It is amusing to hear right-wing media hosts rail about TSA\u2019s body scans as an extension of the Obama socialist agenda and as an environmental health hazard.\u00a0 It was of course the Bush Administration and its supporters in neo-con think tanks that\u00a0hyped the idea that the U.S. is under civilizational threat from Islamic terrorism and that created the bureaucracies whose\u00a0primary function is to respond to the Islamic menace, which therefore can never be deemed to have been exagerrated.\u00a0 Maybe a Bush Administration adoption of body scans would have provoked the same resistance from the right, but I doubt it.\u00a0 Nevertheless, any push-back against the idea that we need ever more stringent security measures is welcome.\u00a0 (I haven\u2019t heard what the right-wing media is offering as an alternative to the body scans, but I would guess that they are calling again for profiling the hell out of Islamic passengers.\u00a0 That\u2019s a logical idea in theory, the problem is that it is nearly unworkable in practice.)\u00a0 As for myself, I have yet to encounter an intrusion that breaches my privacy threshold and couldn\u2019t care less about these scans from a privacy perspective.\u00a0 But I object to the burdens on commerce that they impose and to the \u201cBe Afraid\u201d message that they send out.\u00a0 It would be nice if the right wing stood up for rationality and true risk assessment.\u00a0 There have been scores of deaths in American workplaces over the last year from psychopaths and zero deaths anywhere in the U.S. from Islamic terrorists.\u00a0\u00a0 Ditto in every of the preceding 9 years.\u00a0 As for auto fatalities, don\u2019t get me started.\u00a0 If we went back to pre-9\/11 airport security measures, my guess is that flying would still be far safer than driving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is amusing to hear right-wing media hosts rail about TSA\u2019s body scans as an extension of the Obama socialist agenda and as an environmental health hazard.\u00a0 It was of course the Bush Administration and its supporters in neo-con think … Continue reading