This last time, going through, it struck me that a resilient organism reacts to trauma with an appropriate fight or flight response, shakes it off, learns from the experience, then returns to a status quo leavened by new experience.
What happens when the government is involved, though, is that a new organism is created. This new organism is unconnected with the old trauma. Rather, like any organism, it comes into being and immediately sets out to expand and propagate, to ensure its continued existence. It develops survival instincts, expressed through metastatis into domains and activities which can only tangentially be connected to its ostensible mission.
No one is trying to hijack airplanes in this country. To the extent of my awareness, in BILLIONS of interventions–and forcing people to take off their shoes and belts, as one example, is an intervention–the TSA has not stopped ONE attack. None.
But people continue to diligently consent to full body scans, and getting every piece of luggage opened, and in general dealing with the stupidity of the process of security theater.
We all know 9/11 can’t happen again the same way. Passengers will fight back. The cockpit door is bolted and reinforced.
We all know that airplanes are much safer than cars, and I think anyone with a shred of sense would realize that they are safer not because the TSA does a good job, but because nobody is trying to hijack airplanes.
Yes, of course there are pockets of deluded, violent people. Yes, the NSA can and should spy on them. But this nonsense of patting people down and forcing them through ridiculous levels of security needs to stop.
Airlines should be allowed to opt out of airport security protocols, and passengers, having been informed of this decision, should be allowed to fly them. If I run the risk of being shot down if the plane IS hijacked, I am willing to take that risk, and so too would many Americans. I have known a number of people seriously hurt in car accidents. I have never known, and never expect to know, anyone hurt in an airplane accident, much less an act of terrorism.