Conning Slaves

by Becky Akers
Feb. 12, 2011

Seems John "The Perv" Pistole, chief deviant at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), "wants to hear our [ideas]" on "transportation security."

Indeed.

Haven’t outraged passengers shrieked ideas a-plenty at airports as The Perv’s underlings sexually abuse them? Yet this sociopath not only ignores the clamor, he refuses to change "screening procedures" however heartrending those shrieks become.

So his "remarks to the American Bar Association in January" broke all records for hypocrisy and deceit: The Perv "expressed a need to formulate a vision for transportation security," – oh, good grief – "mentioning a trusted traveler program as an option under consideration and expressing an openness to other suggestions. ‘If people have ideas, he wants to hear them because he’s looking at ways to make changes,’ a T.S.A. spokesman" lied.

Well, Perv, since you asked …

My vision – and it’s a modest one, I grant you – my vision is simply to fly. I wanna take off into the wild blue yonder rather than onto highways clogged with "workers" digging holes while others fill them courtesy of the ARRA; I yearn to enjoy the scenery from above the clouds instead of from behind a tractor-trailer plodding uphill in the only lane still open thanks to Keynesian "construction."

But to achieve my vision, we’ll have to abolish your unconstitutional agency, Perv. As an allegedly free woman in an allegedly free country, I refuse to submit to gate-rape to board a plane. Free women are picky about costs, too. We expect to pay the airlines alone, in money alone, for our flights: no rewarding your goons, too, with our humiliation. That’s why abolishing—Perv? Yo, Perv, are you listening?

I didn’t think so. The Perv doesn’t want to hear my ideas or anyone else’s. Last month’s sham had nothing to do with gleaning suggestions; even an amoeba could come up with safer, more efficient ways to secure aviation than the TSA has.

No, The Perv hoped instead to paint a smiley face on utter and brutal tyranny. He was trying to convince us against all evidence that he’s the public’s servant, not our master, that he’s simply protecting us as we’ve asked him to do, not subjugating us while mocking our slavery.

Acting as if our opinions matter is only one of Our Rulers’ ploys. The TSA, its über-bureaucracy the Department of Homeland Security, and the government as a whole are hurtling ahead on said subjugation – all while pretending that we control our own destinies and even theirs.

Take the new software the TSA’s "testing" on its porno-scanners at 3 of the 78 airports they infest. An agency we’ve caught in lie after lie claims that this innovation "enhances privacy by eliminating passenger-specific images and instead auto-detects potential threat items and indicates their location on a generic outline of a person." For life-forms more advanced than bureaucrats, that translates from the Jargon as, "The TSA’s voyeurs will no longer salivate over your naked body; instead, they’ll see the same stick-figure regardless of whom they’re irradiating, with red boxes highlighting any explosives you terrorists try to carry aboard."

The agency further promises that the "generic outline of a person … will appear on a monitor attached to" the porno-scanner, so "a separate TSA officer will no longer be required to view the image in a remotely-located viewing room." Right. And of course none of those Peeping Toms will mourn the demise of their "viewing room" when a lovely lass approaches the porno-scanner, nor try to re-activate its "remotely-located" screen, now, will they?

Yet The Perv "believe[s]" the software "addresses the privacy issues" – as though he’d recognize a "privacy issue" if it walked up and knocked him on his keister.

"Privacy issues" were only one of our objections to the porno-scanners. The gizmos also emit rays that endanger our health; one of the two technologies is carcinogenic, while the other is so new no one knows its exact effect on human flesh. The Perv’s software does squat about "addressing" this "issue." Indeed, all it does is what his faux solicitation of ideas did: sugar-coat dictatorship.

Another layer in that toxic coating comes from The Perv’s endorsement of "a trusted traveler program" or "tiered screening." That’s the Jargon for "Ha, ha! Let’s persuade some of the peons to pay us, above and beyond the taxes we already steal, to spy on them and authorize our collecting even more data on their finances and friends than we do now – but all they get for this expense and invasion of privacy is faster groping! Yes! We still ogle and sexually assault them, but we call them to the head of the line so they don’t have to wait as long."

"Tiered screening" has kicked around – and been kicked around – for a while. Formerly known as "Registered Traveler" (RT), it seemed like the market’s response to the agony the TSA inflicts: in exchange for an annual fee and scads of personal information, private companies promised to speed members through the security circus. The TSA’s thugs still frisked you as though you were entering prison, not a plane, but you jumped the queue thanks to RT’s "dedicated checkpoint lane." (Which earned the concept and companies enormous scorn from socialists.)

But the market inspired RT about as much as it did Karl Marx. RT was in reality a "public-private partnership" (Jargon for "fascism") between businesses and the TSA. So a bureaucracy devoted to delaying passengers set the rules for and supervised the companies endeavoring to speed patrons through the nonsense. The TSA allowed only about 20 airports to offer RT lanes, and they weren’t always the busiest: Chicago’s O’Hare didn’t participate, but Indianapolis International did. And whatever convenience the companies devised for customers paying several hundred dollars per year, the TSA nixed. No wonder RT never succeeded.

Then RT’s leading vendor crashed. Verified Identity Pass had begun hustling folks through Orlando International Airport in 2005, only for the TSA to thwart it time and again. It reorganized once but finally died in 2009.

Intriguingly, now that it’s driven VIP and its competitors out of business, the TSA is gung-ho to run the program it refused to accommodate. So is the International Civil Aviation Organization, "a United Nations body." Why share the profits? And why are we not surprised?

The Feds have made sexual molestation a condition of travelling by air in the United States; they’re working on making it a condition of travel, period. There is no more graphic or heart-stopping proof of the despotism devouring the country. Meanwhile, the State dramatically out-guns us: it can coerce us to anything it likes – rape, torture, murder, betrayal of family and friends, secrecy about its depredations. So why do Our Rulers fool with charades like The Perv’s quest for ideas, or software to "address privacy issues," or the illusion of "trusted [oh, the irony!] travellers"?

Because Boobus Americanus happily hugs his chains so long as his masters feign that he’s in charge.
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Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com.