As I think about it, this really is an effort to redefine in a permanent way the relationship between our personal space, and the space of an increasingly overreaching–literally–State. What they are saying is that “We have the right to strip you of clothing, or strip you of your dignity: your choice.”
For what? For what concrete good? Israel doesn’t do this, and they have had no hijackings in decades, despite being the number one target. No American plane has been hijacked since 9/11, despite not using procedures like this.
People this has nothing whatever to do with security, and everything towards bending reality towards a New Normal in which the State can monitor the most intimate aspects of our personal lives. It really, truly is the beginning of 1984.
To quote Paul Krugman, in another context: be afraid, be very afraid. Then be angry, and make sure this bitch hears enough noise that our Socialist in Chief has to fire her or retract this totalitarian policy.
The way you break people is not through harshness, but through gradually demanding more and more submission–in seemingly small, seemingly necessary ways–until they lose their sense of self entirely. We are far along in this process in this nation, and this is just one more step in that direction. Enough is enough. Our government has NO right and NO justification to demand that everyone who flies on a PRIVATE airline take their clothes off, or get molested.
If you think about it, actually, in large measures has the airline industry not been taken over by the government? Have we not created a federal police force that does not answer to any of the States where it works, and is largely beyond the control of Congress?
Why is it I can’t opt out of security? Why is it airlines cannot set their own level of security? Some people are so fearful that this sort of screening is what they would want. Most of us are fine walking through a metal detector, and leaving it at that.
Frankly, my preference would be an airline that carefully profiles its passengers, and only bothers to check people who fit the demographic profile of terrorists. We skip the metal detector entirely. I suspect that would work just fine. As things stand now, rather than violating a few peoples “rights”, we violate the rights–severely, in this case–of EVERYONE. Are they going to grope children too? Or force them to pose naked?
This is utter and complete lunacy, and if it stands this alone will be a major issue in 2012. I personally will never submit to it. It is degrading, and goes far past the boundaries that should exist not just between individual citizens, but more particularly between the State and the citizen of that State.