Politics & Power Quote by Kit Bond

Scarcity is doing the heavy lifting here: by insisting that "the vast majority of places in America" can not replicate "a security system such as we have here", Kit Bond turns an expensive, visible apparatus into a kind of exclusive credential. The line quietly naturalizes inequality in protection. Some sites, some cities, some institutions are deemed worthy of fortress-level defense because they supposedly sit at the top of the terrorist "interest" hierarchy; everyone else is left to accept vulnerability as a practical inevitability.

The phrasing is bureaucratic on purpose. "High priority" and "rates" sound like neutral risk assessment, not a political choice about where to pour money, manpower, and public attention. That technocratic tone launders fear into policy: if threat is measurable, then extraordinary measures feel merely managerial. The passive construction ("this rates") also dodges agency. Who is doing the rating? Intelligence? Homeland Security? A committee? The authority is implied rather than argued, which is exactly how security politics often works.

Context matters: post-9/11 America rewarded leaders who could project vigilance without promising the impossible. Bond is staking out a defensible middle ground: we are protected here because we are a target; we cannot protect everywhere because terrorists force triage. It reassures insiders while preparing the public to tolerate uneven security, permanent inconvenience, and a subtle reshaping of civic space around worst-case scenarios. The subtext is blunt: safety is not a right you can scale nationally; it is a resource you allocate to the places that symbolize power.