Terrorism Sanctioned by Authority (aka the TSA)

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin said it a long time ago, and folk have been quoting and paraphrasing it frequently ever since, but it seems that few can actually internalize it.

Take for instance the furor over TSA (officially the Transportation Security Administration, although I increasingly consider them to be Terrorism Sanctioned by Authority) invasive screening. It's justified in the name of "safety," despite sound findings that the security theatre it engages in does nothing to keep travelers or the nation safe, and the vast majority of citizens accept it. When a citizen dares to resist the horrific excesses mandated by authoritarian thugs, he or she is abused, lambasted, charged and fined.

Since that terrible day on 09/11/2001, citizens of the United States have feared the terrorist without... but what of the fear-mongers within? Are they not engaged in a kind of pervasive domestic terrorism? When persons in power harp on the things (they think) we have to fear, we must always suspect their motives.

The institutions of power have a vested interest in keeping the citizens fearful; fear makes stronger shackles than steel, and a fearful citizen is a docile, compliant, conforming one. But whatever is great about our nation was not created by fearful, docile, compliant citizens. Non-conformity is, or once was, practically a religion in our nation. It is the rebel, the outlier, the pioneer who innovates and creates and changes things. Those who foster fear are in a very real sense enemies of the republic.

But we don't have to stand for it. After more than nine years of constant, numbing alarums, the citizens are rebelling at last. Fear cannot be sustained forever. The human organism's capacity for fear is eventually exhausted. We seem to be reaching that threshold now, and for that I thank God. It hasn't come soon enough, but it is coming.

Frank Herbert, in his Dune series of science fiction novels, formulated the Litany Against Fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear is gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Let me share a couple of Thomas Jefferson quotes that I think bear on the subject:

• When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
• I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. 
• The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain  occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be  exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.

I resist the actions of the TSA. I object to the actions of the TSA. I call for all to find alternate means of transportation, avoiding air travel to the maximum extent possible, until the airlines call on the TSA to dismantle their little "theatre of the oppressive." Corporations still have a voice in the halls of power; impact corporations' profits, and perhaps government will act appropriately in this matter.