Airport Tyranny
The United States’ T.S.A. – Transportation Security Agency – “bugs the heck out of me,” as Americans say. I cannot understand why citizens of the “home of the brave and land of the free” put up with it, and why they did not run it out of town long ago. But then I am afraid I can understand after all . . .
At airports, which is where I myself run into the Thousands Standing Around (T.S.A.), they take the form of agents appointed to interrogate passengers flying to the United States, and to check their baggage, presumably in order to make sure that they are not “terrorists.” When I flew from Frankfurt to Chicago a few weeks ago, one of them asked me what I had been doing in Germany. I dared to wonder of what concern that could be to the United States Government.
“If you have a problem with that, take it to the Government,” came the reply, “but if you don’t want to spend hours here, you had best answer.” Then came a series of questions: “Why were you in Germany? . . . Where were you? . . . How did you get from there to here? . . . Have you a ticket to prove it?” I could hardly believe my ears, yet I observed the mass of passengers apparently having no problem with this kind of treatment.
In fact they even seem to enjoy being interrogated, and then body-checked by machines more and more intrusive, if one wants to fly. I have to suppose their attitude is that at least somebody takes them seriously. But I want to yell at them, “Wake up! Can you not see that 9/11 was a Global Fraud?” But of course I would be wasting my breath on the mass of passengers, and I could be getting myself flagged by the T.S.A. as a Terror Propagandist!
Yet only a few years ago, before 9/11, such intrusion on U.S. citizens’ privacy and freedom would have been completely unacceptable. As it is, this ready compliance of passengers suggests to me that they are grateful for being protected from global “terrorists.” Do I exaggerate if I further suspect that being so examined at airports is even welcome to them as coming from their godlike Government, a ritual of their secular State religion? What other religion do most of them have?
Kyrie eleison.
