I’ve taken my sweet-ass time writing this blog for several reasons. Mostly because there’s a lot to talk about and it’s going to be dauntingly long to write (hopefully not so daunting for you to read), but also because I’m not sure how much I want to touch on politics (or religion or drugs or any of the other polarizing subjects that people scream at each other about today) in a blog about my traveling adventures. This TSA situation obviously falls in the traveling category, so it can stay here, but I think I’ll probably start another blog for the miscellaneous rants and raves I have on a daily basis – taxes, elections, political correctness, and hey, why not drugs and religion?! I’ll let you know if/when I start up The Redneck’s Guide to Uncommon Sense – or whatever the hell I choose to call it.
On to the touching of junk….
I am a freedom-loving guy and have been as far back as I can remember. I have a scrapbook that goes from 1st grade to 12th which I updated religiously until I got too cool for it in high school. Each year the book asked what I wanted to be when I grew up and I wrote, “Soldier.” (I ended up in the Marines, but that’s a different story.) I love freedom so much that it’s the first thing I had tattooed on my body and it’s still the only word tattooed on my body. However, experience has taught me that for a society to work and not become a chaotic mess - a splattered bug-carcass on the windshield of history – sometimes freedom has to be curtailed. I think flying is one of those instances and I think the TSA’s enhanced pat-downs/naked-pic screening combo is the best solution to RIGHT NOW to an increasingly complex problem. Our ultimate freedom as Americans is the freedom to move about the country and no one is stopping you from doing that. If you object to the current security methods at the airport, drive to where you want to go. If there isn’t time for you to drive from New Mexico to Miami during your vacation, find someplace close enough for you to drive to in your limited vacation time – no matter where you are in this country, there’s someplace interesting within driving distance to take your family to. If not, build one. If you still want to fly someplace, buy your own plane and learn to fly it. If your company requires you to be someplace far away in an amount of time that can only be accomplished by flying there, work that out with your boss or find a different job. You have the freedom in this country to do all these things and more. This is what freedom is, it’s not the ability to do anything you want anytime you want following only the rules you think are right for you – that’s Chaos.
The Israeli Method
People say, why don’t we do things the way the Israelis do – they never have any problems. I think that in a perfect world (one with many more competent people and a lot fewer lawyers) we could run mass-transit security the way the Israelis do – superbly trained security officers look everyone in the eye and ask a few well-crafted questions and, based on the responses, the prospective passenger is passed on or singled out for further scrutiny. Does that sound like the country we live in? Over the years and particularly lately, I’ve heard TSA agents described as “mouth-breathing, brain-dead idiots”, “people who couldn’t get hired to pick up trash on the side of the road”, “incompetent thugs”, etc. I could go on, but I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of the same things. Disregarding whether or not any of that stuff is true, just look at the anecdotal evidence since the new procedures were instituted – kids being stripped almost naked for pat-downs, hot chicks being singled out for “special treatment” good or bad, a flight attendant having to show her prosthetic breast. These are the people that you want asking you questions to decide if you’re a threat or not?
Israel is a tiny country surrounded on all sides by people who want to see them dead. Everyone who lives there is constantly reminded of this. Every Israeli citizen is required to serve time in their military, one of the most professional and well-trained militaries in the world. All this together creates a very competent, pragmatic, and realistic society. Does THIS sound like the country we live in? No. We’re soft and fat and have been pampered for too long. In Israel security is strict and omnipresent. The people are used to it and understand its necessity. No one is going to bring a lawsuit over profiling or being singled out for special scrutiny. Can you imagine how the lawyers in this country would grow even fatter off the lawsuits an Israeli-style security system in this country would generate? It would be a whole industry unto itself!
I’d like to see a day when competent, well-trained security personnel work the security area and patrol the entire airport looking for and singling out threats, but the TSA wasn’t created with that kind of mandate. The primary focus of the people creating the TSA was on how to add them to the government bureaucracy and unionize them (to create more constituents for the Democrats) and to get them out there in the airports quickly to make it look like the government was responding forcefully (for the political expediency of the Republican administration that was in charge at the time.) It wasn’t created primarily with an eye to competence and superior training.
