It's been a while since the last blog, but I genuinely felt this needs to be said quite clearly: if 30% of Americans will at some point travel by air this year, 30% of Americans (~75,000,000 people) will be being strip-searched at the airport--without probable cause--if we allow backscatter machines to become permanent fixtures in the security line.
I have no idea what makes people somehow think that the magic of technology somehow mitigates such a brazen violation of several constitutional rights by treating the 30% of the entire American population that travels by air each year like criminals.
By the way, in case some of you out there somehow think that this will make things safer, know this: a terrorist doesn't expect to survive the flight, so he'll have no problem filling his large intestine with explosives or downing a few sealed baggies of his explosive of choice. Drug smugglers already do it with every drug imaginable, so I don't think it's beyond wide-eyed fundamentalists to do the same thing with explosives.
Keeping that in mind, my fellow 30% of America, when this e-strip-searching fails to prevent the next once-in-a-decade attack that apparently only kills a few thousand people (0.002% of Americans), be sure to think of me and how right I was when 30% of us are getting...what? I dunno? What's next? Maybe...e-fingers-in-the-asses by some robot. After all, it's not strip searching en masse when it's done electronically, so surely it's not a cavity search when it's also done electronically.
Go ahead. Laugh at the idea of an airport anal probe. I know I did. I mean, it's absurd to even think it'll happen. The thought of a robot with a finger in my ass at the airport is hilarious, and since this is the internet, someone out there probably finds the idea not only hilarious but exciting. :P
I suppose, though, that if a few decades ago you'd told me 30% of everyone in the country and 100% of all air travel passengers would be getting strip-searched annually, without probable cause, well, I would have probably laughed just as hard.
By the way, if any historians in the future happen to read my tiny, insignificant blog on the outskirts of the internet, know this: this is how the most successful empires fall. It's neither lead-lined aquifers nor disease nor invasion nor over-expansion; instead, it's paranoia. Dopamine-fueled paranoia that something, somewhere, somehow... will get us or our children--that evil and danger lurks in our own shadows and must therefore be eradicated before the boogeymen get us. It doesn't matter if the threat is insignificant, justified, or non-existent. If it's insignificant, we think it can be eliminated; if it's justified, then we'll claim ourselves infallible to it; if it's if it's non-existent, then we'll invent it.
When our last real enemy gave up, we panicked when there were no more. We turned on ourselves and decided that if the evil isn't just out there any more, it must be right here instead. It's because of this paranoia that we end up stripping away everything that has allowed the empire...republic...once-democratic nation to flourish in the first place. All of our principles, including freedom itself, are sequentially being seen as weaknesses that are being exploited in a seemingly perfectible curtain of allegedly impervious iron--and those weaknesses must be patched for our curtain to remain strong.
Of course, as history has shown us, it's a detrimental, ineffective curtain that's fated to fall. No matter how high it's built or how wide it extends, it can never be anything other than a huge, expensive hunk of metal we use to keep ourselves thinking we're locking bad guys out when we're really just locking ourselves in, becoming a nation of idle shut-ins content in our baseless, self-determined notion of perfection.
The curtain always falls, and it doesn't fall lightly. It crashes down with a rippling thud, crushing the poor souls desperate enough to erect it in the first place--all to protect the putrid corpse of the past. We'd do anything to get back to the irrationally-idealized "good" ol' days, obsessing in our quest with some bastardized notion that for us, the ends can somehow morally justify the means.
Somehow the anal-probing robot fits into the metaphor, but I'm not sure how. I have to admit, though, I like the mental image of it "inspecting" the very minions constructing the wall. That'd be hilarious...
... Hilarious, but shockingly accurate to the metaphor.
To wrap it all up, I've got this to say: what...the...fuck are you people thinking? Did it never occur to you, somewhere along the way of Nixon, Bush, and the Patriot Act that maybe we should quit fag-bashing and stand up for something noble...something peaceful...something...actually good? Is it even worth trying to fix it any more? I'm starting to think that everyone's just content with letting it all fall to the ground because the charismatic men on TV with fire in their souls, aesthetic crosses on their necks, and cookie-cutter stickers on their cars sit and tell you some missing white girl or some jerk burning a flag or some dude getting married to a dude is somehow more important than 30% of Americans being e-strip-searched without probable cause.
That said, I make a fuss, but in all honesty I really don't give a flying fuck. Nowadays I'm so far outside the freak show that I can only look on and watch in awe. A part of me still wants to join in--to fit in--but thank god I've so far been able to bitch slap that part of me down. :P
It's lonely out here, though. There are few lights, and what lights there are lie far off in the distance, polluted by the fluorescent decadence of a once candle-lit hope for tomorrow. I must admit, though, that I quite like the darkness that everyone's afraid of, because there's nothing to be afraid of once you step outside the light of our noisy cave. I mean, you expect some monster to come get you, and you kind of want one to gobble you whole when you find out the monsters never existed in the first place, or if they did, they're back the way you just came.
I also like the fact that the dark's one of the last places where you can still find balance, and, most of all, freedom.
That said, darkness is a bit depressing at times, and it's a bit of a bitch trying to find the rare kindred spirits wandering around in a night that's almost as black as pitch.... :\ On the upside, though, pot grows like a weed out here, and stress is nonexistent. No wonder they tell everyone there are monsters out here--the whole system would collapse if people knew they actually had a shot at happiness if they stepped out of their caves.
Imagine if we all stopped listening to the cacophonous din of a rock star nation that's been convinced by its businessmen to dump its instruments and ignore its band mates; a pop star nation that now wonders why it struggles to find a harmony or even carry a tune after having carved out its own heart; a bright star nation so desperate to satisfy its addiction to an inflated bottom line that it will steal the very shoes from under the feet of others if it yields more fuel to burn.
That's all it is--a sadistic symphony where everyone screams pointless nothings, dances out of rhythm, and flails aimless delusions in perfect self-confidence that unlike the mechanical music monkeys they so frequently resemble, they remain differentiated from both primitive simians and robotic mechanizations by a far greater, decidedly unique purpose: to repetitively clap for a bass-less cymbal of happiness.
