Calling it as I see it

“Mr. Pistole, you’re doing a great job,” Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Senate committee overseeing air travel, told TSA chief John Pistole, a former FBI agent who’s had the job since July. For emphasis, Rockefeller added a few minutes later: “I think you’re doing a terrific job.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, admitted right away that “I have been a fan of the advanced imaging technology.” American air travelers, she said, “have to understand that this is being done for their best interests and their safety.”

I’m sorry, but anyone who believes that our security theater, seen in airports across the US on a daily basis, is either a “terrific job” or is about our best interests or safety is one of three things:

• Willfully blind
• Incredibly stupid
• A liar

We are no safer in the air now than we were on September 10, 2001. Someone who wants to take a plane down, someone who is willing to die to do so, can. The few attempts so far have been nothing more than half-assed attempts by amateurs. If our Muslim friends wanted to replay 9/11, they would figure out a way to do so. For all we know, they already have and are simply waiting for the right time.

But what we are is becoming accustomed to living in a police state. ID checks, road blocks, endless questions, cameras, intrusions on Constitutionally protected rights, “If you see something, say something” and actions that, if taken by anyone else would be considered sexual assault are now taken for granted, just a part of life in these the United States.

Make no mistake, America. You’re being trained. And you’re taking the harness well.