have I mentioned today that I hate people?

[derien]

I've been debating whether to post this or not, but after thinking about it for a few days it occurs to me that probably the lies are getting more airtime than the truth.

Here you can find the video of the girl who claimed to have been handcuffed to a chair by TSA, and the actual CCTV footage of the event, which clearly shows she lied about all of it:
http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/11/response-to-female-radio-host-cuffed-to.html

And I wrote back to my bro' - I think I did a good job ranting and not ranting too much directly about the idiot who's phone footage he sent me a link to. (Really, who starts recording on their phone before they even start having a fight with someone? Staged much?) I did, however, do some ranting about how this job provides me with WAY too much cognitive dissonance, me being a liberal who thinks it's quite possible Bush staged 9/11 just to start a war and build a police state and yet also wanting to keep people safe and do well at my job. The new patdown is better security but people have to decide if they want security or not. I concluded that I'd be okay with losing my job if people stop flying and build high speed rail, instead. That would be so much better for the environment. :)

Comments

[lacrimaeveneris.livejournal.com]

Here, I can resolve your cognitive dissonance: while people use 9/11 as the go-to reason, there are still people who are crazy and might cause others harm on an airplane (because it's a closed environment), regardless of whether or not there's a war or not.

Or, at least, that's what I tell myself when putting up with security. Although my irritation has always been with the lines, I get the actually security stuff. I'm just impatient. :P

[derien.livejournal.com]

What the news never seems to report is that there are really weird things that are done and items being caught all the time that really look like system tests.

[derien.livejournal.com]

But, yeah, it's not that I don't think there are people who are out there who will cause trouble - one of my coworkers who was in airport security before 9/11 caught a guy with a gun who openly admitted he was on his way to shoot his girlfriend. My own cognitive dissonance is about having been raised to never trust the government, and really being able to understand how people think that we represent a move toward a police state, even while I do believe in the goal of keeping people safe. And then people who think THEY shouldn't have to be patted down (because obviously I'm not a terrorist, I've lived my whole life in Rockland, Maine! - yes we did have a woman say that to us, once) will also say that we should conduct security 'more like Israel.' Because Israel never has problems at all, right? "Get away from this politically correct stuff - just keep the damned Arabs off my planes!" Grrr, wtf?? Timothy McVeigh, anyone? Unibomber? Fucktard who flew his plane into the IRS building? And you know one reason Israel doesn't have planes hijacked is because they went ahead and said "we won't negotiate with terrorists" and blew up two planes themselves. People just don't even know what the fuck they're talking about, they're IDIOTS. Okay, there, I do hate people. :)

[lacrimaeveneris.livejournal.com]

That was so well said that all I can say is, "Word."

[derien.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* :)