Making Hash of the TSA

Recently by Becky Akers: Michael Arato for Congress!

"We have posted signs on our doors basically saying that [employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)] aren't allowed to come into our business," says a woman calling herself KC McLawson who works at "a cafe near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport." She and her boss, the policy's author, became instant heroes after KC contacted "consumer advocate and journalist" Christopher Elliott and pseudonymously discussed the restaurant's resolve: "Their kind aren't welcomed in our establishment."

And you can see why: if McD's is responsible for clumsy customers who scald themselves spilling coffee, restaurateurs are surely liable when thugs notorious nationwide for sexual assault suddenly throw down their forks mid-meal and attack the gals in the next booth.

Nor does rape exhaust the evil in which the TSA's sociopaths typically indulge. They also steal, so it's likely they'd sneak out without paying their tabs – after picking the pockets of the couple at the table behind them. They make little kids cry and savage the elderly; what host in these tough times can afford to let a few ruffians terrorize the rest of his patrons? And true to its Hitlerian credo, the TSA hurts and humiliates anyone weak in either mind or body, those who are ill and those recovering.

Indeed, our noble restaurateurs may have witnessed one such incident in their own backyard: when "Anchorage state Rep. Sharon Cissna" tried to fly out of Sea-Tac last Sunday following "medical treatment," the TSA forced this survivor of cancer through its porno-scanner. Then its perverts threatened to grope her anyway – as they had three months earlier. But one experience with the “invasive, probing hands of a stranger” had been more than enough. "I began to remember what my husband and I’d decided after the previous intensive physical search," Cissna stated. "That I never had to submit to that horror again! It would be difficult, we agreed, but I had the choice to say no, this twisted policy did not have to be the price of flying to Juneau!”

Actually, ma'am, sexual assault is indeed the price of flying to Juneau – you sensibly refused to pay it, so instead you "travel[ed] north from Seattle by car, small plane and the Alaska state ferry system." Which is hardly a "choice," anymore than the mugger in an alley allows you to "choose" whether you'll give him your money or your life. But hey, you're a politician, so close enough for government work.

Given the TSA's enthusiasm for crimes and atrocities, then, as well as the risks of proximate liability in this litigious age, our unnamed restaurateur is prudent to forbid its henchmen his premises. The wonder is that more entrepreneurs haven't.

But are signs on the door enough? After all, the TSA shamelessly goes everywhere it's not wanted. So what happens when its bullies ignore orders against trespassing as deafly and deftly as they do shrieks from passengers? "If [my boss] sees a TSA agent come in," KC explains, "we turn our backs and completely ignore them, and tell them to leave."

Yeehaw! Praise God for such patriots! If enough of us follow suit, if we refuse to deal with the TSA's goons professionally and socially, the agency will find fewer and fewer deviants willing to don its brown-sorry, its blue shirts.

American colonists relied on a similar tactic in the 1760's and 1770's: tarring and feathering. Though we tend to dismiss it as a quaint practical joke, tarring and feathering was actual, physical torture. The boiling tar severely burned its target; it could blind him if it hit his eyes and permanently injure those areas the TSA gropes.

Not surprisingly, when tarring and feathering became the cost of taking the King's shilling, men thought twice before doing so. But we need not rip up our pillows nor haul out the tar-pots. We can accomplish the same thing with our boycott – don't fly the commercial airlines, for any reason at any time – and ostracism.

If you own a company, refuse to buy from or sell to anyone affiliated with the TSA. Do your competitors deal with the agency? Advertise the fact that you don't.

And all of us can socially ostracize the TSA's criminals – as well as Leviathan's lackeys in general. Decent people certainly don't invite pedophiles, thieves, and murderers to their homes; they don't allow their children to play with their kids nor, later, to marry them; they protest their presence on committees and refuse to serve beside them; they glare rather than saying "hello" when passing one on the streets of a small town. The State has long been our direst enemy; it's past time we treated its minions as such.

Meanwhile, Christopher Elliott is doing his best to out the lady who contacted him; you can read his speculations about her real name on his blog, but I shan't repeat them here. Yes, I'm a bad journalist and no, I don't care: in this case, identifying the source and her restaurant to verify that she's correct and truthful matters less than the brilliant, brave blackballing she advocates: "she hopes telling her story will raise awareness of the anger felt by small businesses across America toward the TSA. u2018Maybe more businesses will step up to the plate and do the same,' she says."

Amen!

February 25, 2011