[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
The country is changing, swirling toward circumstances and events very few Americans are happy about. With gas at over $3.00 a gallon, a billion dollars a week blown on a completely failed war that only produces daily horror, health care a nightmare, dollar plummeting, foreclosures and food prices skyrocketing, is it any wonder a record number of Americans say the country is on the wrong track?
Where exactly is that track taking us? More and more wonder apprehensively, especially if verified accounts of American TSA behavior continue. Travelers have had precious possessions of freedom taken from them at Los Angeles International Airport, and were flatly told they weren’t in the United States if they didn’t like it.
Many of us resist and fight the changes being inflicted upon us and our country: we blog, raise funds, canvass, communicate with our alleged representatives, protest, donate, talk to our people. But what would happen if the change we fight personally altered our lives in an immediate way, in real time, like being told one wasn’t in the US while at LAX?
What would any of us do is faced with this incredible Sergeant Schultz TSA slime who would truly dare to say we weren’t in the US at LAX, right to our faces? If the Democracy we love was placed right in our hands, would we let it slip away or fight for it, right then?
Research has consistently shown that almost all humans would in fact meekly stand there and do as they’re told, most humans simply submit to authoritarian orders. It’s not a judgment in the least, that’s just what the research, tested many times, has shown. Most Americans would be frightened to have a uniformed security officer take their possessions and tell them America had gone to hell, sorry, and hope that silence and cooperation could get them out if it.
I wouldn’t. I have undergone abusive, incredibly thorough searches when flying with total meek silence and cooperation, but no one, I mean no one, especially someone who dares to don an official uniform of the United States, tells me I’m not in America at LAX. That goon is never going to forget me as I vociferously tell him Americans are never talked to that way, how does it feel to be a total slime traitor to Washington, Adams, Lincoln and Darwin? Then I’m probably in real trouble.
It’s why I dread flying and will avoid it all possible costs, I hate to have my shoes and rights taken away by a stupid paranoid society, while the risks to my personal and family life are extremely high. I truly could get into serious trouble just trying to fly to Austin Texas, but I haven’t done anything wrong and I try very hard to be a good American. In an abstract way, incredibly, I have become afraid of flying.
I think that’s what would happen to me at LAX if told I wasn’t in America, but I really don’t know, of course. Maybe it’s what I’d like to think would happen and at my true time of testing, American Democracy right there in front of me to fight for, but with almost everything personally on the line, I’d sheep it. What would I actually do? What would any of us do?
Is this your idea of freedom, George Bush? I am a good person, I seriously love my country and will always faithfully serve her, yet here I am in 2007 dreading the thought of a plane ticket, doing anything I can to avoid buying one, horrified and dreading more stories of American uniformed officials telling humans they aren’t in America at LAX. Hoping that somehow I don’t get on some list and won’t have to fight for my country right then, I can’t believe I’d let my family duty be put in jeopardy but it could happen.
Just to get to Texas. This is the freedom I have as an American to travel, and it will not stand, damned if my daughter gets handed off a country like this.