Security Theater

If I were a suicide terrorist (and I hasten to say I’m not), and I wanted to get a liquid bomb onto a plane (and I don’t), to thwart the security theater (“making you feel safer for 10 years now!”), what I’d do is this (and this is no ingenious saboteur idea, just something that any pimply kid down the block could think up while waiting for their next game of Lands of Lore 3 Kingdom to boot up): I’d get together a few of my terrorist friends; book seats on some flight (preferably near the plane’s fuel tanks); pack our carry-ons with the allowed quart baggies, each carrying as many allowed 3-ounce containers as possible with explosives; after going through security theater, buy as many bottles of water as needed, meet up in the restroom, empty the water bottles, and fill them with the explosive liquids from the 3-ounce containers; get on the plane; and somewhere, preferably over a populated area, blow the whole thing up, and hurry to greet my 57 virgins.

The security theater at airports around the world is an expensive exercise in making the public feel safe after the fact. All of the threats – from the original 9/11 box cutter bombers (we can’t take any number of potential weapons on board (except any number of others that we can)) to the potential liquid bombers (we can’t take liquids or gels if not in 3-ounce containers packed in quart baggies) to the potential shoe bomber (we have to pass our shoes through the scanner) to the potential underwear bomber (we have to wear our underwear on the outside of our . . . oh, no, we just have to get an MRI and/or a groping of our genitals) – have been responded to after the fact. I just hope the next attempt – and there surely will be another – won’t involve anal insertion of plastic explosives. That would really slow the security line down.

Duck and Cover

When I was growing up way back in the ancient 1950s, the US population, including us grade schoolers, were instructed by the government in the defensive measure of “Duck and Cover” to protect us from nuclear attack. The idea was that if we saw a flash of atomic light, we should drop to the ground and cover our heads with whatever we had handy, a blanket if we were in the park having a picnic, a newspaper if we were reading it on the street; if we were in school, we were to dive under out desks and cover our heads with our hands. It’s hilarious now to look back and think that we actually bought into the notion that such cursory measures would save us from the thermal and radioactive blasts of an atomic bomb. But we believed it because the government was assuring us of both the threat and the security.

Now in my 60s, I’m reliving that early period of my life, only instead of the threat of atomic attack, it’s now the threat of terrorists smuggling explosives onto planes and blowing them up, and the defensive measures require us to take off our shoes, remove our belts, not carry liquids more than 3 ounces, pass through metal detectors, and either be virtually stripped by body scanners or have our privates groped by airport officials. And of course we believe it because the government assures us of both the threat and the security.

Propaganda is propaganda. And both “Duck and Cover” and the current airport security procedures – “Strip and Uncover”? -- are propaganda. They are both meant to do two things: (1) instill in the public a constant threat, and (2) display for us how government has it under control. All will be well if we just do what the government tells us to do. Duck and cover.