The Transportation Safety Administration's (TSA) decision to step-up airport screening measures has ignited the short fuse of public discontent and outrage. Many find the choice between a see-through scan or having their privates groped by a TSA agent unsavory and unsatisfactory. Stories and video footage are all over the web, the flames being fanned ever higher by the likes of Matt Drudge. People are being arrested for refusing to be aggressively patted down, children are be strip searched, and TSA agents are being paid to do things that would otherwise land them in jail for sexual assault. And no surprise, the law suites are already being filed. If this were the only or best way to ensure the safety of American citizens from possible terrorist attacks, I'd say go ahead and grope me. Scan me. Do what you need to do for the greater good. But the sad fact of the matter is that groping and scanning are not the only or best option. Profiling is (and everybody knows it).
Until now, the question was whether we were going to profile or opt for a little less security. We chose the latter in the name of sensitivity and political correctness. Fine. I disagree, but I get it. But now the government has decided that having TSA agents grope citizens (and arrest them if they refuse the groping!) and take naked pictures of them is better than profiling? Are you kidding me? When did politic correctness become so overtly incorrect? Is there an ACLU wing-nut out there who thinks that what is going on at our nation's airports is still better than profiling?
The notion that we shouldn't profile is just absurd and stupid. The equation is simple: Not profiling = random. And we're not at war with random people. We're not at war with every tenth passenger getting on a plane. We're at war with radical islamists! It's so dirt simple a five year old could see it and yet we refuse to make intelligent decisions based on a clear historic pattern. And why? It used to be because we didn't want to offend or appear to be insensitive. Safe to say, that's clearly not the reason anymore!
But at least we're being insensitive and offensive to everybody, right? No discrimination here.
We need to discriminate. I know that's inconvenient right now if you're a young Muslim man with ties to a country on a terror watch list, but I'd like to think that the average Muslim's top priority when they get on an airplane is the same as mine--to live through the flight. Look, if there were a clear recent history of white, American, Mormon men blowing up planes, I'd not only tolerate the TSA profiling me, I'd expect it. In fact, I'd demand it!
At the end of the day, I guess I prefer sane, rational inconvenience to blind stupidity.
