If you don’t think the terrorists have won, you probably haven’t visited an airport in a while. Not only do these places needlessly gobble up hours of our day and billions of our dollars, but here that we collectively lose all dignity and act like a bunch of automatons just so they’ll let us out of the place. Though sometimes it seems like we might never escape. If we really wanted to slow the caravan from Central American down, we would make them enter through a TSA checkpoint.It sickens me. They are modern-day kapos.
It is at those checkpoints that we suspend our disbelief and pretend that (often) disheveled and (very often) rotund government agents who separate us from our water bottles possess the expertise to ferret out terrorist plots. (By the way, is there not a single physical requirement needed to hold this allegedly vital security job? There are many good reasons I’m not a pro-basketball player or a male model. If you’re not in relatively good physical shape, maybe law enforcement isn’t the profession for you. The only way these agents are the “the last line of defense against terrorism” is if the terrorists are unable to squeeze by them to get on the airplanes.)
Then again, it’s one thing to force millions of adults to schlep through these slow-moving lines so their toiletries can be scanned by some disinterested government worker—on occasion, sharing a few moments of rough intimacy with a blue-gloved stranger—and another for kids to be used as props in this production of Security Theater...
In a merit-based environment, this would result in mass termination and a complete overhaul of the system. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security –a cabinet department formed in 2002 to ensure that a number of inept agencies could work together incompletely—is still patting down old ladies and pre-teens. Nothing has changed.
Education, politics, and anything else that catches my attention.
Monday, November 19, 2018
TSA-holes Are Still At It
Probably not, buy maybe, just maybe, if there were any evidence that the billions we've spent on the TSA in the past decade and half stopped a single terrorist or two, I'd give TSA the slightest benefit of the doubt. As long as we allow our government to treat us like subjects, criminal subjects, though, this isn't going away. It'll only get worse, because there's no incentive for the government to make it better unless we make them make it better:
My husband is starting his retirement job as part of the TSA in December. It's been a seven month application process. He needed a part time job that offered insurance. His training will take two full weeks in Georgia. Anyone who has had to deal with the public understand that "The Public" by and large is a group that seems to believe their every whim must be made so. This is especially true in regards to air travel. We've seen the videos of unruly passengers, we've seen the lawsuits and allegations in regards to lewd and violent behavior by passengers and just the overarching sense of entitlement that many abuse. If you've encountered abuse as a classroom teacher, imagine how much worse that can become when it's drunk adults, petulant millennials or self-righteous social warriors searching for a lawsuit to exploit. TSA does an important job. We haven't had any 9/11 type incidents since it was created. While people may not like the TSA and demand a nuanced application of the rules, that would leave the agency open to lawsuits-the same kind of lawsuits schools see with social justice warriors at every turn. In short, the diversity that this nation affords requires the random inspections in order to avoid being compromised. People get all upset when a grandmother with a cane or a child in a wheelchair has to go through inspection, but they disregard that those same people in other countries are often pressed into service by others to smuggle devices or weapons. 9/11 changed us and while I don't like it, TSA right now is our only option.
ReplyDeleteOn this topic, Ellen, you and I are going to disagree. Some security is necessary, what the TSA does is security theater that isn't known to have stopped a single terrorist.
ReplyDeleteI understand your frustration because I've been there as well. But as you and I both know, the reason they have to do these things is because Federal entities are scared to death of appearing to profile any group. As a result, you end up with a convoluted mess of a situation. I do think that most of the TSA employees work at a thankless job where people are sometimes deliberately provocative. I also think enduring that kind of abuse for too long makes people tend to give it back in kind.
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