Life's but a walking shadow

So. CBS News is pimping their poll, which they claim shows that 81% of Americans approve of the TSA's new policy of electronically strip searching passengers, and groping those who refuse.

And you know what? I'm completely in favor of it. In fact, I think the TSA should start doing actual strip searches, in public, along with a body cavity search. Assholes on the internet (and in the TSA, and in Congress) keep saying "we need to provide the best security"--well, you can't have the best if you don't go all the way, can you?

People are far, far too willing to give up liberty for safety, and our government has become very, very good at eroding liberty so slowly that people don't get outraged enough to do anything about it. The way the modern federal and state governments piss on the Fourth and Second Amendments, the way modern urban cops abuse and intimidate citizens, the routine, casual, and open disregard the feds show every day for the Constitutional limits to their powers... We've fought revolutions over shit like this. But bring it on slowly over the course of a century, and people accept the safety-and-security excuses and think it's normal.

It's only when a government bureau sets new records for rampaging corruption and disdain for the citizens they "serve" that anybody takes enough notice that our rulers are forced to overcome institutional inertia and castrate the offending organ of the state. If the TSA backs down on the strip searches and goes back to "merely" stealing from luggage, imprisoning people who decline searches, keeping secret lists of citizens, and doing "regular" pat-downs of anybody who displeases them, people will lose interest.

Hell, take away the TSA Retaliatory Grotchgrab that's starting to get people really pissed off, and everybody but those crazy fringey libertarians will probably be totally chill with the electronic strip searches at every airport, police station, and courthouse in the US in a half a decade or so.

So go, go, TSA! Cling to the belief that you're the only line of defense between the great horde of ungrateful slobs and a world of terrorists who'd kill 'em all without your vigilance! Keep secure in the knowledge that you know what's best for them, and that anything you want to do is justified. For security. Damn the "civil rights" whiners, brothers, and full steam ahead.