"This too shall pass."
The outrageous behavior of TSA isn't yet a cause for worry. At this time, parents are still not able to explain to their kids why certain strangers are allowed to touch the whole family inappropriately. So long as the outrage lasts, we have hope for an eventual solution.
When the outrage wanes and gives place to apathy, resignation and habituation, then we will be in trouble for real. To a European or an American boarding a ship or a train in 1910, the quiet surrender to TSA and their DHS backers would have been unthinkable. A civilized person could travel armed, unmolested and treated with courtesy. Today, we practice submission rituals no different from ritual mounting among baboons.
In today's land of the free, the debate centers on whether nudo-scans or intimate groping by uniformed strangers is a lesser evil. Rosa Parks objected to something so comparatively benign as sitting in the back of a bus...I wonder how she would have reacted to blue-gloved hands under her skirt. The indignities of racism have abated...the indignities of being an American traveler are just starting. What would it take to end them -- court decisions, airline bankruptcies or direct pressure on individual perpetrators and their bosses?
When the outrage wanes and gives place to apathy, resignation and habituation, then we will be in trouble for real. To a European or an American boarding a ship or a train in 1910, the quiet surrender to TSA and their DHS backers would have been unthinkable. A civilized person could travel armed, unmolested and treated with courtesy. Today, we practice submission rituals no different from ritual mounting among baboons.
In today's land of the free, the debate centers on whether nudo-scans or intimate groping by uniformed strangers is a lesser evil. Rosa Parks objected to something so comparatively benign as sitting in the back of a bus...I wonder how she would have reacted to blue-gloved hands under her skirt. The indignities of racism have abated...the indignities of being an American traveler are just starting. What would it take to end them -- court decisions, airline bankruptcies or direct pressure on individual perpetrators and their bosses?