 |
| Munich airport "security area." Note the overhead chain-link fencing. Can America be far behind? (Wiki commons) |
I do not, I cannot, I will not be party to the excesses perpetrated by the TSA. What does this mean? It means there is not one chance in ten million that I will ever voluntarily subject my person to screening at any America airport. Ever.
Nor will I forget that the acronym stands for Transportation Security Administration, a younger brother of Homeland Security (why didn't Herr Bush just call it Vaterland Security, ja?). There is apparently no pretense at journalism at AOL online (now part and parcel of once marginally acceptable Huffington Post) these days. Throughout, the article refers only to TSA. AOL never identifies the organization as the Transportation Security Administration. Does AOL they expect everyone to know what TSA stands for? Or, more likely, are they in league with the devil, Vaterland Security, to ensure that people forget that TSA is yet another evil stepchild of Bush's Gestapo?
The incident that inspired this post concerns the pat-down of a 95-year-old woman, dying of leukemia and wearing an adult diaper as she attempted to visit her relatives before she died. The TSA agent--look, why not just call him/her by the proper name, Sturmbahnfuhrer--found something "wet and firm and they couldn't check it thoroughly," (AOL) and sent the lady and her daughter to the toilets to remove the diaper so it could be checked. After that, the lady did her traveling sans culottes, a second indignity although far lesser than the first.
There is no excuse in the world for this. Are Americans now so terrified of reprisals from the populations they have historically scorned and lately inflicted harm upon that they will accept the abusive treatment of ill and elderly citizens in a ludicrous show of demoralizing force illicitly characterized as protecting the population? If so, the nation has no future; it's future can only be seen in one of two ways: Either it will implode of an excess of hubris among its supposedly elected officials, or it will tumble down from outside forces, leaving a bewildered population too weak--after the past ten years of insult piled on injury piled on insult ad infinitum since Bush took the reigns (yes, I'm using that word purposefully) of power--with equal emphasis on the word took.
Is there still a chance of saving America? I don't know. I think the population is so drugged--some on thankfulness that they haven't been reduced to begging and others on the stultifying need to get through another day with no job, no health care, no hope--that it seems unlikely.
Is anyone smiling in America these days? Are there any random acts of kindness being offered?Would kindness even be recognized and appreciated, or have the inmates aped the jailers, viewing kindness as weakness to be avoided?
I suspect that there are a few smiles, in fact. Mainly among the Bush family, the teabaggers whose own brand of insanity makes any number of peyote-induced freak dreams seem normal by comparison, and the financial operatives who have gotten away with the riches of Croesus, and sent out their bills for more. Oh, and the sadists employed by that division of Vaterland Security known as TSA. That is, the Transportation Security Administration.
By security, they mean imprisonment in a barbed tangle of convoluted procedures designed to finally strip every ounce of human dignity and resistance from the American people. Unfortunately, it appears to be working.
Got it? While the United States has not yet slammed the gates, they have made getting through them worthy of classical literature, the Odyssey to be precise. Horrors and monsters arise at every turn upon the journey. Travel if you must, but consider walking. It's cheaper, and so far gets you out of the hands of the Strurmbahnfuhrer.
