Nick -
Nah, Steve. I am going to rain on this parade. Sorry.
I wondered what that splashing/drizzling was all about! Thanks a lot!
For years we all had our inseams measured without accusing tailors of
homophilia. There is nothing inherently undignified in the search
except that perception makes it so.
So, my barber who keeps dropping his comb into my lap *isn't* making a
pass at me? Shoots, I'll be needing to find another barber I guess!
And you might not be surprised, but I've never had a tailor handle my
junk while measuring my inseams... but then, that salesgirl at the store
where I buy my jeans is welcome to measure my inseams... but every time
I ask, she declines the opportunity.
All of this "keep your mitts off my junk" ("JUNK!" WHERE THE HELL DID
THAT COME FROM?) is a juvenile distraction from two EXTREMELY
important issues.
(1)Are the back scatter scanners safe?
(2)Is security based on high cost machinery (rather than intelligence)
effective.
It does give me pause that Michael Chertoff was, I understand, a
serious investor in the company that makes the machines. No I don't
have any proof.
I don't suppose I disagree that these are potentially important issues.
But I don't agree that submitting to escalating levels of invasive and
highly questionable measures based on induced hysteria is a "good and
necessary thing".
I'm still of the strong belief that one of the errant memes amok in
our culture is the meme of fascism. The meme that insists that the good
of the whole is entirely dependent on and subservient to the whim of the
bureaucracy in place (and expanding). It is my firmly held opinion that
the majority of the response to 9/11 has been an opportunistic one,
feeding those who would feed this particular meme. Fascism positively
loves fear!
I'm also completely in tune with the theme.... "just because you are
paranoid, doesn't mean they are *not* out to get you". Yes, the great
and wonderful America the Beautiful has ENEMIES and they "Hate our
Freedoms" (What?) and they *will* hijack our planes and fly them into
our tallest buildings if given the chance...
But I contend that there is also a rot within the souls of our own
people who "Hate our Freedoms" in an entirely different way. They hate
our freedom from fear, from administrative picayune control of
everything. Just go dump your wallet out on the table and look through
*that junk* and tell me that you are not being harried by a dozen or
more trivial systems which require you to step and fetch... driver's
license (aka Universal ID), Insurance card(s), credit cards, Social
Security Card, Loyalty Shopping Cards... the rest I'm not sure I wanna
know! Then go check the file cabinet, and the glove box of your car...
or your stack of unopened (my case) or recently opened (more likely)
mail. The quantity and complexity of the systems designed around
keeping YOU in line is amazing. Dial up a right wing talk radio station
and listen to the rhetoric in the *advertising* on identity theft
(guard), it is positively disgusting!
Yes, someone hates our freedoms, but I don't think it is the 12 year old
boys and girls spread across a great deal of the world strapping bombs
onto their chests to blow up our tanks (those not busy stepping on our
errant landmines)... *they* have something seriously sad going on in
*their* (short and likely miserable) lives as do our young men and women
stuck in the "stop-loss" war that is consuming their prime years, but
the threat is as much from within (all forms of paranoid hysteria and
the fascist systems and behaviour it can fuel) as from without.
Ooops, I think I got off on a rant there! <grin>
- Steve
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