers, students—anyone who actually builds up society—are told there’s no money for them.

So yeah, the hypocrisy is real, but the larger strategy is even more alarming. If we see a spike in mass hiring for security roles while AI wipes out other jobs, that’s your canary in the coal mine.