http://www.optoutday.com/
Let me put it this way. I'll often fly in uniform, like when I went on leave from Iraq, NTC, JRTC, pretty miserable places. If not, I'll probably have my ACU-pattern assault pack or at the very least I'll have purchased my tickets with a military discount. Roughly every third flight TSA selects me for 'additional searching'. Sometimes they'll pull me out of line to get on the plane after I've already been searched and my bags inspected just to search me and my bag again. My SOP when they do this is to refuse to be taken into a back room, instead letting them violate the person and privacy of someone who's obviously a veteran, and if it's been a shitty day (read: I just fucking came back from Iraq or they searched me already and I hadn't broken quarantine) I'll make snide remarks about the usefulness of their job.
Don't worry, I'm smart enough to not point out "Gee, all I'd need to do to make all this security completely pointless would be to set up a mortar tube two hundred meters thataway... or drive a VBIED up to baggage claim when a flight lets out..." or any of a hundred-and-one tactics our enemies actually have used. But hey, they're not worried about that. They're worried about whether or not that eighty-year-old lady with the walker is secretly a jihadi. They're deeply concerned that a vet might be carrying a bomb on his person, 'cause, y'know, we're the ones who carry out suicide attacks. For me, the line they shouldn't have crossed wasn't when they started using imagers to look at people's nekkid heineys, the line was when they gave me additional searching twice on a three-flight trip from Sarasota to Detroit and one of the searchers said to me "I wish I had a pack like this when I was in the service" while he was going through my assault pack. I could justify it with the reasoning that they were just looking for any rounds/UXO in my pack that I might've accidentally left - it's happened to other guys before, it'll happen again - were it not for the fact that the government I answer to has put out a memo stating returning veterans are a potential threat.
Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.
- DHS
When I first read that memo shortly after being extra-searched so damn many times, I found within myself whole new depths of outrage and anger wholly outclassing any I'd developed during my deployment to Iraq. I began to become genuinely pissed off at the American people. Not the "I'mma gonna go get me a high-powered rifle and hide out in a clocktower" kind of pissed off, the kind of irritation you get when you see people doing something incredibly stupid when they should know better and squandering something that better men than they have given all they had to win. It's been getting to the point that I've pretty much given up hope that this Republic has any hope of improving, of becoming the world leader in science, industry, and liberty. This thing with the TSA, it's just one drop in the damn bucket. Everywhere I look, I see signs that our Constitutionally-mandated rights either have been or are being eroded away. They limit what we can say and where we can say it, they limit what weapons we're allowed to have, they invade our privacy for shits and giggles, 'due process' is a joke that the gov't ignores and the criminals abuse, if a right wasn't enumerated in the Constitution it might as well not exist, and God knows the Civil War just about gave the guillotine to the rights of the States and the people.
The only reason they can continue to violate us like this is because they have a monopoly on travel by air. This Christmas may well be the last time I fly by airline on my own dime - after that, Uncle Sam's either paying for it or I'm taking the damn bus. The American people can continue to tolerate it or not. I doubt taking an extra day or two on a trip is worth it to them, and for that they have my contempt.
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