Forums

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Sometimes it is the case that the government agent is "just doing their job." Sometimes it is not. A lot of these assholes relish the power that the position gives them (any question at all is almost always met with "Sir, we can do this in the other room with the police" or something similarly ridiculous). They are rude, obnoxious, often incapable of applying common sense and they are generally angry at the world. I acknowledge that dealing with the general public when they are in a rush will lead someone to these feelings. But you need to acknowledge that if you give anyone a little bit of power, they will abuse it--especially in situations like this, where any type of resistance puts you in league with terrorists.

And yeah, here's another anecdote. My wife and I once had a connecting flight for which we were late because the first flight was late. We made a mad dash through the airport, got to security and the line was very short. My wife went on one and I went on another to maximize efficiency. The gate was within view and we saw they were finishing up and about to close the doors. We went through the machines and nothing was out of the ordinary. But the screeners saw we were in a rush and decided to seach BOTH of us. Okay. Fine. My wife's screener ran the wand over her, looked through her bags quickly as we both explained that our flight was about to leave and sent her on her way. My guy was power tripping and intent on making us miss the flight. He intentionally went as slow as possible (and I'm not kidding here, the guy was being a real asshole for no real reason). I told my wife to go to the gate to make sure it didn't leave, which she did and it took me 10 minutes for him to do his search. Power trip. We were lucky we chose two different lines or we would have missed the flight just because this guy's wife made him feel like shit earlier that morning.

And I've seen similar garbage happen dozens of times to other people. I know you love authority and cut them every break you can, but I don't agree that's it's always just a matter of a guy doing the job we and our elected officials are asking him to do. Sorry.

Sidd's story involved a guy who applied a rule with no discretion. Either the shirt was legal to import into the U.S. or it wasn't. The import of Sidd's story was (putting aside asking the girl to take the shirt off in public, which I agree is gratuitous) that it was just a fucking t-shirt -- that the enforcement of a rule always impliedly allows the discretion of looking the other way. I'm making a small point that that's impractical and unwise. I'm not disagreeing with the notion there are assholes with badges, and never have.