One of the joys of vacation--at least when flying--is dealing with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). On this trip, I had the added pleasure of the feds conducting a 100% passenger drug sweep. This meant that, just before going through the TSA screening, passengers had to walk two at a time through a cordoned off area past a drug sniffing dog to make sure that no one was smuggling marijuana out of Nevada. The last time I saw this, the added delay resulted in lines extending all the way out to the checked baggage counters. This time, to speed up the process, the TSA dispensed with having people remove shoes, jackets or belts, and shuffled everyone through metal detectors instead of the regular scanners. Which indicated to me that even the TSA did not believe that any of the aforementioned security measures were actually necessary.
The TSA was created by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act passed by Congress following the 9/11 attacks and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 19, 2001. Before the attacks, screening was minimal and mostly intended to stop persons from carrying firearms onto planes. You could accompany a loved one to a loading gate to bid them farewell or meet them at a loading gate when they returned from a trip. Heck, you could just walk through airport terminals just to watch airliners land or takeoff (a cheap date back when I was in high school). Even citizens were allowed into terminals without a boarding pass or identification.
And, of course, there was none of this nonsense of having to take off shoes, belts and jackets, and load everything into filthy bins to go through an x-ray machine, or having your sexual organs groped because of a "suspicious" bulge, or standing with your arms above your heads and legs apart while you were scanned--something previously only seen in dystopian science fiction movies.
It might be tolerable if it served some useful purpose, but it appears to be empty "security theater" intended more to humiliate and denigrate the public than to protect.
U.S. airlines lost $8 billion in 2001. The industry wasn’t profitable again until 2006. Losses topped $60 billion over that five-year period and airlines again lost money in 2008 during the Great Recession. Job cuts in the wake of 9/11 were in the tens of thousands and workers faced massive pay cuts. ...
U.S. airline employment even before the pandemic still hadn’t recovered to the 2001 peak.
The financial turmoil sparked a wave of bankruptcies and consolidation among airlines that left four carriers, American, United, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines in control of about three-quarters of U.S. commercial air travel market by 2018.
In the years after 9/11 several major airlines stopped serving free meals and instead started selling food, and charging customers to check bags to help offset higher fuel costs and other financial strain. During a 10-year profit streak that was stopped by the Covid-19 pandemic last year, airlines carved up the coach cabin into smaller classes, began charging for certain seats, even those without extra legroom, as well as early boarding and other perks.
The article goes on to observe that when metal detectors were instituted in the 1970's after a wave of aircraft hijackings, "[a]irlines told passengers to arrive 15 to 30 minutes earlier than usual for the new screenings, according to a January 1973 article in the New York Times." Now it is suggested that we check in at least 2 hours early.
That means 4 additional hours to add to a round trip flight. Is it any wonder why people stopped taking the shorter flights?
Michael Walsh recently penned a column for The Pipeline entitled "To Save America, Abolish the TSA." He begins:
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Nevertheless, like so much else in the Bill of Rights, those sentiments are no longer valid, especially when you're shuffling your way, shoeless and beltless, through the sheep pens of the Transportation Security Administration, George W. Bush's gift to the American traveling public.
To be fair, the 4th Amendment was pretty much dead letter law before 9/11 thanks to the "war on drugs." The Patriot Act and related "security" laws were just the coup de grâce.
Walsh continues:
In retrospect, it's clear that Osama bin Laden emerged the victor of 9/11. He brought down the Twin Towers and took a chunk out of the Pentagon, severely wobbled the American economy, destroyed the freedom of the skies, set the American government haring after all sorts of villains but not a single enemy it would name, and made himself a martyr. Worst of all, because of the actions of 19 Muslim hijackers, most of them Saudi nationals but all of them members of the Islamic ummah, he panicked the U.S. government into presumptively criminalizing more than 300 million American citizens with the passage of the Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and of the TSA, a mortal sin that will live in infamy.
What about safety? Surely you jest. To previous generations of Americans, the idea of trading liberty for safety would have been laughed out of court, but a fearful, feminized society won't even hesitate. Curtail your freedom of movement and subject yourself to intrusive, sometimes bodily, inspection every time you wish to travel by plane? Why not? If it saves just one life...
More than twenty years later, it's clear to everyone who flies that what we have is not safety, but safety theater -- the illusion of safety, conducted by uniformed government employees of last resort whose mission as it has evolved is not to provide the phantasm of "security" but to obstruct, hamper, harass, and hinder Americans as they attempt to go about their lives. ...
... From 1968 to 1972 there was a spate of airplane hijackings by Cuban radicals; "On to Cuba!" became a punch line on late-night comedy, and the introduction of metal detectors at airports and the presence of sky marshals put an end to it. After 9/11, the appearance of one failed "shoe bomber" has meant your shoes come off forever. ... Possibly [the TSA] has discouraged a few terrorists from attempting to emulate the late sheikh of Araby, but why bother? After all, why hijack a plane when you can just walk across the undefended, roundheeled southern border, get free transport -- no ID necessary! -- into the interior and there bide your time?
Walsh goes on to address the leftward course of our government, intent on surpassing the worst excesses of other Marxist movements and governments; not the least of which has been the use of anti-discrimination laws and DEI to produce "a profoundly anti-egalitarian nation with a two-tiered system of justice that stands in open violation of every Constitutional principle." And, as he points out, without the public acquiescing to the TSA and its dehumanizing practices, the Covid lockdowns would probably have been impossible. Thus, he concludes:
Dismantling the Surveillance State and its bureaucratic accretions like Homeland Security is, alas, the work of years, decades -- if it even can be done. The guiding principle of all toxic amoebas, even those as gargantuan as a federal department, is self-preservation. Once birthed, they aspire to immortality. The western Roman Empire maintained the fiction of consuls right to the end. But we have to start somewhere, and the noxious TSA is as good as place as any.
Additional Reading:
- "Why Does Asymmetric Warfare Exist? It Works"--Wilder Wealthy & Wise. Taking us through the how and why of the TSA, YouTube censorship and boycotts, and more, to examine the efficacy of asymmetric warfare.
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