America's airports have become common sense-free zones.
“It could be a bomb!”, bellowed the oafish Denver International Airport TSA official peering closely at my 10-year old son’s travel souvenir. The surfing bears inside the transparent plastic pencil holder sloshed about gently on the oil and water mixture.
I pointed to my wife and 10-year old twins. "Does this look like a terrorist cell?”
He handed the toy back to my wife. “You have time to check it in upstairs.”
So now we know. Potential bombs on planes are fine as long as they are not hand luggage. And once inside the cabin, just what would we have used to melt the hermetically sealed container and ignite the “lethal liquid” to achieve our devilish family suicide pact? The in-flight vinaigrette salad dressing?
Next to me, a TSA troll was sticking her latex paws down the trousers of a seriously crippled and resigned-looking elderly lady in a wheel chair. In a third ring of the security freakshow, a fellow TSA goon was busy reducing another elderly female passenger to tears (they are so tough and brave, the TSA!) while her traveling companions stared helplessly in disbelief. It was the TSA at its best.
My wife returned from her second visit to the check-in counter and declined a bonus porno-scan. In the interests of freedom and democracy, she was whisked off for a mandatory grope and warned not to touch her children en route to the TSA perverts’ playroom.
Her escort happened to be the same security gangstress who had told me off earlier for the way I had placed my laptop in the plastic tray. “Next time, don’t put anything on top of the laptop.” I didn’t bat an eyelid. “Save your breath. This is the last time I travel to the United States”.
I too issued warnings as I passed through the voyeur-chamber: “What you are doing is totally unconstitutional”. The po-faced sheep herders in headsets remained silent. How naïve of me. The US Constitution was trashed years ago. Just ask George W. Bush and the US Congress.
I fell into an exchange with a disgruntled male traveler who on principle “opted out” of the scan, going reluctantly (or so he said) for the grope instead. He turned out to be ideologically right-wing but we found some libertarian common ground. “Did you know that Chertoff’s client got the contract for the porno-scanners?”, I asked him. “No, I didn’t!” He seemed startled to learn this. “They’re all in bed with each other”, he said shaking his head.
It was his turn to impress. “Did you know these useless machines cost $330,000 each? And these guys!” He nodded towards the airport Gestapo. “The Thousands Standing Around (nice one!) get a minimum salary of $42,000 and get all the benefits of the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act). And now they want to unionise!” A union for licensed power-hungry perverts?!? Who said that progressive politics was dead in the United States!
Time for some easy mental maths. A thousand of Chertoff’s Confession Boxes (that’s the target for America’s airports by the end of 2011) cost roughly 1/3 of a billion US dollars. And just wait till Janet “God’s Gift to Safe Travel” Napolitano’s dream comes true of hordes of TSA primitives similarly humiliating commuters at every major bus terminal and train station in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave (and the Totally Broke).
My enlightenment wasn’t merely financial. For here I was witnessing first-hand the consequences of the destruction of common sense and with it the extinction of two previously unassailable and centuries-old values: the presumption of childhood innocence and respect for the elderly, precious cornerstones of civilization. Stamp out common sense, as the TSA does daily and enthusiastically with millions of air travelers, and you are left with headless chicken notions of chemical mixing 10-year-old suicide bombers and immobile grannies itching to detonate false limbs.
But as Madeleine Albright once said of America’s imperial arsenal, what is the point of all this equipment and power if you are not going to use it? Besides, the Department of Homeland Security assures us that air travel is a privilege, not a right, and if you don’t like it THEN YOU CAN WALK!
Not so fast, reptiles. In normal countries, those who are scared to fly on planes carrying ungroped/unscanned children and grannies are the ones who walk. Still, it’s a safe bet that once Napolitano is through “securing” America’s transportation system, the traveling public will be so damned “privileged” that cows, sheep, and pigs will have more traveling rights.
One final thought. Just how does Napolitano plan to force overseas security officials to electronically and physically molest passengers flying to America’s airports?
I guess they can all swim to New York if they don’t like it, right Janet?
