“We’re just your friendly neighborhood officers”

There are a lot of wealthy–not rich, but just wealthy–people who really need to figure out that having unidentified internal security forces grabbing people off the street puts them at risk for kidnapping for ransom. There are countries, sadly, where kidnapping for ransom isn’t incredibly rare, and, until now, I’ve never really thought the U.S., despite all its faults, could become one of those countries. But I do think wealthy people (again, not the rich) really need to think about what this means for them, if no one else (of course, you shouldn’t be a selfish asshole, but some people are).

For context, former Senator Mitt Romney spends around $1.7 million on personal security due to fears of rightwing political violence. But Romney’s net worth is around $235 million, so he can afford it. Someone with a few million dollars of assets (which can include a small business or a big windfall, a few good years of commissions, etc.) can’t afford to pay that for security. This makes them unprotected targets, and, again, how do you know who these masked goons are?

Put another way, there’s a non-trivial chance that the first shooting of our internal security forces related to Trump’s immigration policies results from a slightly disturbed, well-off person who was afraid they were being kidnapped.

Fun times.