It's no secret that you can bet on pretty much anything. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket provide a forum for wagering on the outcomes of "traditional" events and occurrences, like golf matches and basketball games, elections and Oscar winners. But you can also bet on what the temperature in LA is going to be tomorrow, where Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift will tie the knot, and when and if the Straits of Hormuz will reopen.
Sports betting sites like FanDuel and DraftKings are sucking folks - mostly young men - into addictive always-on wagering on every nuance of pretty much every sporting event known to man, including darts, chess and ping pong. (The general purpose sites cover sports betting as well.) A lot of the eyes on sports are not those of fans, but of gamblers, riveted on whether the next pitch will be a called strike or not - and whether they've won $200 on that bet.
While the sports betting is not good for the particular or general soul - gambling's always been addictive, but when you're holding your own personal bookie in your hand 24/7, well, truly awful things can happen. And more athletes themselves will be sucked into the easy money of a point here, a point there, which will end up corrupting sports more than they're already corrupted.
But the truly nefarious stuff goes on when insiders on the economic or geopolitical front, those who have knowledge of and/or control over potential outcomes, decide they want to make a bit of coin. Reputedly, there were White House insiders who cashed in on bets on when Iran's Ayatollah would be taken out. (Would any be surprised that members of the Merrily Grifting Trump family wagered an easy-money bet or two. On second thought, maybe not, when there are far larger grifts to grift.)
Then there are the smaller scale betting pools, the kind that a lot of us have been involved with. How many pounds will you your colleague's baby weigh? What team will be left standing in the March Madness bracket? A few bucks thrown in at work or the gym. It can be fun. And pretty harmless
But it's pretty odious when the pool at work is making life-and-death wagers, as is reportedly the case at Camp East Montana, and ICE detention center in Texas that's the nation's largest. (Everything really is bigger in Texas.) At Camp East Montana, guards allegedly have betting pools on who among the detainees under their "care" will be the next to commit suicide. I mean, it's not as if the guards have the power to make someone's life worse, to deprive them of care, to encourage them to kill themselves. Even to report a homicide as a suicide. Nah, ICE guys wouldn't do anything like that, would they?
Predictably, the DHS - an organizational just full to the brim of those of sterling character and moral rectitude - denies that there's any betting going on.
Look, not everyone who works for ICE or Border Patrol is an evil, violent, ill-trained thug. But enough of them are to reinforce such a sordid reputation. And with the decline in recruitment standards and training, the administration's encouragement of maltreatment of those rounded up and detained, out of control thug does appear in many cases to be the profile that the government is looking for and rewarding.
Factor in the amoral/immoral/money-grubbing malaise plaguing our society, and it seems entirely plausible that detention facility guards would try to make some bank betting on which detainee - whether a down and dirty member of Tren de Aragua who deserves deportation (but not maltreatment and torture) or some poor brown-skinned schnook who's been working under the table as a gardner for thirty years - is next for the coroner's wagon.
You don't think it could happen? You think DHS is telling the truth?
I say, wanna bet?
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Info source: Mother Jones
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