The one thing I'll say struck me as true from Baker's essay was that a big part of wide-spread opposition to TSA activities is not the activities themselves, but the attitudes of the agents involved. I'll say that the Denver TSA folks tend to be professional, even (when pressed) compassionate. On the other hand, LAX TSA operatives yell. At everyone. For sins being committed or having been committed by previous folks wending their ways through the lines.
If TSA agents showed any sense of empathy with the folks they are _de facto+ treating as potential murderous terrorists, I think they would not only do a better job, but people would be less resentful.
Which calls to mind the idea that the TSA is some small karmic payback on the middle and upper classes for the sins of conventional law enforcement upon lower class citizens. "Hey, there's a guy in uniform, yelling at me, giving me orders, telling me to stand there, do this, show that, comply with this other thing — and I'd better do whatever arbitrary command he's giving me, because if I don't there will be hell to pay." Hey, folks who find the TSA oppressive — consider how poorer people who deal with that sort of thing every day from the police must feel.
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The Volokh Conspiracy Turned Into A TSA Porn Site So Gradually, I Hardly Noticed
The one thing I take away from Stewart Baker’s extremely unsettling extended sexual metaphor about opposition to the TSA is that the man is very frustrated. Mr. Baker — a self-described “priv…
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