"Your safety is our priority."
The object of terrorists is to make murder and mayhem so ubiquitous and random that the state responds by imposing oppressive measures, i.e. becoming fascist, thus promoting instability and discontent and fomenting revolt. By their incompetence, the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is helping terrorists achieve their goal.
How does the TSA address the monumental stupidity which allowed an avowed Muslim fanatic, who had traveled to al Qaeda hotbed Yemen, who was on intelligence suspect lists, to obtain a U.S. visa, then take off from Nigeria, a country with known Muslim terrorist activity, on a one-way ticket, with no checked luggage, to pass through multiple layers of security, without once being subject to heightened scrutiny, while carrying a bomb? By tightening their lax procedures at airports? By replacing bureaucrats who are more engaged in taking meetings and being important than manning the front lines and actually supervising? No, by imposing still more oppressive rules on passengers to make up for their own incompetence.
Now, our brave security forces have dictated that passengers on a 90-minute or less flight cannot budge from their seats. Even on longer flights, passengers must stay in their seats an hour before landing. This means that passengers asleep for the flight, upon waking cannot go to the bathroom. What about older passengers? Must they now strap on incontinence bags, which will then be subject to inspection at security checkpoints?
Here is the absurd idiocy of the TSA: the would-be suicide bomber on Northwest 253 did not have to move from his seat to ignite his bomb, yet the passengers who possibly saved the aircraft from being blown out of the sky would have violated the rule by leaving their seats to overpower the perpetrator. What would the TSA have done, arrest the passengers?
In a fascist state, when the authorities screw up, it's the people who feel their boot.
