Most of what we go through in airports is fucking stupid. Metal detectors, sure, okay, and dogs and let’s make sure nobody’s bringing a warhead on. But as others have pointed out, the shoe thing and the underwear thing and the liquid thing and all the rest of it is just trying to prevent somebody attacking in the same way an attack has already failed once. I know most terrorists aren’t the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, given how many of them seem to get caught with stuff in their shoes and panties, but COME ON.
An airport’s the dumbest thing to hit right now. The truly dangerous and unsecured sites in America are where anybody gathers in large numbers to do things we think of as ordinary. Suburban shopping malls are more worried about teenage shoplifters than about terrorism, but tell me that isn’t your nightmare scenario. Nobody would ever leave their houses again. There’s no X-ray, metal detector, pat-down process at an NFL or MLB game. Community centers, most city buildings, a clipboard and a confident wave will get you way farther than you ought to go. Lest anyone think I’m giving terrorists ideas, this is just the stuff pulled from last night’s crime procedurals on cable.
We’re scared of flying because it’s what happened last time. We should be scared of what’s going to happen next time.
A.
The TSA is bringing Les Miles level stupid to the table. Not sure if they have his stupid luck though.
for that matter, you could get in a security theater line at an airport wearing a suicide vest and probably take out more people than you could if you actually got on a plane.
We shouldn’t be scared. Not of airplanes, shopping malls, theaters, ball parks, or any other “terrorist” target. Are we scared of a meteorite strike? Of a lightning strike? Of a volcano eruption? All of that stuff has a vanishingly small chance of ever threatening any one of us.
Living is risky. Live with it.
Yeah, but then Marshall writes somethinglike this, where it’s gutter-minded and scurrilous to raise the prospect of the first family being treated like the rest of us. And considering that even witnessing a demonstration of what is laughingly euphemized as a “pat down”creeps out the very people who should be most in favor of it, it’s probably safe to say it’s a REALLY FUCKING BAD IDEA.
indeed. now that dallas has that new obscene stadium for the cowpies…
“Living is risky. Live with it.”
Part of the problem is mass innumeracy. A lot of people wildly overestimate the risk of a terrorist attack and underestimate the risks of more mundane things killing us. We’re spending resourcesand time on security theater that would be better spent preventing the more probable stuff.
“for that matter, you could get in a security theater line at an airport wearing a suicide vest and probably take out more people than you could if you actually got on a plane.”
mellowjohn, you win the thread.
You see that ‘islamic terrorists have a hardon for airplanes as a way to attack the US’.
Yeah, the ones that live *outside* the US do, because that’s their one way to reach Americans. The ones *inside* the US do OTHER stupid stuff like try and set a bomb in Times Square.
Score: NYC cabbie: 1, TSA: 0.
So yeah, ratchet up the security for flights heading to the US from other countries, but don’t bother with domestic US flights. Do that, and 95% of the complaining will disappear.