There’s lots of “occupying†going on recently. I applaud those who actively exercise their First Amendment rights. I’m not sure if I agree with 100% of their position on things, mostly because I’m not completely sure of what that position is. The essence seems to be that they’re opposed to the massive redistribution of wealth that our government has been supporting over the last 30 years, as a bigger and bigger portion of the wealth of our nation rests in the hands of a smaller and smaller percentage of people. The 1%.
I get that, and I agree that this isn’t a good thing. I can’t reconcile it with my spiritual beliefs or my moral principles. As a purely practical matter, such lopsided distribution of wealth always leads to upheaval.
I listened to someone trashing the “occupiers†the other day. I never could figure out what it was that they didn’t agree with, but they sure didn’t like the protesters. When I thought about this person’s comments, it really seemed to boil down to the fact that they didn’t like the “sort of person†who would be an activist for a good cause like this. They didn’t seem to like the “do-gooderâ€. He used the term “bleeding heart†several times – there’s an oldie but goodie!
Which reminded me of something I read once about a comment made by the great Lubavitcher Rebbe – Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. A young man had apparently told the Rebbe that he had decided to avoid social activism because it had been feeding his ego. A bleeding heart.
The Rebbe replied: “And without the activism there is no ego? Better a haughty activist than a self-centered do-nothing!”
I submitted again today. It’s really the only choice you have if you want to travel on the commercial airlines. Like sheep being led to the slaughter, we line up and submit to searches that would make a Stalinist or a Nazi proud.
From TSA Website - The actual pictures they see of you are much bigger and much higher resolution.
We do it without complaining, though my contempt shows clearly on my face as I submit. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before I’m pulled into some room for daring to be contemptuous of this sort of fascist behavior, daring to question the authority of my government to force its will on me in its never-ending crusade to rid our country of any danger.
Well, strike that last line. They don’t seem to mind certain kinds of danger at all. They seem perfectly willing to cast ever greater numbers of the poor and desolate into the streets, happy to cut the last vestige of health care safety net from those without money, delighted to use tax dollars to fund private schools while allowing schools to fail in the poorest and most bleak corners of our nation.
It’s not really safety they’re after. It’s control.
I understand how, following 9/11, we had an administration and a congress bent on stirring fear in us, so we’d allow them to impose ever-increasing authoritarian controls over us, and get us to allow them to trounce all over our sacred Bill of Rights. In that soup of fear and growing authoritarianism, we gleefully allowed them to create the TSA – a gang of thugs who search and probe every crevice of our privacy whenever we enter an airport.
I endured the probing and ever increasing authoritarianism. My slightest whimpers at the offenses brought lighthearted comments from my fellow travelers. “I’m just happy they’re protecting us from terroristsâ€, or “I don’t have anything to hide – I’m glad their searching us allâ€. I could only hope that we would evolve past these thugs we’d elected, and get back to a sane respect for our Bill of Rights. Surely, We The People would revolt against this destruction of our Freedoms and Rights, right?
We don’t seem to care.
Today, as I made my way through the lines of gestapo and the strip-search machines, I watched a wretched site. I shouldn’t have watched, but I did.
A young woman – maybe 30 or 35 – had apparently failed the strip-search machine. In my case, I’d been frisked because I left a dollar bill in my pocket. Really, their machine could see the dollar bill in my pocket, and after I took it out, I was manhandled and searched to make sure I didn’t have any other offending dollar bills in my pocket.
But back to this young woman. Attractive and innocent, she’d worn a nice dress. A bit clingy – you could very clearly see the contours beneath the dress. Having failed the strip-search machine, she was going to be humiliated in front of all to see. Helga, (the interrogator or searcher – that probably wasn’t her name but could have been…), was having the young woman strike different poses over the yellow foot marks on the pad, while she ran her hands all over looking for the offending dollar bill (or whatever her offense was).
This was the part I shouldn’t have watched. If you wanted to know what was beneath her dress, all you had to do was look at her – she wasn’t hiding anything. If there was a dollar bill tucked into her panties I could have told Helga right where it was – I could see the lines of her panties, and I’m sure I could have seen the outline of a dollar tucked in there.
The poor girl was humiliated. Helga was feeling her up in public, and she was supposed to feel grateful that we were somehow more secure from bad guys as a result.
I was ashamed. I couldn’t continue to watch, and made sounds of disapproval and disgust as I passed Helga. Fortunately for me, Helga had her hands full, and couldn’t call gestapo buddies to haul me to the interrogation room.
Fellow Americans, when will we all begin to express our disgust at this behavior, rather than continuing to condone it with our silence? We have a budget crisis. How about this – abolish the TSA to save a few hundred billion?
Look, I have no doubt our Nazi style searches at airports make it harder for hijackers to steal airplanes and kill people. But let’s face it, our government loves to cozy up to terrorists like the tobacco industry and big pharma, and big tobacco and big pharma are absolutely killing tens of thousands of Americans each year with the legislation they buy in Congress, yet we do nothing to protect Americans from them. Somehow though, we’re happy to let these idiots in congress spend hundreds of billions and piss our liberty down the toilet in the name of eliminating some risk to airline traffic.
In our sacred Bill of Rights is the 4th Amendment – protecting us from unreasonable search by our government. It was meant to check and stop the power of government to use “security” as a cover for total control. It was meant to force the government to prove that they have some reason to believe that you’re committing a crime or doing something illegal before they’re able to search you in any way.
Really – look it up – it’s one of the founding principles of our nation. When we created the TSA, the federal government slapped the Bill of Rights in the face, threw it in the gutter, then turned to We The People and dared us to say anything about it or do anything to stop them.
When will we say something?
Life is dangerous. Bad guys exist, and do bad things. Hitler did a great job of making his country safer from outside terrorists, but the price was high. I’m one American who’s not willing to pay for a little security with the liberty that so many good Americans have died to preserve.
