Man booted from airplane for wearing anti-TSA shirt — RT.
What the TSA provides is twofold:
- Security Theater
- Technology Recycling
For the first part, the Security Theater, that’s exactly what it is. It’s a big show to make people feel safe. Not actually safe, but just the impression that someone seriously is quite serious and taking a serious look into serious things that seriously bother serious people. Seriously. But it’s a sham and we all know it. So we take off our shoes because they could be bombs and somehow in some world liquids smaller than three ounces couldn’t possibly be a hazard. Then we are invited to walk into a machine that is supposed to scan us for security threats on our body. A machine that uses radiation that has not been proven by the FDA to be safe for use. These machines are provided to the TSA by the minimum quoted provider. Who is to say what that machine actually does! Do you see an FDA seal on it? Do you know it’s safe? Do you really trust people who are putting on a show to actually know what the big plastic metal machine does? I always (and always will) elect for the enhanced pat-down. I understand it’s part of the security theater and I don’t want to get in the TSA’s face when it comes to rubbing their noses in it, but come on people! What it really comes down to is the ultimate failure of permanent vigilance. You can’t remain permanently vigilant. You can see it popping up left and right. Guns geting passed through X-Ray scanners, TSA agents falling asleep on the job, TSA agents leaving detectors unplugged for half the day. You can’t eliminate accidents or stupidity. No ruleset exists that people come into contact with that ensures 100% compliance all the time. Human beings aren’t built that way. We get bored, we get lazy, we get sleepy. After millions of old ladies, dudes, toddlers, and regular folk – it all tends to just blend together. You look down and notice the bright blue uniform and remember, oh yeah! You’re supposed to be serious!
Then we get to the second part. The technology recycling services the TSA provides. How many people have put expensive bits and pieces in their checked luggage, luggage that the airlines now charge you to carry no less, only to arrive at your destination finding your expensive bits and pieces are now gone? If you are lucky you get a length of TSA tape that indicates that some mystery bumpkin was pawing through your belongings. That’s why, when I fly, I fly with carry-ons only. Everything worth anything is in my backpack and that never leaves my sight, ever.
All of this is just security theater. I know it is so from direct experience. After recently flying and passing under the watchful always-vigilant eye of the TSA I have noted three discrete incidences where the TSA is just putting on a show. What have I done? Nothing dangerous or hazardous, so don’t get your knickers in a twist, but they did miss several key points which do concern me, in that it shows them for being about as vigilant as my cats are. Here’s what the TSA ignored twice, once at a little airport and once at a big airport:
- 4 ounce container of underarm deodorant. This is a gel and therefore falls under the three-ounce rule. Nobody is paying attention to this any longer. I decided I didn’t care if they threw a fit and tossed out my Old Spice deodorant, it was half-gone anyways and I’d be inconvenienced a whole $2.50. Alas, I wasn’t inconvenienced, beyond noting that the three ounce rule is hokum.
- 1 Liter Stainless Steel Hydroflask. It passes under X-Rays and it’s STAINLESS STEEL. Nobody has ever asked me to open my bag and show them the flask, or even open it to demonstrate that it’s empty. It is empty, but that’s not the point. The point is, that vigilance is taking a nap.
- 20 ounce convention flask. This also passed under X-ray without even a single notice. It too was empty, but what if it wasn’t? That’s 20 ounces of mystery fluid… vigilant, just like my cats.
So what this comes down to is that we are very sold on the notion of McSecurity provided by the TSA. It’s a huge government program that eats up huge government dollars and gets all these companies huge government contracts to build machines that nobody double-checks for efficacy or safety. They look at me, they measure me, they find me non-threatening. I’m just another schlub with a backpack, a roll-aboard, and worn-looking brown shoes. I approach with my United States Passport and I don’t make eye contact. I don’t say anything and my answers are affirmative grunts. All of this is theater. We have a role to play, to be pleasant, pliant, obedient schlubs just shuffling through the great machine being as plain, gray, and uninteresting as possible and their role is to pretend to run big complicated machines and seem strong, superior, and always exude an air of serious menace. That somehow being cold, officious, dour, and oh-so-serious somehow impresses on us all that when we get into a poorly-maintained aircraft with angry poorly paid stewardpeople and pilots that are overworked drunk bus-drivers-in-the-sky that somehow the TSA makes everything oh-so-right.
It’s all pretend. It’s all a big show. It’s nice that they behave the way they do, the way they are told to behave. But the bullshit is thick and smears everything. The fact that airplanes don’t just drop out of the sky all the time is more of a testament to luck than anything else.
When it gets right down to it, when we have to ultimately decide between war, food, and medicine then we’ll see what’s what. When the money runs out to fund this magic McSecurity theater program called the TSA, what then? Will these oh-so-serious, oh-so-dour, super-stalwart, always-vigilant (giggle) watchmen of the folken work for free?
They better work for free. Because Americans are fear-addled pussies who couldn’t possibly handle risk. So we sacrifice our dignity and our honor on the altar of McSecurity Theater. What a wimpy pussed-out lot we are. Seeing demons everywhere. Little brown-skinned demons wearing turbans. Yeah, that’s what it’s really all about. Anyone who says differently probably has stock in the company that builds those cancer scanners they say keeps us all “safe”.
HA HA HA.