Examples:
1. Rome, 509 BC: The Roman Republic is seized by a series of civil wars following the defeat of Antony & Cleopatra, throwing the provinces into chaos. People freak out and consul/military leader/really rich guy Augustus and his loyal team of generals, who had already been attempting to seize power for some time, stepped in and said “what we need is order. Tell ya what – you elect me princeps and I’ll let the senate keep their power.” The senate, loving the wealth and resources dear Augustus brings to the table, say “Sure! Extra-constitutional powers? You got it!” The people, meanwhile, do not question the wisdom of the senate, especially considering Augustus’ generals made it clear that there would be more civil wars otherwise. And voila! The republic becomes a principate, then a dictatorship, and the Roman Empire we all know and love, leaving the people with nothing.

2. Germany, 1930: After having their butts handed to them in WWI and taking the blame for the whole debacle, Germany was forced to pay reparations to the world, the amount of which were ludicrous for the time. After surviving a bout of hyper-inflation and finally starting to revalue the mark, the Great Depression struck. Unemployment went to 30%, American loans that had been used to rebuild following the war were called in, and panic gripped people. More and more people started listening to young Adolf Hitler’s insane ramblings about how it’s all the jews’ fault, and if we could get rid of them things would get better. By the 1930 election, the number of Nazis officially in the government went from 12 to over 100. It spreads until Hitler is finally elected Chancellor in 1933, but he’s still just an elected official at this point. Then, however, the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament, is burned to the ground in an arson attack. Hitler had been trying to control his political enemies for some time at that point, but when the people were made aware of this vicious, heinous attack on their democratically elected government, Hitler and his boys were able to get the Reichstag Fire Decree passed, which in essence suspended the civil rights of anyone who belonged to any political party other than Nazi. Gleichschaltung began in full swing from this point forward, with Hitler declaring himself Fuhrer after the German president under which he served died in 1934, all the while the people just smile and nod and give away more and more of their rights in some misguided attempt to reclaim stability. We know the rest.

3. United States, 1950: Having been elected to the US Senate through dirty politics in 1946, a wiley young Republican by the name of Joseph McCarthy was re-evaluating the tactics that had made him unpopular with both his fellow senators and the public on which his re-election hinges. Joe wonders, how did I go from Tail-Gunner Joe to the Pepsi Cola Kid? That’s it! Fresh from the war, he was a hero, because the enemies were OUTSIDE of the country! What we need is something new to focus on INSIDE the country to distract people from questionable political practices and decisions. What luck we happen to be in the middle of a cold war! And considering a poll just revealed that he was thought of as the “worst senator serving,” it had to be done quickly. So in 1950, while giving a speech to a Republican Women’s Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy releases a list of “known communists working for the state department.” In reality, his list was the Lee list created by the House Appropriations Committee to judge the efficiency with which money was being spent by the state department. McCarthy took this list of “loyalty risks” and the stories of what these dangerous spies were up to got bigger and more dramatic with every speech. And of course the people were up in arms – there was already a climate of fear perpetuated by the government, and this guy was just piling on top. The government backed him up and started calling all sorts of committees , from the Tydings committee to the utter usurpation of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for the purposes of communist witch-hunting, McCarthy profited off of ruining the lives and reputations of the innocent until his death in 1957, dying while still in office, despite the fact that the army exposed him for blackmailing them into giving preferential treatment to one of his now enlisted former aides. One can only imagine how much worse the state of politics would have gotten if he hadn’t died when he did.

Reading human history is like watching the same really bad movie over and over again.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I’m not certain about the universe.” ~ Albert Einstein

I hope you like that blue stuff in the toilets, because the PASSENGERS are going to rip you apart and flush the pieces.

No plane will EVER be hijacked again, and it won’t be because of the Testicle Sucking Assholes.

“Ahhm sarrahy sir, ah jes gotta check ya @$$#0[3…”

13 year old mechanically ventilated, Quadriplegic girl in a motorized wheelchair(Obviously a threat), en route to a camp for kids in similar medical scenarios, needs to be hand searched by TSA in the most recently nominated WORST airport, LaGuardia in NY. The TSA agent asks her dad if the wheelchair can be put into manual drive mode. He responds with “Yes, but it takes some doing”. Before he has the chance to take the steps necessary to switch it over to manual, the TSA agent decided she had the authority to move the chair herself using the drive control WITHOUT approval from either of the parents or the nurse traveling with the family. WELL………………..Not being familiar with the controller, the wheelchair lunged forward, and she managed to run the little girls leg into a stationary metal table thereby creating a large bruise and a 7 inch bleeding gash from the front of the knee running upwards. The impact was so hard it ripped the pants she was wearing easily exposing the wound. If this child had the ability to feel pain in her leg she would have screamed. Thank the lord for this fact. Also, The agent who just slammed this little girl could not release her hand from the controls such that the father who is witnessing this has to grab the TSA agent’s hand and PRY it off of the controls as the chair is still lurching forward. The agent asks if we would like her to call medical personnel to attend to the injured. The dad, furious, states that the only thing he wants is to keep is daughter safe and to get as far away from TSA and LaGuardia as possible, and that the nurse can tend to the wounds far away from TSA. Before leaving security this person was asked for her name… Instead of just giving up her name a second douche of an agent decides to be a mediator, “O.k. just calm down…..” “We just need her name”…. Agent:”there is no need to…. “Just please give me the name so we can catch the plane…..” “Sir, BLAH BLAH BLAH…” “Why is this so difficult?, Just give me a name….umm, first AND last thank you…
The female agent Finally writes her full name on a piece of paper and just before I step away she states “The dad gave me permission to move the chair.” This statement is obvious bullshit as there is nobody he lets move the chair and just a feeble attempt to cover her own actions. A short time later while waiting to board, a “supervisor” comes to meet us and asks some questions, but of course, her first words were “The agent stated she had permission to move the chair” Again obvious bullshit, and we let her know it. When we finally arrived at the target airport we passed another mechanically ventilated child sitting ON THE FLOOR of the airport off on the side. It turns out the TSA BROKE his motorized wheelchair, and he was stuck there awaiting someone knowledgeable enough to fix it. Something needs to be done about these wannabe Law Enforcement officers that have an over exaggerated sense of authority.

