Quote:
Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch
What I would like is for everyone to acknowledge that allowing children/nuns/breast cancer survivors/bladder cancer survivors/rape victims/etc. to board planes without invasive screening procedures employed with everyone else involves some risk. We all balance risk differently (as noted by the 90% of people who say they have no prob with the new TSA protocols) so the only truly stupid thing one can say about all this mess is "They should use their judgment and not pat down the _______ people because the ________ people aren't the ones bringing bombs onto planes." I mean, come the fuck on -- do we think our enemies are stupid? That they're above putting C4 on a toddler? The only stupid thing one can say is "I want maximum security but I want 0.05% of the population not to be inconvenienced by these searches because it makes me feel gross to see them get frisked." That kind of thinking will eventually mean everybody's exempted OR everybody but the Muslims are exempted and in either case the security effectiveness goes to zero.
I traveled with a seven month old in December 2001. Did I freak out about the fact he was treated like a potential terrorist like the rest of us? Fuck no, because in spite of some of the things I have posted on these boards I am not a solipsistic moron.
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I go the other way on this issue. I am willing to take the risk of a plane going down to have reasonable security measures when I fly. You're not going to catch everyone and steps should be taken (the "sniffers" that detect like one millionth of a particle of explosive material or whatever seem fine) to maximize what we can catch, while balancing a level of privacy. Does that mean that every once in awhile a bomb gets through and 200 people die? Yes. And that sucks and I hate it. But this garbage is out of control.
Am I going to be a pain in the ass about it at the airport? No. But I don't think that people complaining about it are necessarily overly-sensitive assholes.
TM
