I used to love to fly. In the good old days—before box-cutters, underwear bombers and death-ray body scanners—I’d show up at the airport 30 minutes before takeoff, slip into the bathroom for a quick toke, and shuffle onto the plane with an illegal smile.
In the air, I’d gaze out the window for hours, tracking the cloud topography, landforms and miniaturized settlements with the Zen focus of an eagle scanning a meadow for a furry dinner.
Sitting in an airport now, doubly delayed and depressingly un-medicated, I ponder how much things have changed. There’s a 30-year high school reunion awaiting me in Cleveland, but it’s looking dubious. The first plane was delayed due to “traffic control” issues—an aviation euphemism for the side effects of capitalist greed and unsustainable growth—and the second by unruly weather.
Two minutes after being dropped off at the airport, my partner and I learned that we would miss our connection and spend the night in a Chicago hotel, on our dime, since “traffic control” and dangerous meteorological events are officially categorized as uncontrollable acts of the increasingly angry gods of aviation.
These days, flying is a nightmare. Considering storms, overbooking, shrinking passenger space, rising fares, ridiculous fees, lost baggage and the constantly shifting sands of the Transportation Insecurity Administration, you’re damn lucky if you arrive anywhere on time with all of your stuff, and sufficient money, energy and peace of mind to enjoy your trip.
I expect rip-offs and incompetence—a standard American business model—but the security game really grinds me. “Well, sure, officer, by all means, please examine my rectum with your forceps and flashlight, and don’t forget the chemical swab. In fact, I’m pretty sure I detected some terrorist activity in there just the other day, not long after I ate the Salmonella Special at Popeye’s Chicken.”
Personally, I don’t mind the physical invasion so much. Between Jerry the redneck trucker (who lived next door when I was 9) and six months in federal prison, I’ve been patted down more times than I can remember. I much prefer it to the scary scanners, but I suspect I may be in the minority. As a passenger on flyertalk.com posted, “I have a full-length leg prosthesis; therefore I will never again board a plane without having my breasts and labia touched. Can you convince someone that I’m not really a risk? Until then, I will continue to maintain that the TSA discriminates against disabled passengers.”
You can hardly blame people for souring on the whole terrorists-in-our-midst thing with so many security horror stories going around. The TSA seems far more interested in molesting children, harassing the mentally disabled, stealing plush toys from toddlers and examining the contents of geriatric diapers than actually mounting some sort of sensible security strategy.
Instead, it’s “security theater,” a term one security expert coined on 60 Minutes a couple of years ago. It’s all about creating a convincing illusion of security, which I suspect is all that people really want in this delusional country, anyway. Tuck those terrorist fears away in a quart Ziploc. I have a T-shirt that makes this point for me virtually every time I fly. “I know I’m safe,” it blares, “because I’m wearing my Homeland Securi-Tee™! No national brand gives you a greater illusion of safety!”
Every airport is different, and there’s some new rigmarole every time I fly. Sometimes you skate through with your liquids improperly quarantined; sometimes TSA agents freak. In other countries, they don’t play the shoe game or the baggie game. In Chicago, they swabbed my hands for explosives residue, a first for me. I asked the weary officer what sort of residue was on my hands after the swabbing, but he ignored me.
It’d be one thing if this nonsense made people safer, but it doesn’t. Contraband gets through all the time in organized tests of the system, and spending billions annually on fancy equipment and crackerjack “behavior-detection” squads has produced not a single terrorist arrest. You’re more likely to get blasted by lightning while being swarmed by killer bees on your way to pick up your lottery winnings than you are to become a victim of a terrorist attack.
I guess I should be grateful for Tucson’s mellow little airport. Still, I’m going to put off my next flight for as long as possible—hopefully years—and regress to the overland strategies of my impoverished youth. Traveling on land may be slower—sometimes—but it feels faster, and I won’t have to participate in some grand experiment in the devolution of humans into frightened, pathetic sheep.
This article appears in Aug 4-10, 2011.
Thank you for an excellent article! Thank you for pointing out the utter absurdity and offensiveness of the pathetic security theater at airports. The TSA does zero, zip, to enhance safety. In fact, here’s a list of the many ways TSA makes us LESS safe:
They irradiate vulnerable populations like pregnant women and toddlers.
They cause huge backups of people all at one spot near the security checkpoint which makes an attractive (and unscreened) bombing target.
They make women traveling alone targets by forcing them to say their names out loud where stalkers might hear.
They molest children. Really, they touch childrens’ genitals; they even rub the crotches of minor girls traveling alone without their parents.
They steal our valuables out of our luggage.
They take bribes to assist drug dealers in getting packages past the checkpoint. By the way, how do the agents know it’s drugs in the package?
They re-traumatize rape survivors by forcing them to relive the experience of unwanted strangers coercing or forcing them into sex acts.