The Scanners Don’t Work
One of the arguments I hear is that the scanners and pat downs don’t really work so we shouldn’t bother with them. Also that Michael Chertoff, who was a Director of Homeland Security under Bush, was a big proponent of the naked scanners and now works for one of the scanner manufacturers so obviously it was corruption that got the scanners purchased and installed.
Putting aside how it looks (because we all know that perception is 10 times more important than reality in today’s world), Chertoff always struck me as a solid guy. I can see how he could go from believing the scanners are the best way to go for our country to working for one of said companies after he’s out of public office. Just because he works for the company doesn’t mean the scanners don’t work.
Now put aside the Chertoff issue. Have you seen example pictures from these things? The ones I’ve seen vary wildly from pretty good detail to black and white ink-blot-looking things. I have a feeling that it primarily depends on which technology, manufacturer, and computer settings you use as to what output you get. Regardless, it’s not a Hustler pictorial you’re looking at. People have to be trained to even know what they’re looking at and looking FOR in regards to prohibited items, but they should most definitely be able to see whether somebody’s packing an underwear bomb or an over-large sausage in their shorts.
The real test is going to be if the terrorists start resorting to the anal bomb scenario. I’m amazed it hasn’t happened already, but maybe that’s because of the Islamic aversion to homosexuality. You and I know that ramming a plastic pipe bomb up your rectum might make you extremely uncomfortable but probably doesn’t make you enjoy the company of other men, but maybe the jihadist fanatics haven’t figured that out yet. Anyway, if that form of attack starts occurring, watch profiling suddenly become socially and politically acceptable overnight.
TSA Bashing
Full disclosure, my father is a retired Navy guy who works for the TSA, so that does tend to input a little bias in the way I see those people, though it has nothing to do with how I view this issue overall. He and I get along well and chat from time to time (though not about this subject yet) and I think he’s a great guy – very intelligent and competent with tons of integrity. Obviously not all TSA agents are this way, but when I hear people bashing the TSA as a whole I tend to get really annoyed.
Take it from someone who flies nearly every week of the year, there are MANY more mouth-breathing, hygienically-challenged, fat, disgusting, simpletons standing in the security line than there are working the machines. I hear TSA agents described as molesters, abusers of authority, people so pumped up on their own power that they don’t act rationally – and SOME of them definitely are. But it’s a very small percentage. Most of them are very professional or friendly or both. They may not be as well trained as I’d like or as competent as their position demands, but they have a job to do and they are convinced of its necessity. Most of them don’t want to see most of those people in line naked and definitely don’t want to touch them. It’s like when you drop your cell phone in the toilet. Do you ignore it? No. You’d like to, but instead you try to find something to get it out with (metaphor for the Scanners in case you didn’t catch it) but if that doesn’t work you fight down your revulsion and go in for it with your hand. It’s disgusting and you’ll want to take a shower after, but it’s something that had to be done.
In Summary: Common Sense and the Real World
The American people are capable of adapting to a new reality if they are shown the necessity, but the US is a victim of its own success. If the underwear bomber had been successful in blowing up a plane over Detroit last year or the car bomber in Times Square had been successful or any number of other plots hadn’t failed, we’d be living in a very different country right now. Instead, the American people have a habit of pissing and moaning whenever some new security regulation is instated. Get some perspective people!
I’m worried that the Don’t Touch My Junk guy gave the media and politicians the sound bite they needed to keep this issue in the news much longer than it should be and, in doing so, forced the TSA to back off and not provide us with the meager security that’s within their power. I’ve flown about a dozen times since the new policy started up and I’ve only had to go through the body scanner once (today) and haven’t been the recipient of any blue-gloved hands roaming up and down my genitalia. In fact, I’ve seen the naked scanners roped off and not being used at all in a few airports.
It really boils down to a common sense (an over-used term but in this instance there is no better) example: you have two planes that are going to the same place at the same time; everything is the same except that one plane is full of people who have had the enhanced screening procedures and the other is full of people who haven’t. Which one would you want to be on at 30,000 feet?
In a perfect world there are many different and more effective things that we could be doing to combat the terrorist threat that truly does exist, but in the real world –the one in which we actually live – this is the best we can expect at the moment. So, go ahead and touch my junk and let me get where I’m going in one piece with some peace of mind.
