It doesn't matter to anyone except me that I have an informed opinion about Obama, the United States, and terror. Even in my wildest daydreams, no one's going to call me up and ask my thoughts. And it's certainly a lot easier to have an opinion when you're not weighed down with facts, or the opinions of smart people, that contradict what you think, or want to think. Bush got several things right? Sticks in my craw.
Nevertheless, I do want to have an informed opinion. I therefore found this article, from today's New York Times Magazine, of interest. So much so that when I'm done, I'm going to go back through it and make notes.
5 comments:
The problem with the car analogy is I think why people don't use it to demand licensing of firearms. Deaths from either come from voluntary acts. People don't choose to do something that has a chance to get them killed by a bomb, so they want to be protected against that. But personally selected death -- even if someone else did the selecting, and it resulted in me being affected -- well, that's okay.
No, I don't agree. But thats what I think the logic is.
I'm not sure that Obama's logic is skewed. I think some is hard to defend because it's based on security theater (however much the TSA says thats not the case). But much of it makes sense to me. The idea that we have to care about the lives of people in another country because their refuse (ref-use) will come here to hurt us -- that bothers me, and I wish there was a better way. Cheney would snarl that his IS a better way. Sometimes, it was. But proving it, even to a limited amount -- that was beyond him. He relied on the old New York Mets motto. Which I will leave as an exercise for the student.
Theatre.
I got patted down by a very embarrassed official in England last week. None of the harrassed officials could give a valid reason for the extra security except that is was required on any flight going to the US. About ten percent of the flights going to the US were cancelled or delayed. Massive hit in the US wallet, nobody else in the world demands such extra attention.
Yup, the terrorists won.
And nobody even had to die to do it!
And when I walked out of the airport, I was nearly mowed down by a driver on a cell phone.
I can't help but feel that we are looking at the wrong problems here.
I wonder if I could somehow make, say, Detroit into the enemy. I think Ralph Nader did that back in the early seventies with "Unsafe at Any Speed". It got people to wear seatbelts, got safety glass to become an industry standard equipment, and caused Detroit to install airbags. Reduced the death toll to a tolerable forty thou a year.
(OMG, did I just say that? And did you just nod your head in agreement? When did forty thousand mangled bodies become tolerable?)
Oh well..as long as people die on cell phones, the terrorists will have won. Thats my story, and with any luck, it will be picked up by CNN.
The answer is, clearly, that the option should exist to DEMAND being patted down -- by a very cute TSA agent. Who'd complain?
http://willscommonplacebook.blogspot.com/2009/12/towards-better-security-theater.html
Somehow, I don't think that he's entirely serious in his suggestions. And, of course, it's always easier to mock than to accomplish.
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