Theater of the Absurd, by the Absurd, for...

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 19 Feb 2007 10:52:53 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Fred on Everything - Fred visited D.C. recently, and has some comments on the sekurity theater he encountered. None of the so-called "security measures" do a damned thing to make anybody more secure, but they DO serve to keep the sheep (us) in line. [militant]

Every time I go to the United States (I have just returned from two weeks in Washington), I am astonished by the antic security, by the proliferation of admonitions and alarms and inchoate fear. Now it is illegal to carry toothpaste on airplanes. I find myself wondering: Is this just another spasm of periodic hysteria, like Prohibition, the Sixties, and a Commie Under Every Bed? Or is it calculated political programming?

Most of it impinges at best lightly upon reality. For example, measures for security at airports are largely useless--if their purpose is to increase security. Think about it. Time and again the public-address system warns that vehicles left unattended in passenger-loading zones "may be ticketed and towed." Why? By the time anyone notices that the truck is unattended, by definition the driver will be somewhere else. He will certainly be able to walk a hundred yards before the tow-truck arrives--and push the button. Boom. In the case of a suicide bomber (which is what we are worried about, no?) it doesn't matter anyway. Boom.

...

The whole business looks remarkably like malign vaudeville, like mummery intended to accomplish two things. The first is to persuade the foolish that the nation is At War. Actually only the president is at war. The second, and I would like to be wrong about this, is to train the public to obedience. The formula is simple: Keep'em scared and you can do anything. It works. Americans are rapidly becoming accustomed to Soviet-style surveillance, to the state's power to search and spy without restraint, to being barked at and ordered about by low-level federal employees. People deserve what they tolerate.

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