Been Awhile Since I've Done A TSA Post

When was the last time I flew, February?  To and from Mexico City?  And that was in the time of the 'rona, when I had to stand around outside the Mexico City airport and wait for the results of my $45 'rona test.  Then it was time to go through security.  I wasn't left alone, even at the gate--another passport check, my 'rona vaccination status, my 'rona test from an hour before.  *sigh*

Sacramento's TSA checkpoint is nowhere near the worst I've been through.  I despise the TSA, and I sound like a leftie when I say things like "Come the revolution, TSA officers will be the first up against the wall."  Sacramento's will be the last of the TSA officers, though, because I've never seen them be more obnoxious than their job requires.  I even complimented them once.

I'm not one of those people who will verbally denigrate TSA officers to their faces.  I have my passive resistance to their procedures, though.  For instance, I won't look them in the eye.  That would indicate a level of familiarity I just can't muster.  I hand them my boarding pass and passport and just look off to the side.  One actually said to me once, "Will you look me in the eyes, please?"  My reply was, "Is that a requirement?"  When he said that it was, I looked--glared might be a more accurate term, but I complied.

I've flown since I was a young child.  My first intercontinental flight was to Germany to visit my mother when I was 9 years old.  I've flown to Europe several times in the intervening years; heck, I was in Germany in '85 when some terrorist group or another blew up the Lufthansa counter at Frankfurt International.  A few weeks later a friend and I had firearms drawn on us at Atlanta-Hartsfield because we'd forgotten that he had dummy hand grenades in his carry-on bag to take to his little brother (we had just completed Army parachute training, were gung-ho, and had stopped by an army surplus store on the way to the airport).  After a few tense moments all was calmed down, the dummy grenades had been disassembled and put into his checked baggage (which airport personnel somehow found, as we'd checked in over an hour before), and we got on our respective flights.  Guantanamo Bay never entered our minds.  Almost 20 years ago when my son and I were returning from the DC area, I almost had to step out of my shorts--in full view of the flying public--to satisfy the TSA-hole that it was my zipper that was setting off his metal-detecting wand.

So what brought on today's rush of anger against the TSA?  This article:  The Humiliating History of the TSA.  Yes, much of the article was about "trans" and "brown" travelers and the extra humiliation they go through, but that doesn't mean there isn't enough left for the rest of us.  The article points out how TSA employees are overly stressed and among some of the lowest paid federal employees; I've been known to say they're minimum-wage-caliber employees with the full force of the US government behind them.

But what exactly is that job? Empirically, we know that the TSA does little to stop massive terror plots or even the occasional airport shooting. Instead, TSOs protect the flying public in lots of little ways — by stopping cases of human trafficking, for example, or confiscating firearms from people’s carry-on luggage. And that’s good! But it doesn’t justify the massive curtailing of individual liberties inside airports, the regular harassment of ethnic and religious minorities and gender nonconforming people, and the creation of one of the most vindictive and hostile workplaces in the federal government.

As for Bush’s first line about protecting America, I don’t really recognize the America that exists at a TSA checkpoint. It is overly paranoid, vindictive, and unaccountable to us as citizens. In fact, it mostly brings to mind Masha Gessen’s observation that “resignation was the defining condition of Soviet life.” At airport security, I, too, feel a keen sense of despair and helplessness, and I can only pray that the gaze of the administrative state passes over me without notice. 

The TSA fits in well with Brandon's red-and-black-lit speech from Thursday night.