The foolishness and wastefulness of our anti-terrorist schemes is bad enough. The cruelty and petty power plays bred by things like our airport screening system is infuriating.

We cannot bring water onto the plane even if we buy it at a premium price along with a lousy $8 sandwich in the secured area beyond the checkpoint. Doesn’t the TSA check packages that supply the shops inside the airport?

Travelers, shippers and flight personnel are hostages to this institutionalized insanity. A United flight attendant informed me that the increase in passenger requests for water has caused in-flight water rationing and inspired United to consider charging economy class passengers for this forbidden liquid. No doubt this will increase the stress in an already tension filled job as cranky, cramped customers take their rage out on those trained to be polite.

The TSA screeners suffer no such stress because challenging their opinions or actions is legally impossible and practically out of the question. Arguing will get you hauled off to jail or placed on the infamous and useless “no fly list.” I’ve had my curling iron confiscated, my prescription medicine spilled on a filthy counter that had had shoes on it seconds before and had a disposable pen taken apart to the extent that I had to dispose of it.

Last week, I watched helplessly as the TSA took four people away from their stations to nearly disrobe, then lift a stroke victim from his wheelchair. Embarrassing enough for the gentleman and his panicked daughter, but the screeners should have been embarrassed by their attempts to take his urine bag because it contained liquid. They weren’t embarrassed, they weren’t malicious, they were stupid. They are in charge.

The daughter, who was shaking with anger and fear – fear for her father’s state and for the consequences should she react as any healthy person should, with outrage - kept saying, “He has a catheter. Here are the doctor’s reports.” Clearly the screeners had no idea what she was talking about and could no more have discerned a dangerous chemical from a bodily fluid than a terrorist from a fellow screener. What was the TSA saving us from here?

If we are safer now, then why are we at orange alert? Why are we all being treated as suspects instead of as “My fellow Americans” who are supposed to be united behind eliminating the terrorist threat?

Stupidity is dangerous. Institutionalized stupidity is inherent toHosatges to Insitutionalized the Bush administration.

There is a great deal of talk about forgiving people for their past offenses as a way for an injured person to relieve herself of the burden of anger. Anger is a legitmate response, a real emotion, like love or grief, and not to be dismissed as bad or innately harmful. Like any emotion, it is fuel for action and understanding. One chooses how to act after recognizing how one feels.

LW's mistake was trying to convey the injuries done by parents who do not, who perhaps, cannot acknowledge their own guilt. LW must learn how to accept the past, without endangering herself or her family. As Cary suggests, LW needs professional help, but not because she is broken or desperate, but because she needs to learn compassion.

This is not the popular, misguided notion of forgiveness. Compassion is the resolve to treat people respectfully, even kindly, despite their histories. That doesn't mean disavowing the past, it means learning from it and making choices that make the present loving and the future hopeful.

Forgiveness, at least real, deep forgiveness, requires asking for it, which means recognizing that you have done something wrong. It is impossible to forgive someone who does not acknowledge the causal raltionship. Forgiveness is not required for healing, knowledge and love is.

By forgiving those who trespass against you, even when they ignored the waring signs, one is merely reengaging the old, dangerous dynamic and giving power to those who cause harm. However, therapy can give us the tools and the perspective to unlearn old responses and to move from vilifying people to seeing them and ourselves as we are. When it is possible to see the path we've trod and the paths available to tread, we can make choices.

To be able to move and be moved is a triumph. Asking for help is a move toward help.