Overblown

In October of 2001 my later partner, Joel, and I took a long planned ‘once in a lifetime’ trip to Hawaii.   It was somewhat surreal traveling in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.   There were rifle-toting National Guardsmen all over every airport but apart from their conspicuous presence, airport security was still pretty low key and ‘customer service’ oriented  (if the security rules that had been in place on 9/11 had actually been FOLLOWED, none of the hijackers would have been allowed to board).   Passenger screening  had Not yet been "Halliburtoned" into a passenger funded federal agency that has turned checking in for a flight to Phoenix into an experience only slightly less intrusive and de-humanizing than be booked into a typical county jail.  

So it was on the return leg of the trip that we had ‘travel day from hell’.   Evolving security arrangements had resulted in  huge HUGE lines and more than an hour after arriving at Kahului we were just in this endless line that was moving glacially.   (Joel had the sense to lie down on the floor and grasp for his asthma inhaler,  deftly  bringing forward an Aloha Airlines agent who swiftly transferred us their VIP lounge booked us in first class on the next flight to Honolulu).    Unfortunately we missed our connection so got to spend the afternoon and evening waiting to take the red eye back to Seattle.

It’s ten pm and a crowd of tired, sun-burned tourists has collected at the departure gate.   A whole plane load of them.    Then the gate agent says that we all have to leave the gate area and queue up again out in the un airconditioned arcade.   And as I waited with all those other tired sweaty people who had done it and Really wanted to go home NOW as a gate agent checked our ID’s and tickets at a glacial pace, which had already been checked at least three times by the airline and the National Guard.   This was just overkill and it didn’t make us one iota safer.

If, like me you find it glaringly obvious that the civil liberties revokations New Security Measures serve several agendas entirely unrelated to making us safer and which actually make us both less safe and less free,  you don’t really need to read Overblown in which John Mueller makes clear what a scam it all is,  from arresting Dionne Warwick for having a joint in her purse to the current procedures which are at once overkill and ineffective.   I haven’t the stomach to read all the details and see all the evidence laid out in black and white.  But if you do Overblown is Recommended.