TSA Time

You’d have to live under a TRS 80 and have a 300 Baud modem to not know about the latest dustup between .gov and your battered and bruised civil rights.    I’m speaking, of course, about how the Tea Party has ginned up Bristol Palin’s success on Dancing with the Stars (shown on your local Panem et Circenses Broadcasting affiliate).  NO!  I’m only joking.  I’m talking about the firestorm that has enveloped the TSA in general and, in particular, the PornoScanners that the flying sheep public are being herded expected to walk through or submit to a sexual assault. (No.  I didn’t do that in red strike through. What else is it?)

There is a large portion of population that is just fed up with crap like this (NSFW) and a significant portion of said fed-uppers will be flying soon for the holidays.  They are NOT your average road warrior who has to suck it or not get paid.  When boss-man tells you to be in Dallas on Monday, LA on Tuesday, Phoenix on Wednesday, and Birmingham on Friday, you don’t have the luxury of getting all butt hurt about surrendering your dignity to some perv who couldn’t get a job as a REAL mall cop.  You just have to take it, one way or the other, so your family gets to do little things like eat and stay warm. 

But for the next month, or so, people like me, who HATE FLYING to begin with, will be jetting hither, thither, and, yes, yon as well, on those great metal dragons that once where the stuff of lavish dreams.  And you know what?  They don’t like being told, “hump or death.”  So I expect this kerfuffle will stay a hot topic for the next little while.

But unless I miss my guess, the NudiScans are here to stay.  Why?  The same reason everything happens in this country.  Money, Power, and Indifference.

Follow the Money

Why have Radiological Rape sites set up in the first place?  To stop bombers and Terrorists?  No.  Because they make some company money.  And since they are being made at the behest of .gov, who never met a dollar they had to manage properly, those little slices of voyeur heaven probably cost 10 times over retail.  People are making money and money doesn’t like to not be made.  So when John Q pushes back, Lenny the Lobbyist is just going to tell Connie the Congress Critter to hold out a little while and people will get used to this cut like they have the other 999. 

It’s About Control

.gov likes being in power.  They believe that YOU exist for THEM to govern.  It’s not a simple matter of them being the stewards of the people’s power.  Oh no.  You are the sheep that need a shepherd.  And if you don’t like it, tough. 

Oh I’m not saying there is a dark room with illuminati symbols where faceless men plan our fates on altars constructed over the bones of dead Roswell aliens.  What I am saying is that the nanny needs a charge to look after or there is little need for the nanny to exist.  A nanny that allows her charge to grow into adulthood soon finds herself out of a job.  Our government, much like a bad nanny, treats us like kids who need more supervision rather than adults that need less.  If they back off in this area, we might just get the strange idea in our heads that we can make them back off in other areas.  And what follows will be disastrous.  People reclaiming their First and Second Amendment rights!  States telling fed.gov to go piddle up a rope!  We might, the horror, even make them cut spending and be responsible with our money!  OH TEH NOEZ, worst of all, we may get the damn fool notion, after all that reclaiming of power, that it’s OUR MONEY!  These things can’t happen.   .gov sees every challenge to its power as a domino.  The NudiScans could be their Vietnam that causes all the other pockets of governmental control to fall. 

Who Cares

What the companies and .gov count on, and usually get, is the public to have a short-lived attention span.  Helped out by Ministry of Propaganda (aka: The Mainstream Media) that can bury a story at will, .gov can make things go away by dangling a sufficiently shiny object for the MSM to spin over and over in the 24 hour news cycle until the important topics are as distant from everyone’s mind as contrition is from sociopath. 

At that point, people will still hate the scanners, but they only have to go through them once in a while, so… might as well.  They will bitch about it like they harp on too much tax.  But they will never really demand anything be done.  Partly because it’s for the children and partly because, meh, the new Harry Potter movie is out so who has time.

A Small Wrinkle

There is some hope, however.  You see, these same wise leaders that believe it is their job to govern and our job to bend over and take it, also thought they were bullet proof this past election.  They believed, also, that nothing P-Barry or his administration did would ever be questioned.  They thought, and rightly so given our voting past, that no one cared about the little things.  But something happened. P-Barry got cross threaded with the people and the people fought back.  Oh he still had the power and used it to his advantage, promptly shanking us with Socialized Medicine and a debt we will never be able to pay, ensuring our children’s children are either under its yolk or fighting the wars that it will inevitably start.

But even in the face of his scorched economy policy, the people pushed.  And they won.  A small victory in the grand scheme of things, to be sure, but a victory after many years of defeat at the hands of BOTH PARTIES.  And that’s the one thing that takes my prediction that, “the Pr0nViewers are gonna be here forever,” not quite a dead cert. 

You see, the powers that be, at least the ones that can really read the tea leaves, know that the loyalty of these newly emboldened voters is up for grabs every November.  They hold no party allegiance, and unlike the so-called, “Moderate Voters,” who are really afraid to speak their mind and tend to just go with whatever is popular, these new voters are bold, brash, and really have a moral compass that points true North, not “D” or “R”.  To get these voters, lawmakers will have to really show they are listening to the people. 

If the people get angry at this most basic intrusion into our personal lives and stay angry, then some politicians will start to say, “Hmmm.  There’s votes in them thar hills,” and sponsor some movement, or even legislation, to pull this things.  But it will take a lot of perseverance and anger on the part of the people.  It will take all the road warriors opting out and makeing the lines long as hell so airlines lose money.  Basically, it will take US being inconvenienced all to hell while .gov tells us that if we don’t submit, someone is going to blow some plane full of nuns and children and cripples out of the sky and won’t we feel bad when it happens. 

The Bitter Truth

And we will feel bad.  But the horrible truth that people need to learn NOW is that life really does suck and no scanner, screener, or law is going to stop that.  Bad people find ways to do bad things.  Look at the cities where guns shouldn’t exist.  Laws upon laws are heaped on, covering the rights of the average citizen and people are still dying.  Why?  Becasue people who want to do harm to others aren’t deterred by laws.  People, spurred on by a malignant religious adherence that makes them believe they are going to be rewarded by their god, are going to find ways to do harm.  You can’t stop it.  You never will.  Deal with it. 

Will it be a tragedy?  Yes.  Will there be finger-pointing?  Yes.  But someone has to have the guts to say, “Enough.  I don’t want to be alive at the expense of living.  I’ll take my chances and if my big ol’ bird is about to be used as a bomb or missile, I bless you and the poor jet jockey given the task and beg you to shoot me out of the sky.”

Until we aren’t afraid to live again, we will always be healthy, but under the boot of someone who couldn’t care less that we aren’t living well.

Ok, if you can’t get worked up with a money quote like that, think about this.  I think he’s really hit the nail on the head there.  Stop thinking about yourselves here for a minute.  Stop thinking about an unnamed ghoul that .gov it warning about.  Stop thinking about a plane load of unknowns that knew the risks when they handed over their credit card.  Think about YOUR loved ones.  Think about looking into the eyes of YOUR little girl and having to explain why that mean man touched her “there” and YOU did nothing.  Do something.  NOW!

One last item.  I have a suggestion for the holidays over here at my less serious blog.  It may be a way we can vote with our wallets and show that we don’t want this level of abuse. 

H/T to all Unc., Tam, Breda, NJT, Instapundit, Sebastian, Lawdog, and anyone else I linked to in the article.