One of the ICE applicants I spoke with seemed to have an insatiable desire for conflict in line with this hypothesis. All his life, he said, he had hoped to fight wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. He’d joined the army hoping to fulfill this desire. But our foreign wars had wound down by the time of his enlistment, and he never got a chance to fight abroad.

He said his wife had almost been assaulted in Texas, and when she’d called the police they arrested a man who turned out to be an “illegal alien” and who was promptly deported. He said he’d seen videos of a member of the Taliban getting into an argument at a fast-food restaurant in California (I couldn’t find any evidence of this—not even as a conspiracy), and that he wanted to join ICE to protect his family.

I am too much of a pussy to go into actual combat, so I have to make up stories about my wifu getting attacked by someone other than her boyfriend and about people being shitty to fast food employees who aren’t white Karens.

I know this kind of guys. When shit actually hits the fan they are the first to run, shoving over children and elderly.