‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp’

So far, the revolt against The Transportation and Security Administration has resulted in very little fundamental change, other than exemptions for special interests. By fundamental change, I mean the restoration of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

One misconception that lingers is that the traveler can choose between the Scylla of the scan and the Charybdis of the enhanced pat down. Even if you select what to you is a lesser evil, your TSA dominator or dominatrix could still pull you over for a once-over. After opting for the photons as opposed to the fondle, “a bladder cancer survivor from Michigan, who wears a urostomy bag that collects his urine,” “was pulled to the side to be patted down by a TSA agent.” Such stories abound.

A mushy-headed maxim held in the US is that to be a victim—of crime, terrorism, one’s own stupidity—is to be automatically conferred with oracular wisdom. The time was ripe to hear from relatives of those murdered on 9/11. At least two such Delphic sources have praised the home-grown terrorism of the TSA, advising Americans to play along with these probe-and-grope routines.

I give you “Mary and Frank Fetchet, whose son, Bradley James Fetchet, was killed on Sept. 11. [They] have … issued a statement in support of the new measures, citing the failed Christmas Day plot last December as a reminder that ‘comprehensive security measures’ are still needed.”

Another true believer is Alice Hoagland. Apparently, the fact that her son was killed in the Twin Towers gives her the (ostensible) authority to advocate for the rogering and radiating procedures.

What can I recommend as resistance? Name and shame the perpetrators.

WE LIVE UNDER THE LAW OF RULE, AS OPPOSED TO THE RULE OF LAW. State workers are thus often shielded from the consequences of crimes they commit in the course of performing their “duties.” Taking care to work around such legal protectionism, fliers who’re frisked should document the name of the particular TSA perp who pawed them, and expose him on the Internet. Footage of the victims is everywhere, but the agents—the stars in these horror films—remain nameless and faceless. Name, shame, and dissociate from them.

The TSA is but one government department. All other departments are like it. Bureaucrats write most of the laws under which we live and labor. For this reason, some of us use the term “Managerial State” for the Thing “The Huckster” and “The Hannity” call “our freedoms,” “our democracy.” We really have very little of the first. As bad as mobocracy is, we are, in truth, managed by unelected apparatchiks.

As a mother—as a human being with a heart—it was particularly hard seeing children subjected to the cruelty of strangers. Watching footage of the kids down whose miniature trousers TSA goons have been reaching (including the heroic, iconic little Mandy Smith and her father in his reprehensible abdication)—I could not help but wonder: Where in all this has the FLOTUS been?

Never-ever could I condone such state sadism. Not against innocent adults. And most certainly not against children—not even against the president’s kids. Yes, it occurred to me, if only fleetingly, that the thought of Malia being mauled or Sasha scanned might make their mother speak up. The girls’ only flaw, however, is to have been born to a dreadful cur.

Make that two.

If Michelle Obama had experienced a gut reaction to the ordeal inflicted by her husband’s administration (begun under his predecessor) on travelers and their tots—she was not letting on. The First Lady, as you know, is in touch with her gut—and the gut of every kid in the country. The FLOTUS of the fat-based initiatives “cares” enough to decide what America’s bloated babes will ingest, but not enough to weigh-in when their bodies are being invaded by state workers.

WHERE ARE THE MEN in all this? This is no country for men. Emasculate them, feminize them, make them over in the image of woman—and they’ll sacrifice their own children to the state. Having been “liberated” from the natural instinct to protect their own, one can hardly blame men. Women most certainly don’t have a case against their compliant partners. The state as parent and protector: Is this not what most modern women have strived for?

It’s safe to say that the moms of the Fox News Blond Squad were with The FLOTUS. One of these interchangeable females implied that the interminable complainers at the terminals were no more than an insignificant group of noise-makers. Kirsten Powers, a liberal member of that squadron, expressed her satisfaction with the porn protocol. Her sympathies, she said, go out to TSA workers.

Yes, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”