You know that we’ve reached a new level of Sovietization when you’re treated to statements from the Transportation Security Administration claiming confusion to be all a part of the plan. If you’re confused then the terrorists will be confused too. Freedom’s last hope is that nobody knows what’s going on, and the subtext is that not establishing a protocol publicly allows the TSA to be “flexible.” Just remember that even in their flexibility, the organs never make mistakes.



Let’s be honest, the TSA personnel who deal with passengers are pretty much the same just-enough-above-minimum-wage-to-justify-wearing-the-uniform rent-a-cops that the airlines used to hire before “the day that everything changed.” The only difference is that now they have the full weight of federal law enforcement behind their badges and some sort of conviction that they’re keeping the world safe from evil. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that some of them can barely read; no protocol is going to be effective when implemented by the incompetent.

But that’s just my disgruntled, i now hate airports, self bitching. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing anyone…not even super-genius, secret government agents with perfect teeth and a lovely December tan…can do to make us perfectly secure. So it really doesn’t matter who’s manning the TSA checkpoints; at least those folks have a semi-decent, if rotten, job. Hopefully they can pay the bills.

What i don’t understand is the idea that Americans are entitled to perfect security. Here we are (and for the record, all the troops stationed everywhere in the world are you and i) crashing around the globe and blowing shit up, yet those of us in God’s country should face no threat. And for the most part, we don’t face any threat. Nobody’s bombed any of the weddings i’ve been to over the last few years. I’ve never thought, “I don’t think i should go downtown, because somebody might suicide bomb where i shop.” I’m convinced that the Canadians will launch their plan for world domination any day, by invading the social and evolutionary cul-de-sac of America where i live. But as of yet i have not had to contend with RCAF close air support in the neighborhood.

Still here we are, gripped by fear and willing to submit to whatever the organs say is necessary to protect us. Hunter Thompson used to say that we’re a nation of pigs. I disagree. (Unless he was being Orwellian.) The comparison is unfair to that noble and intelligent, barnyard beast. We’re a nation of five year-olds whose parents don’t say, “No, no, there’s no bogeyman in the closet because there’s no such thing as the bogeyman.” Our parents keep telling us that the bogeyman is real and he’s out to get us. He could be in any, or every, closet. In fact, he probably is in every closet!

True, it is a good way to keep us out of the porn collection and drug paraphernalia.

I’m not being glib nor am i underplaying all those “very real dangers” that we face in the post-9/11 world. I’m saying that if we don’t want to live with the dangers then we might want to stop provoking them. I’m saying that there is no such thing as perfect safety and security; you are going to die someday and you probably won’t go to heaven. And i’m saying that our government consistently overplays any actual threats (and their probability) in order to control us through fear.

I know i’m right because any terrorist organization worth its holy book would have stopped trying to blow up airplanes in flight. They would have started walking into the ticketing areas of American airports and blowing themselves up right there. There’s no fancy security to get to check-in. There are plenty of people to kill, dramatically so. And such an act would be more effective at terrorizing the American people than some guy lighting himself on fire above Detroit.