ten billion butterfly sneezes

I’m proud that, for 3 years or more, I’ve been able to avoid the cluster-eff that air travel in America has become. I don’t fear crashing planes, terrorists on planes, or anything remotely similar. I don’t fear, but resent with every fiber in my body, the feeble ministrations of the TSA and the entire Department of Homeland Security, in their “mission” to Keep us Safe.

I shake my head in bafflement at people who put up with the TSA idiocy, and then shed their shoes, belts, and all but disrobe to get on an overcrowded plane staffed by surly airline personnel, and then say “It’s inconvenient, but if it makes it safer, it’s worth it.” Right on the inconvenience, wrong on the making us safer part. The TSA screening points are staffed in the main by poorly managed, ill-trained people who are on the government teat, and serve only to provide some uniform-clad illusion of safety.

The DHS in general has turned into nothing less than yet another domestic spy agency, gathering, mining, and storing data on innocent American citizens, all in the name of “security”.

Guess what, you nitwits? I’m not afraid; I was not afraid on 9/11, I’m not afraid now, and all your meaningless color-coded horseshit advisories are just that: futile gestures by an inept bureaucracy struggling to justify its existence. You serve only to instill and reinforce fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the populace, egged on by cowardly legislators and the nationwide network of the lapdog press. In so doing, you are pissing away untold tax dollars for zero returns. You care not about anything, save next year’s appropriation, which do-nothing legislators are all too willing, due to their cowardice and sound-bite cravings, to provide. Appropriate, rinse, repeat. That’s the drill. And Beltway Bandit contractors gather greedily around the trough, all too willing to buy, sell and trade whatever ineffable swill is in vogue on any given day.

In spite of that, we want to see our grandchildren. So, in 10 days or so, we fly. Not willingly, but we fly. The drive is just too long for the time we have for this trip.

It would be much better, if we lived closer. We’d drive then. We’re working on it.

-k-

tbbs tags: Politics, Life, DHS

Technorati Tags: DHS, TSA, Security