Quoth the Beep: "Bags are supposed to be CLEAR PLASTIC."

It was. What's that you say? The political statement compromised the perfect transparency of the plastic, and constituted a security threat?

Let's imagine that our disgruntled passenger had instead written "I Support Our President and Our Troops" on the bag. Does TSA give him grief? I think not. Diss the agency head, though, and

I would have denied him access (which is the right of the TSA) just for being an idiot.

You know, I believe you would.

Looks like you'll fit in nicely in this New American Century of ours, kid.

cordially,

Beep froths: "How do you, when faced with someone being obviously belligerent to you, respond back to that individual?"

[link|http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6440005|Here's] where the account was posted, and to refresh your memory, here's how the encounter is described:

Yesterday, while discussing the new rules a fellow Flyertalker suggested we write "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" on the outside of our clear plastic quart bags. So I did just that.

At the MKE "E" checkpoint I placed my laptop in one bin, and my shoes, cell phone and quart bag in a second bin. The TSA guy who was pushing bags and bins into the X-ray machine took a good hard look, and then as the bag when though the X-ray I think he told the X-ray operator to call for a bag check/explosive swab on my roller bag to slow me down. He went strait to the TSA Supervisor on duty and boy did he come marching over to the checkpoint with fire in his eyes!

He grabbed the baggie as it came out of the X-ray and asked if it was mine. After responding yes, he pointed at my comment and demanded to know "What is this supposed to mean?" "It could me a lot of things, it happens to be an opinion on mine." "You can't write things like this" he said, "You mean my First Amendment right to freedom of speech doesn't apply here?" "Out there (pointing pass the id checkers) not while in here (pointing down) was his response."

At this point I chuckled, just looking at him wondering if he just realized how foolish that comment was, but I think my laugh pushed him over the edge as he got really angry at this point. A Milwaukee County Sheriffs deputy was summoned - I would have left at this point, but he had my quart bag with my toothpaste and hair gel...

So...granted we have this cheeky passenger's account, and not that of the TSA worker bee, but show me where the "obvious" belligerence is. He didn't "accost" the TSA screener, as you would have it; the TSA screener accosted him. There was no security risk here. I don't doubt that the passenger's chuckle was freighted with as much amused condescension as he could pack into it, and it is generally imprudent to mock a petty functionary who has the power to inconvenience one, at the very least, if he is made to feel pissy. But the passenger was not being belligerent by any commonly accepted definition of the word. Perhaps you meant "passive-aggressive" or something.

But all this is rather beside the point, which is that in the name of that marvelously elastic "war on terror" this society is sliding into a sombre, imbecilic authoritarianism so rapidly now that the passing scenery has started to blur. We're being told—why, by people just like you, Beep!—to shut up, to defer meekly to every trespass, however great or petty, of that arbitrary power upon our ancient liberties, lest we be labeled "jerks" or worse.

As I said, you'll probably feel right at home in the prison-house they're building. Most of the rest of us, not so much.

cordially,

TSA screeners are not there to monitor levels of fealty to or dissent from the regime. TSA screeners are (broadly speaking) paid to determine whether boarding passengers are likely to divert aircraft away from their assigned flightplans and into large or famous buildings.

I invited you to consider whether our cheeky passenger would have been interfered with had his clear plastic bag borne a "patriotic" sentiment on the order of "I support our troops and President Bush." You declined to address this point, and I'm going to assume from your silence that you agree that no, the passenger would not likely have aroused the ire of the vigilant screener, although I'd love to see you argue the contrary.

The honorable traveler in question invited, nay sought, the confrontation that he received. The act of writing something he thought "amusing" invited this confrontation. Does this better fit? Have I met your superior liguistic challenge?

Nope.

You see—no, you don't, do you?—the point is that political sentiments written on a plastic bag should not concern a TSA screener unless they say something like "Long live al-Qaeda! Death to Amedrica! Death to the Sears Tower!"

Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that a hijacker who has devised a new way to seize control of a commercial aircraft that somehow solves the problem of hardened access to the cockpit and the ire of fellow-passengers who would rather be featured on a made-for-TV movie as heroes who swarmed the bad'ums and saved the White House/Capitol/Sears Tower/Transamerica Pyramid than as helpless sheep...well, a feller clever enough to think past those obstacles is not likely to announce his intentions on the surface of a ziplock bag. Is he?

You with me so far, Beep, or would you rather this conversation had never happened (hey, I'm cool)?

So we've got the TSA screener, supposedly charged with identifying threats to civilian aviation, and he sees (let's imagine) two plastic bags in the x-ray machine, one praising President Bush and the other dissing Kip Whatsisname. What reason on earth does he have to detain either owner of either plastic bag as a potential threat to airline security?

Not. One. Fucking. Reason. At. All.

You know, if you retain a gram of intellectual honesty, that the guy with the rah-rah sentiment on his plastic bag almost certainly gets a pass. You know from the account we're both discussing that the guy who says bad things about the TSA head gets pulled out of line and given grief. And you don't merely see nothing wrong with this, you all but applaud it.

You should not. We can agree on this: the incident as described is essentially trivial. The passenger was making no particularly profound gesture of dissent, and his punishment consisted of little more than a brief delay, the temporary confiscation of his passport, a moderately tense confrontation with the airport constabulary.

And yet, and yet.

All this proceeded from writing a political sentiment on a plastic bag—not merely apolitical sentiment but the wrong political sentiment. Any rational person will understand that anyone capable of a successful aircraft hijack in 2006 will not announce the fact, or even hint at it in any conscious way, in the course of the boarding process. The TSA screener didn't imagine for a moment that he was detaining a potential hijacker. What he knew was that he was bullying a smart-alec.

This is the United Fucking States of America!! We're supposed to be smart-alecs! Anti-authoritarian! Quirky! Individualist! Skeptical of authority! When the hell did the memo come down that we were all supposed to cringe before our betters?

It gets worse: the monstrous farrago of repressive measures passed the other day by Congress to its eternal infamy permits the Executive broad latitude in designating "enemy combatants," a label which once affixed even to an American citizen effectively drops him down the rabbit hole, assuming that your rabbit is reddish in complexion, has horns instead of ears, and a barbed tail. Yeah, the "man who brought it to himself" had it coming for expressing an opinion that someone way, way down on the Executive org chart didn't like. Under this new law any of us will have it coming should we offend, and while this will likely involve most of us in the event in mere inconvenience, it may be that some untimely instance of sarcasm will come to the attention of someone higher—perhaps not that much higher—up the political foodchain. In that case the unlikely victim becomes an Orwellian unperson: Evidence against me? —Sorry, no can do; national security. Get my story out to the papers? —Not permitted. In that case OH JESUS NOT THE WATERBOAGGGHHHHGH

The "man who brought it to himself" is doing us all a favor, whatever his motives. The old American Republic is slain and rotting, and a monstrous thing, a gigantic imperial maggot is struggling out of the corpse. Can you not smell it, Beep? Is your denial so smug?

I'm going to attempt to cross post this in "Politics," because this thread is sinking down on the screen. Replies there, if interested.

cordially,