First, this is costing a ton of money. Not just “model employees” as far as the eye can see, and the new full-body scanners that show you what all the Islamobabes look like underneath the burka for 200 grand a pop. But the money and energy drained out of the real economy by all those people who’d be doing something more productive if they weren’t spending so many hours standing around waiting to do the shoeless shuffle. Look at the crowd, figure they’re all on minimum wage, and it’s still a lot.
The second thought that strikes you is that the ever-longer lines to get into the “secure” area are now the least secure area in America. Why not blow up the security line? You could kill as many people as on an airplane, and inflict more long-term economic damage. But don’t worry. The TSA has plans to expand the “secure” area, so the insecure perimeter will be somewhere else, with even more vulnerable people standing around waiting to get into it.
I wrote a few days after 9/11 that the modern airplane cabin was the most advanced model of the progressive social-democratic state, the sky-high version of trends that, on the ground, progress more slowly. It was a statist’s dream on Sept. 11: no smoking, 100 per cent gun control, and no First Amendment either. The justification was a familiar one—that in return for surrendering liberty, the state will ensure you are safe. And so on 9/11 three out of the four planes followed all the 1970s security procedures and everybody died. Because in the end the state wasn’t up there with them.
It was the same on Christmas Day. This time it was the post-9/11 security procedures that didn’t work, and once again the state wasn’t up there. We’re told that Mr. Abdulmutallab wasn’t on the no-fly list per se—there’s only about 4,000 people on that—but on a kind of standby list for the no-fly list, with about half-a-million people on it. Whatever. Had he chosen to light up his panties in the bathroom instead of waiting till he got back to his seat, everyone would be dead.
Question: what do the 9/11 killers, the Shoebomber, the Heathrow plotters, the Pantybomber, the London Tube bombers, the doctors who drove a flaming SUV through the concourse of Glasgow Airport and the would-be killers of Danish cartoonists all have in common? Answer: they’re Muslim. Sometimes they’re Muslims with box cutters, sometimes they’re Muslims with flaming shoes, sometimes they’re Muslims with liquids and gels, sometimes they’re Muslims with fully loaded underwear. But the Muslim bit is a constant. What we used to call a fact. But America’s leaders cannot state that simple fact, and so the TSA is obliged to pretend that all seven billion inhabitants of this planet represent an equal threat.
I wonder how far out the “security” perimeter will eventually be drawn. Just as the micro-regulatory coerciveness of the pre-9/11 airline cabin has now spread to the airport, so eventually post-9/11 airport “security” will spread way beyond—all because the prevailing political culture cannot tell the truth about what’s happening.
Thinking back on it, I should have spoken up in Vermont, even if I get on the no-fly list. The more the merrier. And the sooner all seven billion of us are on it, the sooner we can start over.
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