Knowing the specific circumstances that led one person in particular to work as a TSA screener should help me empathize a little bit, but it doesn’t… one of the reasons we stopped seeing each other after a couple of months is related to the fact that she didn’t really see a problem with the concept of the TSA in general. Kind of incompatible world views :)

Of course, in reality at least 2/3 of TSA screeners are not bad at all. You just don’t notice them. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there like the one I knew. But like with cops, being complicit is essentially just as bad.

Notably though it has gotten a lot worse in recent years going into Canada as well, though they’re only up to the point that the US border people were several years ago.

I’ve been mistaken for people on the terrorist watch list coming into the US (they had me in a room for an hour while I guess they were checking if my passport was real), and I’ve had people on the Canadian side be extremely rude and belligerent toward me for small mistakes in paperwork (I’ve worked at a summer camp in Canada and other things like that so I have more experience with them than simply crossing the border to go shopping).

Nicely done, now like many black, white, latino, asian, etc. working class people trying to pay their bills:  I’m a “nazi” too…..

Championing “the workers” when they do the work of totalitarian government agencies is fascist apologism. This attitude is what allows fascism to take hold.

So I expect you will work to have Obama’s “totalitarian” “nazi” government kicked out?  Right?  Yeah, I thought so.  

Congrats.  I’m just glad you didn’t employ: “socialist”, “reverse racism”, “gay agenda”, “PC police”, or “nazi”….wait!!..oh shit…you did…

That better?

Also, no reply to Obama being the one who in the end appoints the head of the TSA and who is ultimately responsible for these policies……

Silence is deafening…..

How pathetic, sad and embarrassing.  A grown “adult” comparing the TSA to the REAL horrors and genocide of the holocaust.  Shame on you.

…I’m German.

How does telling everyone to vote third party make him a troll?

His name was AdolF not Adolph mmkay.

*really, the behaviour here is no less human. Whatever we do, that is us.

Oh.  My.  God.

Read the original article, Navin.

Solipsism in action, ladies and germs.

Probably not, I would say more like financially comfortable “lifestyle liberals”.

As for the rest, it’s a cop out. 1.7 million fly every single day. This is manufactured, class driven, political “outrage”.

These agents are empowered by the state, elevating them to an authority status. That’s why TSA critics spend so much time reminding people of the limits of their powers, to dispel some of their perceived authority.

The outrage against the TSA and the administration of it is different from the reaction to these individual encounters.

When an agency treats the public with such disrespect, they are criticized. Its an institution and everyone understands that institutions on the whole are inefficient and flawed.

When an individual treats another individual with this kind of disrespect, its personal and this quite justifiably inspires powerful emotional reactions.