Recently by Becky Akers: Versus Nurture
In 2006, the courageous Ryan Bird from Wisconsin approached a checkpoint after writing "Kip Hawley is an Idiot” on the plastic bag said idiot had decreed for passengers' toiletries. You can predict what happened next: the TSA's goons "detained" Ryan for 25 minutes to punish his feistiness.
We'll trust Ryan finally if tardily arrived at his destination and has thereafter avoided airports. Otherwise, little has changed in the last six years. The Idiot's mental capacity is still half that of wallpaper, even if his circumstances now differ: he forsook his cushy seat as the TSA's Alpha Male when the Republicrats lost the political football to the Demopublicans in 2008. That fumble eventually subjected aviation to the tender mercies of John "The Pervert" Pistole. Idiot was a tough act to follow with his 3.2-ounce nonsense and his baggies to neutralize explosive Listerine and cologne, but The Perv managed to exceed this abuse. Under his suzerainty, the TSA's thugs gate-rape and ogle us. It's enough to induce nostalgia for mere lunacy from The Idiot rather than The Perv's outright sexual assault.
Perhaps that emboldened The Idiot to write a book (and no, I will neither read nor review it: good gracious, there are limits to the risks Your Intrepid Reporter will run, and addling my wits courtesy of The Idiot's pablum lies far beyond that boundary), the dying Palgrave Macmillan to publish it, and the equally moribund War State Journal to feature 2500 words from The Idiot promoting his tract. (The Journal restricts ordinary serfs to "600 to 1,200 jargon-free words" on its op-ed page; maybe that's why The Idiot's screed appears in "Life and Culture." That section doesn't post its requirements on length, but another piece on which I randomly clicked numbered around 900 words.)
The TSA's multitudes of enemies have gleefully hailed The Idiot's article because of such lines as "Airport security [sic] in America is broken … [TSA] end[s] up on the evening news when someone’s grandma gets patted down [sic for u2018sexually molested'] or a child’s toy gets confiscated [sic for u2018stolen'] as a security risk. If you’re a frequent traveler, you probably hate us"–bingo, Idiot, but so does everybody else–"… it is a national embarrassment that our airport security [sic] system remains so hopelessly bureaucratic and disconnected from the people whom it is meant to protect [sic for u2018dominate']."
The fanatical statists out there, including the staff at Palgrave and the Journal, may listen now that even the TSA's former kingpin admits, "Airport security has to change. The relationship between the public and the TSA has become too poisonous to be sustained." But I doubt it. Editors who can overlook toddlers' screaming as the agency's pedophiles fondle them and a manhandled pilot's puking aren't likely to suddenly condemn these crimes against humanity because an acolyte of the God-State confesses that the deity's gilding is cracked.
Meanwhile, The Idiot deliciously and completely proves his credentials as imbecile. "I arrived [at the TSA] in 2005," he tells us as though auditioning in the role of Mr. Smith for Frank Capra, "with naive notions of wrangling the organization into shape, only to discover the power of the TSA’s bureaucratic momentum and political pressures." Breathes there a dumbed-down prisoner of the public schools, even at the elementary level, who doesn't understand that "bureaucracy" and "politics" not only characterize but are the sine qua non of government? Sorry, Idiot, no sympathy for you.
What's even more damning is that after a review, albeit brief and euphemistic, of the TSA's incompetence, The Idiot does not recommend the only sensible solution, abolition. Rather, he fantasizes that we can "fix" this bureaucracy of profoundly deceptive deviants and offers five suggestions for doing so. I need quote only one to illustrate how sadly, stunningly stupid Our former Ruler is: "Give TSA officers [sic for u2018sociopaths'] more flexibility …TSA officers should have more discretion to interact with passengers…" Right. Any more "flexibility" or "interaction with passengers," and they'll be gang-banging victims right on the concourse's floor.
But what else than such drivel would we expect from a loser who also credits the TSA's feeble-minded, blue-shirted terrorists with "well-trained, engaged brains" and insists against all evidence that "No security agency on earth has the experience and pattern-recognition skills of TSA officers." Ahhhhh, so that's why they mistake Granny and Junior for Al Qaeda's newest recruits, all that "experience" and "skill" at "pattern-recognition." (Yo, Journalites: I thought we were striving for "jargon-free" prose here.)
I asked Bogdan Dzakovic his opinion of The Idiot's maunderings. Bogdan is to the federal stranglehold on aviation what Ron Paul is to Congress: a man whose intelligence and integrity throw into even darker relief the corrupt morons around him. Bogdan's an expert on security who regularly blew the whistle on the feds' malfeasance and threats to passengers until the TSA exiled him to a cubbyhole in 2002. There he safely, innocuously stuffs envelopes and photocopies fliers instead of embarrassing the security theater's managers.
Bogdan had earlier told me that "'the bigger threat' to our well-being isn't terrorists … but u2018our own government's knee-jerk reaction' to them." Yep, this hero sees things as they are, not as Our Rulers decree.
No wonder Bogdan began his response to me with the reminder that "when Kip Hawley was in charge of TSA, … there was … a website where you could go to get coffee cups, t-shirts, hats etc with his face and the words, u2018Kip Hawley is an idiot.' I’m serious."
See why I like Bogdan?
He continued that The Idiot "is right about airport security being broken, but for the wrong reasons … His comments that the hardened cockpit doors will prevent another 911 hijacking are wrong. The doors should have been constructed as double-hulled doors (two doors in which only one could be opened at a time). We practiced breaching cockpit doors when I was an air marshal and it only takes a moment. On long flights pilots/flight attendants constantly open the doors. …
"The sad thing is that even if TSA was motivated to fix things, they couldn’t do it. The managers at TSA simply don’t have the intellectual and professional skills. I work at TSA HQ and the main thing we do is service the bureaucracy. Those that support the bureaucracy are rewarded and those that don’t are ostracized. TSA should be disbanded, make the industry protect itself."
So there you have it, folks: wisdom that the Journal and the rest of the corporate media will go bankrupt, praise God, rather than print.
April 19, 2012
Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.
