CHECK THE BABY. IT MIGHT BE A BOMB.
May. 17th, 2011 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM: A baby stroller sets off an explosives detector at the airport in Kansas City. TSA officers duly frisk the baby for dynamite.
There’s probably no need to parse this, but it’s worth parsing because it implies a couple of key symptoms of the current State Of Things:
1. The TSA officers have either been trained to decide, or concluded on their own, that terrorists trying to smuggle a suicide-bomb baby through airport security is MORE plausible than a false alarm, and/or:
2. The TSA officers knew full well there was probably no bomb on the baby, but the alarm went off and their supervisor will demand to know why they didn’t frisk the baby, and it’s more than their job is worth to just wave them through because who wants to be the goat in case the baby DOES have a bomb?
Both options are sadly plausible – the former because modern security policymakers tends to think in terms of movie-plot threats, and the latter because security agencies tend to operate in CYA mode (where CYA = “cover yr ass” – i.e. if a bomb gets on a plane, you’d better be able to prove it wasn’t YR fault, so it’s better to frisk the goddamn baby no matter how stupid it makes you and the TSA look).
Which is why this is never going to stop no matter how many Osama bin Ladens we kill until the US govt – and everyone else – gives the order to stand down and relax, which they can never do for pretty much the exact same two reasons given above. That, and certain politicians and popular news organizations who will always warn you that the Islams are Scary and Dangerous and will kill us and establish Sharia law the moment we let our guard down.
And that’s why we have to frisk infants and pose nude in x-ray machines and take our shoes off and let strangers feel us up. Because if we don’t, the terrorists win.
Ha ha. Too late, Jim.
New baby boom,
This is dF
There’s probably no need to parse this, but it’s worth parsing because it implies a couple of key symptoms of the current State Of Things:
1. The TSA officers have either been trained to decide, or concluded on their own, that terrorists trying to smuggle a suicide-bomb baby through airport security is MORE plausible than a false alarm, and/or:
2. The TSA officers knew full well there was probably no bomb on the baby, but the alarm went off and their supervisor will demand to know why they didn’t frisk the baby, and it’s more than their job is worth to just wave them through because who wants to be the goat in case the baby DOES have a bomb?
Both options are sadly plausible – the former because modern security policymakers tends to think in terms of movie-plot threats, and the latter because security agencies tend to operate in CYA mode (where CYA = “cover yr ass” – i.e. if a bomb gets on a plane, you’d better be able to prove it wasn’t YR fault, so it’s better to frisk the goddamn baby no matter how stupid it makes you and the TSA look).
Which is why this is never going to stop no matter how many Osama bin Ladens we kill until the US govt – and everyone else – gives the order to stand down and relax, which they can never do for pretty much the exact same two reasons given above. That, and certain politicians and popular news organizations who will always warn you that the Islams are Scary and Dangerous and will kill us and establish Sharia law the moment we let our guard down.
And that’s why we have to frisk infants and pose nude in x-ray machines and take our shoes off and let strangers feel us up. Because if we don’t, the terrorists win.
Ha ha. Too late, Jim.
New baby boom,
This is dF
