Starts When You're Always Afraid

Step outta line, the man come and take you away...

The Airport Security Follies


If you read the article, my responses here will make sense.

1. I find it an excellent and coherent article written by a well-researched and eloquent journalist.

2. The comment queue cut off after 265 entries. Look at the timestamps. There are 265 responses--overwhelmingly positive--in 27 hours, yet many commentators included some reference to "the American people are too complacent. There's too many people who buy into it. There's not enough people angry enough to speak up."

3. As a recent resident of Berkeley, CA, I do know of my inalienable right to petition, peacefully assemble, and protest. I also know just how easily my government can ignore my petitions, assemblies, and protestations. Protests are pointless, (and often deemed riots by authority members and subsequently tear-gassed unless held in hidden, miles-away "free speech zones"), writing to your congressperson returns politely-worded "your sentiments will not affect your representation" form letters, voting is blatantly disregarded, and outright riots result in the immediate arrest, death, and defamation of its participants by news and political speakers. Trust me--Berkeley is ignored by the government every single day.

There is absolutely no way for average citizens to change anything except by a gross majority coming together and not spending money on whatever it is that warrants change. Which isn't going to happen. Enough people rely daily on air transit that far-reaching boycott is overwhelmingly improbable. Recall: there are 300 million people in this country, most of whom have low-paying jobs, families, and insufficient resources to attempt alternatives to the mainstream. This country is too big and run by too few businesses for a private sector boycott to make a dent in air traffic. LA and NY are just too far apart for anything except teleportation to challenge that--and even then, it would still be regulated by the TSA!

The only way you can avoid funding the antics of your government and the companies that run it is to leave, in a rowboat, hewn by hand with handmade tools from trees felled in countries that have no trade agreements with the US. Have fun.

When Big Business is in cahoots with Government by the Highest Bidder, there's no exposed toe for the common man to jump on. No matter what we say or do, as individuals, we cannot stop the corporations in charge from doing exactly what they want to us. So long as we know we're all being lied to and humiliated in the security line for the sake of generating a national threat through the power of the collective imagination, we might as well put up with it. We don't really have any other options. The world has gotten small enough for it to be controlled by one small group of people. I'm of the opinion that it's Procter and Gamble.