They create naked images of children. Seriously, convince me this isn’t a pedophile’s dream.
Fight! I will never stop fighting to stop the TSA from abusing innocent people. And until then, I’ll take Amtrak.
Thanks Randy. Being disabled (and about to embark on a cross-country flight), I am reminded why I haven’t done so in several years.
Entertaining article. Thanks. So true.
The TSA is a criminal, out-of-control agency that abuses people with impunity. It hasn’t caught or thwarted a single potential attacker in its multi-billion-dollar history.
Pistole and Napolitano are its sick, twisted ringleaders. They should be fired — after being forced to go through a few gropes themselves — and the entire agency dismantled.
But I’m not holding my breath. Congress is craven, the president clueless (after all, his wife and children don’t have to get stripped or groped), and half the population willfully ignorant. I’ve kept track of accounts of abuse for the past 18 months, and they are legion. Since we can’t post links in these comment, you’ll have to search for it yourselves. Go to TravelUnderground (it’s a dot org domain) and look for “Master Lists of TSA Crimes and Abuses.”
Empirical evidence, risk assessment, statistical analysis, security experts, logic — none of it matters to the United Sheeple of America. “The Terrorists! The Terrorists Are Everywhere!”
So many cowards and paranoiacs. They won’t be happy until Uncle Sam is sticking his fingers up their a**es.
Total discrimination. Total Sexual Assault.
Your vocal and unrelenting mockery of TSA in addition to driving is much appreciated–thanks for the great piece.
Randy says…..hes in the airport “and depressingly un-medicated, “
Brownies Randy…Brownies…You can eat ’em before ya get to the airport or munch while you wait (easy to get thru security)
Try it…You’ll like it..
I’m definitely on the same page as Randy. I put up with all the “show screening” until they put the Rap-e-scans in. You know that doctors, nurses, and flight crews won’t go through them for the most part. In fact, even though TSA said they “changed” the pictures, they really only changed what the public sees. I’ve avoided air travel completely since the “enhanced patdowns” began. If I were inappropriately touched, my reflex would be to physically strike out–then I’d end up in jail and paying $10,000 instead of going on my trip. I don’t know if citizens lobbying their members of Congress for changes even helps, but I will continue to complain to my own members of Congress.
I fly almost every week. I refuse to go through the pedoray machine. I get frisked in order to monopolize the suspectors, requesting that they go through the speech three times.
The only thing the TSA is good for is reducing unemployment. If they were not employed, the unemployment rate would be 15%.
If there is ever a terrorist on a plane I am on, either they will be hurt and possibly dead, or I will be dead. In my view, that is a better defense than being told to be vewy, vewy afwaid.
TSA has employed the “Big Lie” strategy in their effort to convince Congress and the public that the organization is not as corrupt and arrogant as it actually is. This method relies on an endless of streams of lies, obfuscations and denials of facts in an attempt to persuade people that they did not see or experience that which is plainly obvious. There have been dozens of instances where victim or witness accounts have been disputed by TSA only to later to be confirmed after being captured on video, which explains their aversion to perfectly legal attempts to record them at checkpoints.
When an ABC producer reported that a TSA screener reached inside her underwear and made direct contact with her genitals, Pistole denied that it saying” that never happened” which he later changed to “that never should happen” when the woman went on national television and recounted the incident. Again another lie. Then in December when reports that of a young boy being essentially strip searched in Salt Lake City, TSA again denied categorically that he event took place until video surfaced on You Tube documenting the original account. Again TSA lied and was forced to recant their earlier statement.
The same has been true in the wake of every child pat down that has been reported, TSA states they are revising their screening procedures but continues to grope and traumatize innocent children. This happened after the 3 year old girl was recorded screaming while the screener molested her, again after the Salt Lake City incident, and yet again after the 6 year old girl in New Orleans and most recently after the infant groping in Kansas City. Other similar incidents have been reported including the Tennessee mother who was arrested for trying to prevent TSA from groping her adolescent daughter. Security video later revealed that they did in fact molest the young girl just as her mother feared.
Under Pistole’s policies, TSA screeners have been turned into de facto child molesters and sexual assailants. They have admitted that the pat downs involve direct contact with passenger’s penises, testicles, breasts and vagina including those of children, which meets any reasonable definition of sexual assault. By their own calculations, TSA gropes over 60,000 passengers every day.
Much like the childhood story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, some Americans have refused to acknowledge that the Emperor is indeed naked, even though their eyes tell them he is. Fortunately, many have begun to realize that this agency and its management are corrupt and operating against the interests and will of those they supposedly serve. It is long past time to dismantle this agency and prosecute those responsible for this travesty.
http://www.travelunderground.org/index.php?threads/master-lists-of-tsa-abuses-crimes.317/