Welcome to the late-stage American experiment, where the pursuit of happiness has been replaced by the pursuit of a ‘right-swipe’ that doesn’t end in a career-ending federal investigation. We find ourselves today contemplating the tragicomedy of Brandon Wright, a man who served eight years as an IT functionary for the Department of Homeland Security—a duration that suggests either a saint-like patience for bureaucratic rot or a total lack of alternative prospects. Mr. Wright’s mistake was not a security breach, a missed patch, or a failure to reboot a server. No, his sin was the oldest one in the book: he thought a woman on a dating app actually wanted to hear his opinions.

Wright is currently suing the DHS, alleging that his First Amendment rights were trampled after he was fired for criticizing the department’s head, Kristi Noem. The setting for this ideological execution was a date orchestrated via Bumble, a platform designed for the curated exchange of lies and flattering camera angles, but which in this instance served as a trapdoor into the unemployment line. According to the lawsuit, Wright was filmed without his knowledge by an unidentified woman using ‘yellow journalism tactics.’ In the modern era, ‘yellow journalism’ is a polite term for what we now call ‘content creation’—the act of baiting a bored office drone into saying something mildly controversial so it can be fed into the outrage machine for digital pennies.

Let us pause to admire the absolute, crystalline stupidity of everyone involved. First, there is Wright himself. To spend eight years working for the DHS—an agency that essentially functions as a paranoid, multi-billion-dollar nervous system for a crumbling empire—and then assume that a stranger from the internet is a ‘safe space’ for dissent is a level of naivety that borders on the pathological. Wright apparently believed that his private thoughts on his boss, Kristi Noem, were protected by the sacred parchment of the Constitution. He forgot the primary rule of the twenty-first century: you have the right to remain silent, but you lack the capacity to do so when faced with the possibility of a second drink and a sympathetic ear.

Then we have the DHS itself, an organization so fragile that the grumblings of an IT worker over a cocktail are treated as a catastrophic threat to national stability. If the Department of Homeland Security’s integrity is so brittle that it shatters because an employee thinks the Secretary is a vapid political opportunist, then we are truly further down the drain than I previously theorized. Firing an employee for private speech isn’t ‘security’; it’s a temper tantrum with a badge. It’s the behavior of a regime that has given up on competence and settled for enforced flattery. They didn’t fire him because he was a bad worker; they fired him because he broke the kayfabe of the administrative state.

And what of the ‘date’? This unnamed operative of the digital panopticon represents the new social contract: everyone is a narc. We are living in a participatory Stasi, where citizens don’t even need to be paid by the state to destroy their neighbors; they’ll do it for the likes, the retweets, or perhaps the sheer, hollow thrill of being a ‘whistleblower’ for a cause they barely understand. The lawsuit describes these as ‘surreptitious’ tactics, but in reality, it’s just the natural evolution of a culture that has replaced intimacy with surveillance. Every romantic encounter is now a potential deposition; every compliment is a possible sting operation.

Wright’s lawsuit claims that his termination violated the First Amendment. It’s a quaint argument. He’s appealing to a legal framework that assumes people are rational actors in a free society, rather than disposable assets in a PR war. The courts will likely spend years and thousands of taxpayer dollars debating whether an IT guy’s drunken rant constitutes ‘protected speech’ or ‘operational interference.’ Meanwhile, the real lesson is ignored: we have built a world where the only way to stay safe is to be a silent, unthinking cog. To have an opinion is to have a liability. To share that opinion is to sign your own pink slip.

Ultimately, this isn’t about Kristi Noem, or Brandon Wright, or the sanctity of Bumble. It’s about the total collapse of the private sphere. When the government, the tech platforms, and the predatory dating habits of the terminally online converge, the individual is always the casualty. Wright wanted a connection; instead, he got a crash course in the reality of the American workplace: you are free to speak your mind, provided your mind is a perfect mirror of the current leadership’s ego. Anything less is a security risk. Enjoy your appetizers, Brandon. I hope they were worth the eight years of pension you just lit on fire.