Today's big discussion on the Intertubes today is about how the TSA has gone off the rails.
A few slices:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/11/15/israelifacation/
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/nov/14/tsa-ejects-oceanside-man-airport-refusing-security/
Here where I find this sort of stuff bewildering and an example of a real failure of leadership.
First, I don't hate bureaucracies, because I realize that you have to norm certain behaviors and responses. You need to follow the same rules at the Social Security office in Tulsa that you follow in Utica. But law enforcement does not follow the same rules and regulations that bureaucracies do. A police office is given some latitude in some areas. Speeding tickets are not automatic when you go 56 in a 55 zone. Sometimes there are warnings given. There is not a one-size fits all approach to policing, just as there isn't a one-size fits all approach to teaching, nursing or other semi-professional endeavors.
The problem is that it's pretty apparent that instead of creating "airport police" who are trained in detecting problems and exercising judgment, we have hired a combination of competent people and those who can fog a mirror. In a work environment like that, you need the "fog a miror" type to perform as well as the competent screener. How do you get that? You put the rules ahead of the goals. You make frisking a little girl a necessity rather than a judgment call.
Second, a lot of the problem stems from Cover Your Ass political leadership. Shoe bomber? Take off your shoes! Fruit-Of-The-Loom bomber? Full body scans and pat downs! It's inherently reactive, and it assumes that you can definitively stop someone who is intent on blowing himself up from doing that.
Trust me. Al Qaeda are clever. They will find another way. And frankly, given how poor our security is elsewhere, I can't understand why they aren't trying to blow up Grand Central Station or halftime at the Rose Bowl.
We've bought into a fallacy that we think we can make ourselves perfectly safe. We have airbags covering every inch of the car. We have childproof locks for the toilet. And when it comes time to die, we segregate that from the rest of our lives so that we never have to face our own mortality within the mortality of others.
We think we can create a safe and sanitary world. But ultimately to get there, we wind up fondling preschoolers in an airport security line. And perversely, we wind up dulling our own ability to sense danger.
I remember many years ago when they were putting the stricter bans on cigarette sales, someone said, "If smoking was as bad as they say, the government wouldn't let people sell cigarettes." There's a certain logic to that.
I'm not saying we should return to the days of no safety regulation. I think most safety regulations should be improved, since we've come to assume that things like the food we eat is safe.
But we also have to get beyond the fact that everything is safe. Yes, your peanut butter should not have salmonella in it, but hurtling through the air at 300 MPH might not always be safe.
On the other hand, a few more years of TSA screenings and their overall lousy service and we'll all be driving everywhere anyway. Seriously, why would anyone fly anywhere?
Oh, yeah, because the GOP keeps killing funding for trains...
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