Joel's Rant

A few years ago I decided I wouldn’t take my shoes off while going through the airport metal detector because I knew there was no metal either in my shoes or anything of the sort holding them together.  They were pure leather and stitching.  There was no possibility they would set off the TSA’s metal detector.  As I approached the detector the TSA agent asked me to remove my shoes, at which point I confidently told him I’d take my chances that the alarm would not go off. 

Unexplainably enough (yeah, right!) the alarm did go off, supposedly because of my shoes, and I was told to wait for an agent to wand me.  And there I waited for about 45 minutes, for a one-minute wanding, almost missing my plane.

Clearly I was being punished for not following the ridiculous dictate that I remove my shoes that had no metal in them.  And isn’t that what’s happening today?  Either submit to a full body x-ray, that essentially renders you completely naked and in surprisingly humiliating detail, or endure the punishment of some TSA agent feeling your genitals and buttocks, and anything else within touching, groping and grabbing range.

And it’s the entire commercial flying population of the United States that must submit.  Not just terrorists or people suspected of being a terrorist, or people meeting the profile of a terrorist.  No, it’s everyone.  It’s as if the potential for terrorism exists exactly equally and randomly throughout the entire population of the United States.  Small children, grandmothers, old men in wheel chairs or using walkers, nuns, young mothers with pre-school children in tow, uniformed military and on and on.  It’s our neighbors, and friends, and coworkers and you and me.  Yet there’s not a snowball’s chance that 99.9% of them could even remotely be a terrorist, yet they’re considered equally as suspicious as a 20-something Islamic male in Arabian robes wearing a bandolier.  Is that crazy, or stupid, or incompetent or is something far more nefarious afoot? 

And why are “government officials” specifically exempted from complying with naked x-rays or sexual assault pat-downs when they board commercial flights?  Yes, they really are!  (For the same reasons members of Congress, the president and others are exempted from ObamaCare.  You see a pattern here, right?)

This isn’t just a trivial matter of submitting to a sexual assault so we can all be secure.  Security has nothing to do with this kind of out of control and lawless government behavior.  While we submit to degrading and invasive screening measures, our enemies, virtually all young Islamic men, will calmly shift bombs from their shoes and underwear to minimally screened cargo, or checked luggage, or carry PETN explosives onto planes in body cavities, or disguise them as allowable materials.  Terrorists adapt, no?

Anyone paying attention has already learned that the Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) will not detect non-metal materials.  It will not detect plastics or powders and it will not detect anything shoved up someone’s nether-hole.  And right then and there the supposed safety, proudly provided to you by your federal government, vanishes to complete zero, and the government knows it; how could they not if you and I know it?  And what about trains, busses, subways, non-commercial air travel, sports stadiums, and all the other places where large numbers of anonymous people gather?  No, there’s no safety anywhere and the government knows it yet they continue to force people into a naked search or a sexual assault before getting on a plane.  What’s wrong with this picture?

Imagine if the Bush administration gave us this Faustian choice of either a taking naked x-ray or endure a sexual assault before we could board a commercial airline?  The ACLU would be screaming that Bush was violating the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution, barring unreasonable searches and seizures, and calls for his impeachment would be heard throughout the Democrat controlled Congress and their minions in the liberal media.  Yet that’s not what’s happening.  The ACLU has not even made an appearance and the Democrats are nowhere to be seen.

So what’s really going on here?

I submit to you that what’s happening is very dangerous government behavior.  I submit that evil has an initial first step, a seemingly benign initial action, a beginning, in which a process is put into effect that is purposely meant to control a population, to condition that population to submit to “uniformed government authority” without question, to submit to a set of ironclad rules mandated not by Congress or elected officials, but by an unelected bureaucrat like the TSA Director, John Pistole.  Why does this unelected and unaccountable political appointee and protégé of that idiot Janet Napolitano get to make such draconian rules that cannot be challenged?  I submit this TSA behavior is that “first step” and this has got to stop.

In the wrong hands, the very word “safety” is a dangerous thing.  Throughout history, but particularly in the 20^th century, the word “safety” has allowed dictators and villains to do whatever they want.  In order to be safe, we’re too often told, we need to give up some of our freedoms and liberties.  And that begins a rollercoaster ride to tyranny and worse.

In our country, actions to lessen liberties in exchange for safety have historically been tempered by third-party arbiters in the form of the judiciary and the courts.  There’s redress for grievances.  For example, supposed violations of the Patriot Act are played out in federal court and well founded grievances, if any, are alleviated.  But there is no third-party arbiter here in this TSA controlled world of commercial air-travel safety.  If you don’t submit, you don’t fly.  It’s as simple as that and you don’t get a lot of time to make that decision. So who’s not going to submit?

And then what exactly are you going to submit to?  Clearly the government is invested in the entire flying population going through the AIT and checking out your naked body.  That’s why the only available alternative, or punishment, for not going through the AIT is to undergo a sexual assault by a nameless uniformed bureaucrat. 

But at what cost is a full body x-ray to you?  The government claims it’s safe.  Do you believe that?  I, for one, absolutely do not believe the government’s pronouncements about the safety level of a full body x-ray that can see through your clothes with exacting detail yet will do you physically no harm.  How can that be?  And has the government ever lied before?  Draw your own conclusions.

By the way, did you know that there’s AIT technology that, rather than providing a detailed view of you naked, instead represents your body literally as a “stick-figure” that would only highlight your entire naked body if contraband were actually detected.  That’s true, yet it was rejected by the TSA.  Why do you suppose they rejected that plan? 

Maybe because nothing controls a person faster, and gets them to submit obediently without question, then by exposing them naked.  That’s a fact.  That’s why interrogators get their captors naked.  That’s why the CIA and other intelligence services use nudity on their captives; it makes them very obedient, very compliant.  And getting you to appear naked instead of as a stick figure will get you to be more obedient and compliant too.  And that’s why this TSA thing is so good for the government, because it begins a process, slowly at first, of getting people used to being obedient and compliant.  Am I wrong?  If I am wrong, then why don’t they use the stick figure AIT?

The TSA has been screening over 2 million passengers each year since 9/11.  That’s approaching 20 million people handled in some fashion by TSA agents.  How many terrorists have been captured, or stopped, or arrested, or identified?  If I’m not mistaken, I believe the answer to that question is zero.  None.  Nada.  Yet we continue this charade of safety.  Isn’t there a better way that does not treat every passenger in the country like a terrorist, and a naked terrorist at that?

I know most people will read this and assume I’m a nut.  But try thinking about this for just a few minutes before dismissing my argument here.  How can the government be so completely stupid and incompetent?  Is that possible?  I think not.  But I do believe in the government’s capacity to be evil, threatening and tyrannical.  By crafting aggressive TSA screening as a “safety situation” they can pretty much do whatever they want and most people will agreeably comply.  That’s how tyranny works.

Now here’s the really tough part.  Once you know the truth, the truth at least as I see it, then you have to decide how you’ll react when asked to step up for your full body x-ray.  How will you respond?  Once you know the truth, denial is no longer an option.

Remember this; when you trade freedom for safety you get neither.

And that’s all there is to it.