Airport Security

I’ve always thought that airline travel was inconvenient and uncomfortable but now it’s just downright insulting. I’ve had to put up with seats that were too narrow for anyone but a 14 year old girl, black and blue knees, food that was as tasteless as the décor, overhead bins that were taken up with someone else’s rubbish because they brought too much on the plane and endless queues. In the old days, there were smokers, too. I hated that. It always seemed to me that no other business would be able to succeed while treating its customers as badly as airlines do.

Now we have a whole new era of “airport security” - and a new oxymoron. Who do they think they’re kidding? Does the government really think that they can fool us into believing that nail clippers are dangerous weapons? Do they think we are going to believe that shampoo, cosmetics or medicine bottles are potential explosives containers? What kind of drugs makes these idiots so paranoid?

Recently, I went on a holiday abroad. I had no problem going through security but my wife had to take off her belt and shoes because they had metal buttons on them. Do they think there’s a gun hidden inside them or something? It probably hasn’t crossed their pea-brained intellects that a belt can be used as a garrotte. Oh, my God! Let’s ban belts! If you’ve ever seen some of my wife’s shoes, you may think that they were dangerous weapons in the hands of an angry woman but I doubt that the buttons on them are deadly. They’re certainly less lethal than airport food.

I have a pair of metal grooming scissors that are about 3 inches long. They have dull points and won’t even cut my skin. They will cut my nose hair, however, and some security brainiac thinks this is a potential weapon? What a goofball. Other than feeling that an airplane is essentially a flying coffin, I don’t feel particularly afraid of nail clippers and grooming scissors in one.

As a paying customer, I don’t like to be treated like a potential criminal. Airport security measures are not particularly effective, reasonable or even useful. Sure, they might be able to find the guns but, remember, the 911 planes were taken over by insane clowns wielding utility knives. Offhand, I can think of half a dozen knife-like weapons that one could bring on board undetected today. And if one really wanted to bring more than a couple of pounds of explosives on board then why not just get more than one person involved? How many were on the 911 planes? So much for limiting the amount of shampoo. Yet another useless inconvenience. I don’t mind the X-rays on the bag but I object to stripping. If we don’t do something to stop the paranoid madness then we’ll be subjected to surreptitious X-rays on ourselves in the not too distant future.

Another thing that all the security rhetoric about Islamic extremists doesn't seem to get is that they don’t even know that Canada exists. Heck, the US barely even knows that we exist. We’re not a target for attack despite what our PM may say – the US is. If someone did hit us, who would know? No other countries report news in Canada generally speaking. Our currency isn’t even accepted anywhere else. Denmark might smirk a little because we’re in a pubescent pissing contest with them over some uninhabited arctic sand bar. Would anyone else care? I doubt it. There isn’t anything worth bombing here. We have no iconic financial towers, no global economic clout and no army that rushes about invading countries in retaliation for giving us a bloody nose. We wait to be asked politely before going. Our government doesn’t offend anyone except its own citizens.

We live in a semi-free society. Taking away our freedom to cut our nose hair and finger nails is simply too much of a totalitarian gesture. It is not a reasonable limitation on our freedom. It does not make us safer. It is a futile attempt to justify the unjustifiable. What governments fail to comprehend is that, in a democracy, they are not the ones in control, the people are. One day they will push us too far. To paraphrase an old adage, even a Canadian will turn.

The only thing that really scares me is the people doing the security. Their blatant paranoia and disregard for their customers’ rights, their futile restrictions and unwavering aversion to reason and their blind insistence that this nonsense is for my safety is what really scares me. Why not put all the money and effort wasted on such useless and ineffective security towards a better air traffic control system? Now that would make me feel a whole lot safer.