This is an update to yesterday's diary, in which I reported from the airport about being asked to remove my "Impeach Bush and Cheney" sticker before boarding a Delta Flight from El Paso to Atlanta.
I landed uneventfully after two more boardings. To address the gist of many comments on this post, yes, the attendant asked me to remove the sticker, I refused, and nothing more happened, but I take this seriously. I do not know if she was overruled, or if she simply dropped it on her own whim, but a head flight attendant in his/her official capacity is pretty much "god" to the goings-ons in the cabin, not just another citizen. All it takes is for you to be challenged more aggressively (she could have followed me or said that another passenger complained about my sticker), for me to argue my right to wear the sticker, then for her to say I am causing a "disturbance" on the plane, and that's it. I'm off the plane, maybe spending the night in an airport lobby or spending a couple hundred dollars on a hotel, and my trip ruined (late for work or my family reunion or whatever.) For doing absolutely nothing wrong.
I would win the legal case in the end, but as the cops say when they are arrest you for nothing at a peaceful protest, "you an beat the rap but you can't beat the ride."
So when I heard this apparently harmless little lady say "sir could you please remove your sticker while you are on the flight," my blood ran cold. She had the power to force me to choose between shutting up by removing my small sticker, or undergoing great, great inconvenience.
Then the mission is accomplished: why the administration allows this sort of thing to go on, as it has many times and said nothing to clarify the lines of free speech. Word gets out on the news, people think twice about exercising their constitutionally protected speech, and we keep tip-toeing around each other and using quiet, knowing nods about impeachment rather than saying it out loud, as it should be and must be.
This is how democracies turn into police states, ninety percent self-censorship, not anything the authorities do. Thus I decided to report what was happening to the Kos community as it unfolded, to show the powers that allow this that we are fighting back. I was ready to give a press conference on the spot in the Atlanta airport, wearing my sticker and my favorite cowboy hat (I was REALLY born in Texas, and no damned George Bush is going to out-"real American" me.)
There are many instances since 9/11 of people being thrown off flights and out of Republican rallies for wearing anti-war buttons, anti-Bush t-shirts, and all manner of constitutionally protected speech. Just google "anti-bush anti-war button tee-shirts banned from flight" or the like, I don't need to list them here.
Thanks to eveyone for following this minor story. The real story here is that "impeachment backlash" in Republican-leaning parts of the country is a myth. I had exactly 3 negative remarks about my sticker during my trip. One was this attendant, another was in El Paso when a guy said "that's what the terrorists want, to impeach Bush." I told him what the terrorists wanted was for us to invade Iraq. The third was the young man in this post, which was only slightly negative, and in a friendly way.
On the other hand, I can't even count the number of thumbs-up and " I like your shirt, bud" that I got in rural red county land (forget the metropoli, places like Albuquerque may as well be San Francisco, all agreement, no fun.)
I believe now that the impeachment of Cheney and Bush is a dam ready to break, and the people with their fingers in the dyke are none other than the Democrats.
website May 8th