Make Flying Great Again
My friend had a colonoscopy done recently. I asked him if he went to the doctor's office or the airport?
Like many Americans, I start off my holiday season every year at the airport. And like those Americans I am unpleasantly reminded that I live in the land of the free from one of our most coveted federal agencies—the TSA.
My fear that the next 9/11 is right around the corner melts away once that matte, authoritative blue fills my eyes. My ears swell with the sound of orders in the way I imagine a defeated drill sergeant sounds.
“Laptops out of the bags in a separate tray!”
“Ma’am please step forward.”
“Empty your pockets. Are your pockets empty? Pleaseeeee empty your pockets.”
Nothing makes me feel more American than undressing next to my fellow countrymen while another is molested by a bureaucrat, and another watches the bag they barely got to close spring open so big chungus can confiscate the shampoo that poses a threat to national security.
But what’s even more defeating for me to watch is how many Americans have given up. The number of people who let the government scan their face, willingly and while being told it is completely optional is terrifying. The cynical side of me asks: “wow if we’re willing to give our country away that easily, maybe we don’t deserve one?” I walk myself back from that dark abyss and anestitize myself by saying maybe they do not realize what’s going on.
As a Zoomer, I do not know of a post-9/11 world. The idea of showing up to the airport thirty minutes before the gate closes is foreign to me. And that benefits the apparatus. The complicity of prior generations allows for the continual erosion of rights because their offspring know of no other world. The mere idea of a world without the TSA scares people my age: But before the TSA we had—9/11! We don’t want that again! And it’s that argument that infuriates me not only because it invites the oft-cited cliche from Benjamin Franklin which I will not quote here,1 but it completely dismisses the Fourth Amendment. Really? Who in their right mind thinks mass screening of every commercial airline passenger in the United States is a reasonable search?2
Let’s set aside the ideological argument for a minute. Is the TSA even effective? Time and time again the TSA’s screening has failed to prove that it is effective at stopping prohibited items from evading its screening. In 2015, the Inspector General reported that the TSA failed to stop prohibited items from getting through in 67 out of 70 tests! The details of that report were not divulged for NAtIoNal sECurItY pURpOSes, but in one test an undercover agent managed to sneak through an explosive strapped to his back.3
The fact of the matter is, the TSA does not keep us safe, and even the government knows that. They don’t even give them a gun. What makes you think they are stopping the next terrorist attack? Everytime we respond to tragedy with emotion and give up part of what it means to live in a free country nobody wins except the administrative state. I ask you to imagine a world with less government and more convenience for the American people. One where we don’t live in fear and instead endeavor to retake the America our parents once knew. And for the love of God please opt-out of the biometric face scanning.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” - Benjamin Franklin. The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. VII Letters and Miscellaneous Writings 1775-1779. Retrieved from The Online Library of Liberty.
While writing this I learned of the “administrative-search exception” which is lawyer-speak for a federal agency can violate the Fourth Amendment if it is a really big deal. See United States v. Biswell, 406 U.S. 311, 317 (1972). Sometimes I have to laugh at ridiculous otherwise I’ll just cry.
Bruce Schneier has a blog detailing more on the screening failures of the TSA.