TSA: Just ordinary folks--gone horribly awry

I remember as a kid the Vesuvius-like joy that filled my soul when Dad said we had to go pick up someone from the airport.  The wide-open terminals, the cool little shops (to include the arcade), and airplanes!  What was not to like for a little kid?  I didn't even have to be the one flying.  Airports were great places to be.

Not any more.

In fact, it took us two days to drive to Wisconsin.  You could have handed me five round-trip tickets from my front door to my mom's home and I still would have taken the two-day drive and night in a hotel to get here.

First, I can leave when I want.  I don't have to cater to whenever I can get the tickets.

Second, we have a 'burb full of goodies to snack upon when we travel.  Good eats and sweet fellowship with the family.

Third, my woman and I read to one another while driving.  Not much better way to pass the miles than to read with your bride.  The teen hibernated.  The girls watched movies.

Fourth, and the impetus to this micro-venting, I don't have to go to the airport.

What has become of our airports?  While I never traveled in Eastern Europe in the days of the Iron Curtain, I imagine that getting through the Brandenburg Gate back in the day proved far easier than getting from the front door of any big-city airport in America to the departure gate in 2010.

The fact that my government sees all of its citizens as suspect grieves my heart the most.  While I can seldom bear Ann Coulter's screaming-meemie approach to political observation and discourse anymore, she sums the problem up nicely in a recent article.  In a nut shell, howz-about we target those most likely to target us?  Not the nuns.  Not five year old children.  Not the WWII vets trying to visit their great-grandchildren.  Considering every major atrocity committed against the US in the last three decades has been committed by someone of a conservative Islamic persuasion with a heritage that usually springs from a locale well east of the Mason-Dixon, what say we scrutinize folks like that?

That would require a fundamental shift from the top down not likely to happen in the next two years.  Janet Napolitano has studied internal national security from the likes of old Heinie Himmler and Joe Stalin.  Nope.  She's set and President Obama doesn't appear to be reigning her in.


An American Travesty


So what happens when the order comes down to the TSA agents that they MUST do a nude scan or full-body grope of Sister Mary Catherine before she can board her plane?  Have any balked?  Have any of them quit their job in an economy where jobs are scarce because they could not carry out such heavy-handed tactics against friends and neighbors?

Personally, and like many others, I believe what the TSA is doing to American citizens is criminal, a shaking down of individuals who have provided no impetus to the government for this unreasonable search and sometimes "seizure."  At this point, I come to understand how ordinary men and women could lead other human beings into gas chambers.  Really, it's not that extraordinary a leap.  When national leadership tells you that it's for the good of the nation, that the safety of the country depends upon what you are doing, a sense of civic duty rises up and you answer the call.

Until you take a hard look at what you are really doing.  Unfortunately, I have heard no stories of TSA Agents quitting over what they've been tasked to do.  My heart grows heavy every time I see a picture of the TSA groping folks that ought never be groped, body-scanned or metal detected. 

When will this all end?  I don't know.  Our government of the people is doing this to us.  We have let it tether itself around our freedoms.  It's up to us to say, "No more."

Until then, I'm steering clear of airports, getting out on the wide-open road, and praying they don't institute highway checkpoints between states.