The Surprise Party That Never Ends

I remember when government websites were boring.

Budgets. Regulations. Forms nobody could understand. Perhaps a photograph of an official standing behind a podium. Apparently, we have entered a new era.

The White House now has an arcade. Yes, an arcade.

Among the games currently offered are Build the Wall, which invites players to protect the border from a “coming horde,” and Rio Run, built around border enforcement.

I wish I were making that up.

My objection is not that government should never communicate creatively. Nor is this an argument about whether a country should enforce its immigration laws. Of course a sovereign nation needs borders, laws and mechanisms for enforcing them.

The question is different:

What happens when the exercise of government power over human beings becomes entertainment?

That question should concern us regardless of political party.

Government possesses tools the rest of us do not. It can tax. Regulate. Investigate. Prosecute. Detain. Deport. Wage war. Deprive people of liberty. Those powers are sometimes necessary. Precisely because they are necessary—and enormous—they should be exercised with discipline, proportionality and respect for human dignity.

This is where my builder brain kicks in.

When something in a system begins behaving unpredictably, I don't immediately reach for a wrecking ball. I open the toolbox.

What failed? What boundary disappeared? What incentive are we creating? What behavior are we normalizing?

And, perhaps most importantly:

What needs to be contained before more damage is done?

Containment has acquired an unnecessarily sinister reputation. Good systems contain things constantly. A riverbank contains water. A circuit breaker contains electrical overload. Guardrails contain vehicles. Building codes constrain construction. Corporate boards constrain executives. The Constitution constrains government.

Healthy containment is not domination. It is structure around power.

America's founders understood this remarkably well. They did not design a system around the assumption that good people would always occupy positions of authority. They divided power because human beings are human beings. Ambition, ego, fear, certainty, tribal loyalty and the desire for control don't disappear when someone walks into a government building.

Checks and balances are therefore not an inconvenience to effective government. They are part of the architecture and this brings me back to the arcade.

I am less interested in whether someone finds these games funny than in what their existence tells us about the institutional culture producing them.

There is a meaningful difference between enforcing immigration law and making a game of immigration enforcement.

There is a difference between communicating policy and gamifying state power.

There is a difference between strength and spectacle.

Those distinctions matter.

We seem to be living through a national surprise party that never ends. Every time I think surely there cannot be another balloon hiding behind the sofa, someone yells:

SURPRISE!

And there it is. Another moment requiring Americans to decide whether something should be dismissed as funny, defended because our political team did it, condemned because the other political team did it—or examined on its merits.

I prefer the fourth option.

Because the larger question isn't whether our side should be allowed to wield power this way.

The larger question is whether we would be comfortable handing the same tools, precedents and permissions to people with whom we profoundly disagree. That is one of the simplest stress tests I know for governance.

If the answer is no, the problem probably isn't the person holding the tool.

We need to take another look at the toolbox. And perhaps install a few more guardrails while we're in there.