There was a time when air travel was considered a big deal. We dressed in our best clothes, we washed, ironed and packed our special clothes with care, and we trusted the airlines to treat us and our belongings with courtesy, care and professionalism. This was within my lifetime, and I remember it well. How things have changed.
Now people turn up in all manner of dress and undress to airports, using all manner of receptacles to carry their belongings, fully aware that someone will be pawing through their things, so they must not lock their suitcases, duffels, cardboard boxes, etc.
Since 9-11, we have accepted many changes to the once-considered privilege of air travel, including searching of our belongings, restrictions on what we are allowed to take with us on the plane and how we prepare to board the plane once we have jumped through all the ID hoops. At the same time, we have accepted rising prices and diminished services for the travel we once enjoyed.
When the Transportation Security Administration began making me take off my shoes, I simply made a practice of wearing slip-on shoes when I traveled. When they started making me take off my sweater or jacket, I simply wore things that I could easily and quickly slip out of, regardless what it did to the outfit I was wearing. When they confiscated my expensive cosmetics and shampoo and yet another unopened bottle of drinking water, I sighed and went on.
But when they tried to remove my infant daughter from my front carrier, I stopped them. I advised them that they were welcome to use the wand to their heart’s content, but not to expect to remove my baby from my arms without losing one of theirs.
Now, they want to use X-ray vision on me, and manually molest me after making me remove my shoes and my sweater, while holding onto my official ID, my boarding pass, and somehow continuing to control my carry-on bag and laptop. All the while they are barking orders at me to step back then forward, then halt, then go here then there.
What is next, I shudder to ask. We are perilously close to the routine strip search, and being made to wear standard-issue striped pajamas onto the planes. I, for one, prefer to keep my personal orifices personal, thank you.
And if any of these nasty TSA agents takes a step toward my child expecting to search her with their
hands, they will have to go through me to get to her. They will not succeed.
Obviously, there is no negotiating with the TSA. They have been given the authority of the Gestapo, and anyone resisting their orders is quite likely to end up incarcerated.
Yet at this moment, we do have an alternative. The alternative is to eliminate elective air travel, and that is what my family has done. We will not be subjected to the indignity of a manual search, nor the displeasure of paying the exorbitant airfare that goes with it.
Anything further than removing shoes and sweaters “in the name of security” is unacceptable and completely unnecessary. The new policies and practices of the TSA under the direction of Czar Janet Napolitano are revolting, offensive in the extreme and flat-out wrong.
I reject the TSA’s efforts to subjugate Americans in this offensive way, in the name of security, when its track record is such a failure. We have intelligence and technology at our command, and we also have drug-sniffing dogs, which are proven to be the most effective method of finding hidden explosives. We have the ability to profile those most likely to be carrying explosives while traveling.
These represent viable and much less invasive methods of ensuring that people boarding airplanes in U.S. airports are not carrying bombs. No American should tolerate search procedures such as those implemented
by the TSA.
I say let the profiling begin, turn the dogs loose and jihadists’ feelings be damned.
Lisa Davis is a teacher in Caribou.