I’ve posted several rants on this topic before, but the recently-released camera-phone video of the TSA employee “patting down” the 6-year-old girl at the Armstrong Airport in Kenner (New Orleans) has prompted me to vent again.
Near as I can tell, about half the people I’m connected with in social media think it’s just fine that TSA has to do this – I mean, after all, there was an “irregularity” in the full-body scan that was administered to the girl moments before she was groped, er, “inspected” by the female TSA employee. And it would be just like those terrorists to plant bombs on a six-year-old girl travelling with her mother.
The other half think this sort of stuff is just more evidence, and there’s plenty of it, that the TSA should be defunded and our rights as free Americans should be restored - like the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.
Those who think this sort of thing is what we must do to combat the terrorists and be safe in our travels would probably be sanguine living under a dictatorship or under totalitarian government. Their mindset seems to be along the lines of “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” As long as you’re in the majority, or are in favor with the ruler, things are just fine. Such as, if all those Jews in Germany (like many of my maternal ancestors) had just moved somewhere else where they’d be with more of their own kind, they’d have been much happier.
Those who think this sort of invasive full-body search of a six-year-old travelling with her mother was more than just over-the-top security theater are probably the kind of folks who would have saddled up and rode with Paul Revere late the night of April 18th, 1775. And, I hesitate to draw the analogy, that they would be the kind of folks who would have helped toss tea into the Boston harbor a year and a half before Revere’s midnight ride.
And maybe it’s just that I’m tired of being pulled out of the line and given very personal attention EVERY time I fly somewhere, and those who think feeling up six-year-old girls is OK don’t do much air travel.
Gee. And I get scorched over here for yapping about "too much Gummint"--which inevitably precedes "too much COST of Gummint," you know.
ReplyDeleteRight on....Right on!...where have I heard that before?...We need to defund the TSA...that should save at least a billion...and those people out of a job could be moved to the IRS to assist in auditing the returns of the super rich, as I am sure their returns will require special handling...any extra they could get could be applied to the prison budget to absorb the TSAers that will be caught groping without a cause...oh what a world?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there's a more insidious phrase in English than "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."
ReplyDeleteBy the way--unrelated--your Missus appeared in this outfit's daily release yesterday:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.milwaukeenewsbuzz.com/
Story was about Walker's un-scripted responses to various email queries.
Dad - She's no stranger to media. She e-mailed me a link to the piece yesterday. Thanks for the note, though.
ReplyDelete/tjm
Colonel,
ReplyDelete>> And maybe it’s just that I’m tired of being pulled out of the line and given very personal attention EVERY time I fly somewhere <<
Well, if you wouldn't grind your teeth so loudly, you wouldn't have any problem, now would you?
>> And, I hesitate to draw the analogy, that they would be the kind of folks who would have helped toss tea into the Boston harbor a year and a half before Revere’s midnight ride. <<
See? You're half-way there!
The Town Crank
Neenah
I agree with commenter garyjay: Never mind the paranoiac pointlessness of it all ... How is browbeating children into being publicly groped by an adult not sexual molestation? What the hell has become of us?
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the Crank's comment ...
Irony is lost on the Tea Party folks, but for any who may be susceptible to its charms ...
The legendary Boston Tea Party of Thursday, December 17, 1773, was perpetrated by small businessmen who were angry about the lack of government regulation!
There was nothing "patriotic" about it. The merchants were angry because big corporate - in this case the East India Company - was allowed free economic rein in the colonies. It brooked no competitors.
The big businessmen were able to dictate, along with practically everything else pertaining to the colonial economy, where tea would come from, who would import it, which ships would carry it, who would be allowed to sell it, and how much it would cost. The price would, then as now, determine the amount of tax to be paid to the central government -- the English crown.
If you wanted to do business, you did business with EIC on its terms.
That was the law, and the police ("Homeland Security" types: they wore red coats, carried muskets and were paid by the central government)enforced the rules, sometimes with the use of deadly force.
That's right, folks! If Big Government had put some reasonable restrictions on Big Business and opened a level playing field to competition, the whole "American Experiment" thing might never have happened.
Before you jump to the false conclusion that it was lucky a recalcitrant King George (ahh, more irony!) was pigheaded and short-sighted because he brought about the Revolution, take this for the cautionary tale that it is: When you persistently favor a privileged strata of society at the expense of others, you invite discontent.
The Tea Party adherents, in large measure, seem to grasp part of that concept, but the fun-house mirror they use to look at their grotesque world makes their neighbors appear greedy and dangerous, and makes those parasitic corporados who selfishly fund the political lie-generator appear as some sort of heroic champions.
