Letters to the Editor
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There was no such thing
as "liquid bomb" plot. First of all the alleged explosive, TATP, is not a liquid but a white crystalline powder. It is also extremely difficult to make. Not something whipped up in an airplane bathroom in a few minutes. There's no such thing as an easily mixed binary liquid explosive. It's Hollywood fiction. So all this hoo-haw about liquids is a bunch of crap.
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I am staying home, or driving
This last idiocy is the last straw, as far as I am concerned. I am lucky that I do not have to fly anywhere.
Vacation plans will center around driveable destinations.
I refuse to be herded as a sheep as passengers are today. And if I open my mouth to complain, I could be arrested. Ridiculous. So, I stay away. The airlines are the ones who are missing out on my business, and I am sure I am not alone.
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What we can do
There's always a first step, and the obvious one here is to vote Democrat in November.
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The Last Straw
I've tried to discuss airline security with coworkers and friends, and I'm always immediately drowned out by the 'better safe than sorry' crowd. What amazes me is that some of them are otherwise well acquainted with common sense and logic.
The liquid ban is the last straw for me. The only thing that will get me on a plane now is the death of a close family member.
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Let them all go out of business
Let every airline that operates in the US go out of business and stop operating. Seriously. Let's not forget that before 9-11 they were teetering in bankruptcy, strikes, cutbacks and other problems that basically had to do with them telling us "You fucking peons just better get used to worse service at higher prices." So let's not make too too much of the morons and rednecks fighthing the swarthy gel insoled menace. This 'security' is no more than an excuse to replicate endlessly the same hopelessly fucked up service we've been subject to for years, decades really. So screw them, screw the airlines. It's Greyhound with machine guns.
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Dollars and (Non)Sense
Why do the small minds that run airlines acquiesce to all the governmental security nonsense? Strictly a monetary issue... they fear the draconian fines that will be levied for noncompliance. Pilots and passengers don't run airlines: lawyers and accountants do. They all know the security procedures are window dressing.
Ever since the reign of Elizabeth Dole as Secretary of Transportation some years back, the government's role as benign, cooperative overseer of the airline industry was changed to one of tyrannical punisher, levying enormous fines for even small infractions. The guidelines for these fines were simple: if you didn't follow your own published procedures to the letter (no matter how trivial or inconsequential the error was, or how stupid the procedure), you were fined to the tune of $1000 per flight the condition existed. Some of these minor errors went for days, weeks, even months before discovered. Airliners can fly hundreds of flights per month; it adds up fast, pouring more red ink into the coffers. It is not uncommon for an airline to be fined several million dollars for missing signatures on a form, even though safe operation was never compromised. This posture now colors all dealings with government agencies (even the EPA wants to ground airplanes and fine airlines for the quality of onboard water). They can just image what the check would be for not supporting even the most assinine security regulation.
The airlines decided a few years back they no longer had any control over the cost of fuel or the price of a ticket. Aside from employee wage and benefit cuts, fines are about the only other cost they have some control over.
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Howdy, Patrick...
Writing from my new digs here at Boeing.
The answers we seek can't be found on the page to which we are consistently directed by this administration as being the source of the problem.
The *real* problem is global mobility, the spread of disease (natural and lab-created) and the containment of information and culture. The present regime disapproves of democracy and always has. They can not bamboozle us unless we are consistently getting "stunned," (as Randi Rhodes puts it, over and over again) into inaction.
The only way to get people to stare at you in disbelief is to act in ways which are beyond belief. Dogs yawn when they don't know what else to do, and people stare in disbelief when they can't believe what their eyes are showing them.
Perception REQUIRES that the perceiver believe what they are seeing. If they do not believe in the truth of what they are seeing, they will literally screen out the information, overlook it, or disagree with anyone who suggests that the world is pretty much a WYSIWYG proposition.
I know you want to focus on flight and flying as the issue, but it's really not just about flying. It's about freedom.
And we don't have any anymore.
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Part of the problem is that there is no 'travelling public'
One reason that there's no 'public' impatience or reaction to the insanity of shoe removal and the banning of fluids is that there isn't really a travelling 'public'. Most of the people flying on any given day are not frequent travellers - they do it maybe once, twice, four times a year. At that frequency, you don't get familiar enough with the ridiculous 'security' precautions to become impatient enough to actually bother complaining about it.
It's the same mindset that's responsible for the ridiculously small seats in economy class, even on transoceanic flights - most of the people flying economy do it rarely enough that they can just hunker down and endure 12 hours of inhumane discomfort.
Of course, the other point about security is that it is very clear (by implication, if not on any posted public notice) that complaining or otherwise bringing attention to yourself will result in further hazing and delay - possibly to the point of being denied boarding, detention at the terminal, etc. Those who travel regularly can't afford to be branded as disruptive elements, so they conclude that speaking out isn't worth the risk. Those of us who aren't US citizens also have the spectre of being denied entry on subsequent visits to the USA.
To me, the disproportionate reaction to terrorism is symptomatic of a society which is increasingly unable to react rationally to risk. Compare the number of people killed each year in car crashes with those killed in terrorism ... why aren't these victims fetishised like those of 9/11? (There have been about 208,000 road deaths in the USA since Sept 11 2001, according to http://www.unitedjustice.com/death-statistics.html). You can blame the media for this, but in the end, each of us is responsible for discriminating between irrational fears and rational caution ... and for speaking out when our friends and neighbours veer into deranged panic.