It’s hard to keep up with the entertainment landscape these days. One week it’s “Shark Week,” the next it’s “Barbenheimer,” and now — premiering exclusively on the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ morally grey channel — we have The Purge: Loyalty Oath Edition.
This season stars Kash Patel, the FBI’s current Director and apparent graduate of the “I Don’t Need Evidence, I Have Vibes” school of personnel management. His latest performance? Allegedly firing bureau employees based not on competence, ethics, or — radical thought — actual job performance, but on their loyalty to him and his preferred political ecosystem. Because in 2025, we’ve apparently decided that public service is just reality television without the confessionals.
The plot beats are familiar:
- Identify staff who might think independently.
- Whisper words like “disloyal” and “problematic” in closed-door meetings.
- Remove them with all the subtlety of a guillotine in a public square.
- Insist, through gritted teeth, that it’s “about efficiency,” even as the script bleeds patronage politics from every line.
It’s the kind of corporate restructuring that would make even the most ruthless HR manager at Enron say, “Maybe tone it down.”
Act I: The Casting Call
Every purge needs a casting call. Reports say Patel’s auditions were simple: instead of headshots, applicants provided proof of ideological alignment. The wrong answer to “What’s your favorite amendment?” was apparently the fastest way to get a pink slip. Those with an appreciation for nuance, or God forbid, the separation of powers, were shown the exit before they could even grab their FBI-branded stress balls.
From a distance, it reads less like federal oversight and more like the set-up for a high-budget dystopian drama — Hunger Games: J. Edgar’s Revenge. And yet, the critics aren’t just coming from outside; former officials — seasoned in the fine art of not looking surprised — are using words like “purge” without irony.
Act II: The Rebrand
Once upon a time, the FBI sold itself as a place where investigations were conducted based on facts. Now, we’re dabbling in a different metric: loyalty as currency. Forget evidence-based policing; this is fealty-based staffing. The agency’s seal might as well be redesigned to feature a handshake in front of a loyalty pledge banner, with an ominous subheading: We Investigate You Before You Investigate Anyone Else.
Patel’s defenders — and there are a few, most of whom sound like they’re auditioning for state media roles — argue that loyalty is an underrated quality in law enforcement. That’s true, in the same way loyalty is an underrated quality in dog ownership: it’s valuable, but if the dog starts biting every guest who questions the furniture arrangement, you might have a problem.
Act III: The Moral of the Story (Which Isn’t Really a Moral)
The danger here isn’t just the alleged firings. It’s the normalization of the purge. Once you start swapping out seasoned personnel for ideological mirrors, the organization stops functioning as a watchdog and starts functioning as a vanity project. And vanity projects, as history shows, have a way of ending with expensive portraits and suspiciously empty bank accounts.
There’s a reason actual law enforcement training programs teach critical thinking, chain of custody, and ethics — they’re supposed to outlast whoever’s in charge. Otherwise, every new director gets to stage their own season of “Out with the Old,” complete with confessional booth footage and slow-motion badge handovers.
Former officials are sounding the alarm because they’ve read this script before. It’s the one where political loyalty eclipses professional duty, and the agency’s work starts to resemble performance art. The last act usually involves congressional hearings, awkward apologies, and a Netflix docuseries no one can watch without pausing to scream into a pillow.
Closing Credits: Now with a Queer Bee Cameo
Imagine the bureau as a hive — not the cute kind with honey jars and mason-jar candles, but the kind you only notice when it’s swarming. The queen isn’t producing honey; she’s just replacing bees with ones that hum the same political tune. The comb rots from the inside, but from the outside, it still looks like a hive. That’s the trick.
This isn’t about whether you like Patel or hate him. It’s about whether you want the FBI run like an HOA board meeting where dissenting homeowners mysteriously stop receiving invitations. If the only qualification for keeping your badge is nodding along in unison, congratulations — you’re no longer part of an investigative body. You’re part of the chorus.
Final Thought: The real purge isn’t the firings. It’s the slow, quiet removal of the idea that the law should be bigger than the people enforcing it. And that — no matter how well it plays on camera — is the kind of plot twist that never ends well.