The bobble-head wear-it-on-the-sleeve patriots who have been mesmerized into identifying with the hilariously misnamed Tea Party are dangerously confused and are willingly eroding the very freedoms they profess to cherish. Trouble is, they are losing them for all of us.
If Big Government had put some reasonable restrictions on Big Business and opened a level playing field to competition, the whole "American Experiment" thing might never have happened
ReplyDeleteNot surprising that you have it exactly backwards.
In the case you specify, "Big Government" and "Big Business" were on exactly the same page. The King was the beneficiary of the tax; the intermediary also benefitted, of course--just as is the case today with GE and Obama in their marital embrace, not to mention Google and Obama in THEIR marital embrace, and, of course, GM/Chrysler providing backup embraces for Obama and the UAW when called upon to do so.
I haven't gotten to the "TBTF" banksters, but if you'd like, you can Google (cough) the cross-matches between Goldman Sachs, Citi, Chase, and the various Obama-ite Fed agency/czar appointees. It will be a long and impressive list.
Makes Hustler kinda minor-league.
And, yes, I know that the (R)...ahhhh......."service-recipients" are just as bad.
So you're wrong. In fact, the "regulators" are doing exactly what their King(s) and "regulated" expect: screwing tea-partiers for their mutual benefit.
But you knew that, right?
This is getting a bit far afield from our blogger's trenchant examination of the astonishing moral and ethical travesty that comes wrapped in the flag and the claim that forcing travelers to submit to being sexually assaulted in public is the way a great nation must guard its citizens. But ...
ReplyDeleteI think Dad29's attempt at riposte to my straightforward citation of historical fact is either failed satire or an effort to show off for the Glenn Beck School of Conspiracy Theories. What a marvelously convoluted Gordian Knot of political intrigue he has imagined. Dan Brown, eat your heart out.
That said, I confess I can manage only the foggiest idea of what he's going on about, and I do hope some one of this blog's intrepid readers will offer a plain-English translation, that we may all be enlightened.
There seems to be an element of lobbyist chicanery lurking in dadster's smoke screen. He never does come right out and say "Jack Abramoff" or "Tom DeLay," but I am aware that crooked influence-peddlers and big-money shills and weasels are an enduring problem in the political process.
Theirs are the sort of sly-wink, hide-the-envelope arts that steer money to big contributors, cut taxes for big contributors and put representatives of big contributors in charge of regulating industries they control.
We do agree that the GOP establishment is "screwing tea-partiers." Yes, we all knew that. Ohio's favorite son, Drunken John Boehner said as much when he admitted the Party would seek to co-opt the Tea Party naifs. He then went ahead and did just that.
---
A point of information regarding my earlier remarks about the Boston Tea Party. The attack on the East India Company freighter "Beaver" actually began late on December 16, 1773, but carried on into the wee hours of the following day. Choose whichever date you prefer for marking the event and I'll not quibble.
Hier is paid by the word in his day job, eh?
ReplyDeleteHieronymous,
ReplyDelete>> After reading the Crank's comment ...
>> Irony is lost on the Tea Party folks, but for any who may be susceptible to its charms ... <<
Not bad! Though I'm dismayed that, being versed in the multifarious forms of irony, you wouldn't also be familiar with the delights of persiflage. That's all right! I'm here to help!
Persiflage is bantering, lightly mocking talk...even extending to "light raillery" (thx to Merriam-Webster for that little nuance). You see, I feigned approval of the Colonel's faux-revelatory reluctance and expressed faux-encouragement and faux-praise for his progress in what will certainly blossom into a 12-step program towards Tea Partyhood. Maybe there were too many fauxs, there.
Anyway, that's all right. I'm only interested in your welfare!
The Town Crank
Neenah
Ha! Crank! Your concern for my welfare is truly touching.
ReplyDelete"Light raillery" sounds like another chapter in the Great Madison Choo-Choo Debate.
Persiflage, as you are doubtless aware, is particularly useful when letting some of the foul air out of the puffy political poltroons who occasionally post here. (I find alliteration another amusing and sometimes useful rhetorical device in that regard.)
Your appreciation of irony and your skillful employment of persiflage is well known on this board, and greatly appreciated - at least by me. No need to try wearing the proverbial shoe if it doesn't fit.
You're a sport, Hieronymous. And thank you for pointing out the delicious double-entendre of "light raillery". I think that it would make a perfect title for one of Morrissey's rants about same.
ReplyDeleteThe Town Crank
Neenah