by CKR
Seems like we’re getting a new story every week about the disaster that American air travel is becoming. More lost baggage and fewer flights on time. Bankruptcies and coming out of bankruptcy. A mother thrown off a flight for breastfeeding her baby in the window seat near the back of the plane. Film for the television show “Lost” ruined by screening x-rays. TSA trying to collect $196 million for its services from the airlines, who say it's not their dime.
At Alaska’s Ted Stevens Airport, a man bound for a Disneyland vacation with his family found out at the last minute that if you land on a penalty square, you have to go back to screening. Do not pass “Go,” do not collect $200. Just take off your shoes. He made the plane despite the best efforts of the TSA screeners.
And the Brits, Mancunians in particular, are trying to devise new ways of not having to toss those dangerous liquids in the trash. A fellow in Manila got irritated by too many requests to go back through the metal detector, and took off his pants.
But what bothers me most about airport security is what it’s doing to how we think about ourselves and each other. I’ve gone through several stages and reached a new one during last week’s trip. Shortly after 9/11, when they started the messages over the PA system, “If you think your baggage has been tampered with, please notify an airline representative or law enforcement,” I jumped every time and instinctively looked around for someone to notify. I had had to leave the locks off my luggage, and I knew that TSA was tampering with it, and who knows who else behind the scenes. Definitely not safe. Then I would reboot: the ones who are tampering with your baggage, Cheryl, are the ones making the announcement. Oh.
Now I can shortcut the twinge when I hear those announcements. Still get it, though; don’t like people tampering with my baggage.
For a while, I regarded getting through security as a challenge and mostly made it without notice. As they added nonsensical requirements, though, I began to get angry. Sort of like this: :
I’m stuck in an airport, my bag has just been sullied by some numbskull wearing rubber gloves and I don’t want strangers to talk to me — even disembodied, symbolic strangers. If they try to address me, I probably won’t like them. I can guarantee that I won’t like them.A nasty little incident a couple of years back convinced me that I have to control that anger, and I’ve been working on that for a while. The change on this trip was that I achieved a zen-like serenity that sails me through screening. Or maybe it’s numbness.
It’s the possibility that it’s numbness that bothers me. Something seemed to switch off, whatever causes me to become angry. I can’t tell if this is good or bad; it also turns off most of my thinking as I go through the screening. I don’t recall the process very well, and the busyness of the screening procedures works against introspection. I’m concerned that it could be similar to the state of mind one needed to survive in, say, the Soviet Union.
Here’s another reaction:
While I'm sanguine about baggage woes, one thing I am pretty close to going postal over is ALL THE STUPID FUCKING PEOPLE WHO STILL DON'T KNOW THAT LAPTOPS NEED TO BE OUT OF THEIR GODDAMNED CASES, YOU CAN'T BRING LIQUIDS THROUGH SECURITY, AND TOILETRIES NEED TO BE IN A FUCKING PLASTIC BAG. Really, where in God's Hell have you been living where you don't know that even if you don't travel a lot? Setting ignorance aside, when security tells you what's what, don't stand there and argue with them. Okay? Jesus jumping Christ on a pogo stick by Clueless, Inc. Get the fuck out of my way.Other than that, ntodd seems like a nice enough person on his blog; he lives with a bunch of cats and dogs whose photos he regularly posts.
Earlier in that post, ntodd noted that complaints about lost baggage had decreased, although numbers of bags lost or misrouted had increased. He said that he himself had not bothered to complain about stolen electronic gear. What’s the point? he said.
If you can’t get angry at the powers that be, you can get angry at the people around you. Like my numbness, this is another coping mechanism under an oppressive system.
It gets worse. Thomas K. Reed, Jr., writes in Sunday’s New Mexican about his misadventure with TSA at the Santa Fe airport. His driver’s license had expired; the airline agent said it was okay, but TSA wasn’t so sure. As TSA was giving him the extra screen and one more for good measure, he made his big mistake: he put his hand on the TSA screener’s shoulder. Reed is, according to his op-ed, 75 years old but more than six feet in height, and the screener was female. He missed his flight, was interviewed by the Santa Fe Police and the FBI, and now has received a summons stating that the City of Santa Fe has filed a criminal complaint of battery against him.
I’ve seen two women in tears at the screening points in the Milwaukee Airport: one middle-aged, wearing the rural Wisconsin uniform of plaid flannel shirt and jeans. “Can’t I go through the metal detector again?” she pleaded. No, the stern-faced screener said as she marched the teary suspect off to the black-curtained area. Another in tears and in the extra screening line was younger, slender, blond, with a maroon passport in hand. I was selected “randomly” for extra screening when I was wearing my Kazakh foxfur hat.
We are all suspects now when we want to board an airplane. That is what Mr. Reed didn’t realize. Anything that doesn’t look perfectly normal or American is suspicious. Mr. Reed thought that he was an American citizen with a presumption of innocence. It sounds like he is embarked on a painful learning experience. My best wishes go with him for a quick dropping of the charges.
Oh, and for those of you traveling with children, TSA screeners will now be apprised of Amber alerts for kidnaped children. They will be given photos of the children believed to have been kidnaped. Better hope yours don’t resemble them.
Airport screening is teaching the TSA personnel that they have the arbitrary power to make someone’s life miserable. It’s making some travelers crazy. It’s teaching the rest of us that we must blank out any individuality that might raise suspicion. And that those TSA-ers can wreak their vengeance in some very upsetting ways. Worst of all, it’s teaching us to behave like subjects of a dictatorship rather than citizens of a democracy.