Deep massage by TSA
Recently, TSA began subjecting passengers to "enhanced" pat-downs. I took them up on the free massage offer but was quite disappointed by the service. One of the two gropers was civil, the other surly. The massage was quite superficial, without proper warm-up of the muscles or a "happy end". Massage parlors near truck stops don't have to worry about TSA competition just yet. Their performance wasn't worth the $35 "security fee" added to the ticket price or the ten minutes of my time.
The crotch-sniffers involved didn't have very high morale. One of them insisted on explaining to me that they were trying to observe proprieties. Their self-justification wasn't any more interesting or relevant than the motives of leg-humping dogs. I got an impression that the TSA creatures understand well just how undignified, ridiculous and useless their work is. They may view it as preferable to being on the dole, though many taxpayers would happily pay them to just stay home.
I didn't have to deal with as much idiocy when leaving the USSR in 1989 from a Leningrad airport. Had the Soviets done this, we would have viewed it as an outrageous example of totalitarian harassment. When our own federales do it, it's supposed to make foreigners even more "envious of our freedoms". The insistence on official documents -- equivalents of internal passports -- for travel is another similarity to the USSR. Not a surprise from the agency that treats "1984" as an instruction manual rather than a dystopian cautionary tale. Explaining our recent acquiescence to indignities to my foreign friends is becoming awkward. What do I tell to people accustomed to travel without physical molestation by fast food rejects?
The crotch-sniffers involved didn't have very high morale. One of them insisted on explaining to me that they were trying to observe proprieties. Their self-justification wasn't any more interesting or relevant than the motives of leg-humping dogs. I got an impression that the TSA creatures understand well just how undignified, ridiculous and useless their work is. They may view it as preferable to being on the dole, though many taxpayers would happily pay them to just stay home.
I didn't have to deal with as much idiocy when leaving the USSR in 1989 from a Leningrad airport. Had the Soviets done this, we would have viewed it as an outrageous example of totalitarian harassment. When our own federales do it, it's supposed to make foreigners even more "envious of our freedoms". The insistence on official documents -- equivalents of internal passports -- for travel is another similarity to the USSR. Not a surprise from the agency that treats "1984" as an instruction manual rather than a dystopian cautionary tale. Explaining our recent acquiescence to indignities to my foreign friends is becoming awkward. What do I tell to people accustomed to travel without physical molestation by fast food rejects?