Now answer the question. It IS a question. It demands our attention and vigilance and consideration. Is this TSA stuff truly necessary? Does it diminish us? Is it really American? Why is it here? Whom does it serve? Why are American people being trained to suspect and search others?

If you get a chance to watch Leonardo DiCaprio’s/Clint Eastwood’s HOOVER, have a look. Paranoia and the Lindbergh baby created the FBI. The TSA is just another FBI, but not as effective or disciplined or coordinated. The US has local police, state police, national police (FBI), and the NSA, CIA, and all of that underer Homeland Security.  So what does TSA really do? If it truly prevented a single jet going down every year, would that be worth 8 billion dollars and the millions of wasted man-hours?

I have never seen anyone having trouble with TSA in the past few years. In the immediate time after 9-11, things were awful, but this is probably to be expected. However I keep hearing these reports and wondering exactly how much of a problem this is. I understand the plural of my anecdotes are not “data”, but neither is this selective gathering of the most egregious, headline grabbing transgressions of a massive government agency.

Now I completely agree that the majority of the newer security measures are wasteful, time-consuming, invasive and almost certainly ineffective. If I were Dictator for a Day, I would roll back the vast majority, cut and retool the TSA down to a more sensible yet effective system in whatever ways possible. But this situation seems the classic security dilemma in action: no matter what consequences politicians and bureaucrats face in setting security measures: all the bad press, complaints, ethics violations and examples of small-scale tyranny that these security measures cause, the incentive will ALWAYS be stronger to never roll these measures back. One genuinely hostile terrorist or even backwater malcontent who makes it past security with a weapon, harmful object, or simply an oversize quilting needle? That is enough to instantly end or ruin the career of a TSA official, airport official, or associated politician. “WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?” will be the public outcry, with huge media coverage and resulting outrage. “WHO cut corners or judged that the latest million-dollar-machine wasn’t cost effective? These are our children’s lives you risked, and our national security!”

Stupid, short-sighted and irrational as this is, we live in America; a country so self-traumatized by fear and injury that it has invaded numerous countries in the past decade, sent assassins mechanical and human into others to wreck vengeance and preemptively kill those who have any intentions to hurt us, no matter how ineffective those enemies may be. Where is the public outcry over the drones in Yemen? Where are the Senators and Congress-members standing up and actually pressing the Administration and bloated security apparatus? As far as I can tell our Senate and House have essentially forfeited their Constitutional duty to decide when this country should go to war, and they have done it out of fear and cowardice that they may be blamed as being “soft” on our enemies. That *Obama*, a president who has authorize unprecedented measures of covert and unconstrained attacks against (the admittedly non-traditional, guerrilla style) enemies of the US is STILL attacked by the Republican Party should give us pause at how little our public officials are pressured otherwise. It took Nixon to go to China, but I doubt even Ron Paul could muster the political capital and support in Congress to roll back this idiocy.

I know that few will care or listen to my comment, but I don’t really find any of this outrage very important or useful. I completely understand the various motivations BoingBoing has to prioritize this subject, but aren’t we missing a chance to discuss the underlining problems that cause this clusterf#$% of security and invasive government? These “shock-and-outrage” articles may be effective to marshal public attention, but this seems like just fighting a single symptom of a much larger problem: our Constitutional limits are so outdated that instead of guaranteeing our rights, the public as a whole implicitly allows them to be ignored rather than modified in a rational manner. How long has it been since the 4th Amendment was seriously upheld? How long since “due process” has been a serious consideration in the trials of suspected terrorists, or drug offenders, or protesters, or anyone without a few thousand dollars of discretionary money to hire a competent lawyer? How long since there was any serious push to cut the largest defense budget in all of history?

Perhaps this “shock and outrage the privileged and tech-savy” strategy is more politically effective; I am certainly not equipped to know either way. But I believe it is inherently dishonest, short-sighted, myopic and downright dogmatic. I like BoingBoing, and respect its writers and authors. But this ideological attitude does a disservice to their integrity.

http://i.imgur.com/Uonir.jpg

We’ll just have to wait until some progressive senators, congressmen, and presidents take the same stand.

Take off your blinders and you’ll see it in a blink of an eye…

http://supportdignity.com/2011/03/press-release-stop-the-tsa-republicans-and-democrats-unite-to-file-traveler-digntiy-legislation/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20023476-281.html

http://thehill.com/blogs/transportation-report/tsa/194313-george-mcgovern-calls-for-eliminating-tsa-and-homeland-security-dept#.TsVTB4u10Ds.twitter

But, I do agree that many bluedog democrats need to be thrown out on their asses along with all republicans.

Talk is cheap, particularly when you use a purported detainment as a fundraising ploy for your father’s presidential campaign.