Bill, I notice that Stewart Baker, who thinks we “self-appointed guardians of liberty” should shut up and love Big Brother, was a Bush appointee. It reminds me, first, of Mayor Bloomberg’s recent comment that Obama is “the most arrogant man he has ever met.”
But second, didn’t Bush’s “Good Friend and Buen Amigo” Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, say the same about George W. Bush? “He is the cockiest guy I ever met,” Fox wrote (and I believe the original Spanish was somewhat more tart). Bush has proven it in his memoirs, which demonstrate that he regrets nothing and has learned nothing. His arrogance, masquerading as Christian piety, is sickening.
The entire TSA scenario is a manifestation of “Trickle-Down Arrogance.” We know that federal employees (a.k.a. “public servants”) are urged to believe that their IQs went up by thirty points the day they were hired. Even the lowest TSA ex-janitor (sorry in advance, janitors!) believes that he now shares what Thomas Sowell calls the “vision of the anointed,” and that we are his guinea pigs.
That’s why Guy Winch, quoted on your blog, insists that TSA managers “need to convey the message that superiors are aware of the stresses the employees are under and are there to support them.” It’s just what Huxley envisioned in Brave New World: “I’m so glad I’m a Delta!”
5:44 pm on November 22, 2010
