Coming home from overseas is always a joy, especially when greeted by my favorite people, the TSA. Sure, other countries used non intrusive common sense tactics, which work. Why should we be like them? If we want the world to be flat, it will be flat.
I thoroughly enjoyed the rude way they dealt with me. It was like being in one of those themed restaurants where the waitresses tell you to go jump in a lake. I especially enjoyed how their scanners went off after I had passed through several other scanners in various airports with identical luggage.
I enjoyed how they made me step aside and pretended they were going to pat me down, acting almost like a bunch of grade school bullies. I pretended to be an angry man giving them the stare of death while demanding to see their supervisor. It was almost comical how they pretended to sheepishly back down.
They could not have picked a better actress to play the supervisor. An overweight angry woman with skin tight pants, it was right out of a Seinfeld stand up routine. I of course asked why the scanner had gone off when I had already passed through several scanners in the past two days. She then decided to improv and say that the computer randomly selected me for screening. Meanwhile the other goons were searching through my carry on.
I decided to go with it, and asked her if a cop had ever randomly searched her house for no apparent reason. She looked a little confused, so I explained my question. I told her the supreme court has ruled that for a police officer to search your home they need a warrant or probable cause. The same is true of automobiles and various other examples. It's a little something called the 4th Amendment, in a little document we call the Constitution.
She quipped back that they were just trying to make things safe. To which I responded I had traveled in several other countries including an airport in the Middle East and never had been harassed like this. She then arrogantly suggested I should write my Congressmen. I explained the purpose of Congress was to pass laws. The problem here is not the laws, it's that you are violating the law. She then explained they have authority to search randomly. I explained that the constitution was the supreme law of the land and any law which contradicted it was invalid. I then asked if we airports were special places where the Constitution did not exist.
About this time her goons finished their search of my luggage. She handed me a complaint form and said if I wanted to file a complaint with her superiors I could fill the form out and mail it to them.
How I love coming home to the land of the free, where nothing like the Nazi brown shirts could ever happen. Nothing says thank you for your service quite like good old fashion TSA theater. I hope they miss me as much as I miss them.
This is how you deal with a bully. You stand up to them, they did not dare lay a hand on me. I wonder how the blue shirts sleep at night.
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